Abstract

It is another contribution to a new approach which considers individuals’ style of resolving conflict are dynamic and rejects the orthodox approach that treats individuals’ style of resolving conflict as static. This article ranks conflict resolving strategies and responses according to the mean value based on the secondary data given in Volkema and Bergmann (1989:1995) are used. This article has two other contributions: on the one hand it complement the work of original authors (Volkema and Bergmann 1989:1995), on the other hand, it points out the shortcomings of their work.

 Introduction

 The study of conflict has been directly or indirectly in the interest of philosophers and researchers, at least, from the time of Aristotle (See Rahim ). The researchers have studied conflict in organizations from different angles including types and stages of conflict (Thomas 1992; Pondy 1967, Deutsch 1973, Jonson, Jonson, Dudley and Acikgoz 1994), reasons or sources of conflict (Robbins 1993 Corwin 1969; March & Simon 1995; Perrow 1986 Pondy 1967; Carroll 1991; Chasnoff and Muniz 1985; Thomas 1976, 1992; Tjosvold 1993; Veliert 1984), functional (advantageous) and dysfunctional (disadvantageous) aspects of conflict (March and Simon 1995; Robbins 1993; French and Bell 1990; (Rahim 1985; Ohbuchi and Takahashi 1994; Robbins 1993; Tjosvold 1993; Dion 1979, Markides & Cohn, 1982; Hall and Williams 1966), and relationship between personality and conflict (Terhune 1970; Blake, Shephard and Mouton 1964; Bell and Blakeney 1977; Jones and Melcher 1982; Sternberg and Soriano’s 1984; Blake and Mouton 1964).

Individual styles of conflict are also investigated in many studies (Deutsch 1949, 1994; Rubin 1994; Vliert et.al 1994; March and Simon 1995). The most popular five behaviours of handling conflict are outlined by Blake & Mouton (1964), Thomas (REF) and Rahim (REF). (1989) are among those researchers (for example, Falbo and Peplau 1980; Hirschman 1970; Rusbult and Zembrodt 1983; Rusbult, Johnson and Morrow 1986; Withey and Cooper 1989) who have not followed the popular grid model of individuals’ styles of resolving conflicts). This article is based on the secondary statistics of Volkema and Bergman (1989, 1995) studies.

Volkema and Bergmann (1989) conducted research to obtain information about employees’ responses to interpersonal conflict at work. They studied 21 responses, which an individual may demonstrate in situations of conflict. They indicate that different responses fall in different categories. Two hundred and twenty two (222) participants of the study received a list of 21 responses. They asked respondents to recall a real conflict situation and mark their responses in sequence 1,2,3 and so on, which they employed during their conflict situations. The participants of the study were asked to (1) rank these responses in the order in which they actually responded to the conflict situation, (2) identify the responses that they were currently using, (3) identify those responses that they had not used but might use, and (4) identify those responses that they would never use.  They calculated a mean value for each response. After plotting the mean value of all responses, categories of strategies were identified. The given mean value for responses in Table 1 is taken from Volkema and Bergmann’s (1989) study.

Table 1: Mean Value for conflict responses.

Source: Volkema and Bergmann (1989)

They grouped these responses into six categories:  (1) Problem solving (2) Forcing  (3) Short-term Avoidance (4) Withdrawal or Exit or Long Term Avoidance  (5) Emotive Responses (6) Third-Party Sensemaking.

(1)   Problem solving: (a.) Discuss with the person. b. Convince the person c. Listen to the person. 

(2)   Forcing:  (a). Use my authority (b) Form alliance (c) go to higher up.”

(3)   Long Term Avoidance or withdrawal category: (a). Leave the job (resign) (b). Transfer Hirshman (1970) includes these responses under the heading of ‘Exit’. In this article, the term Exit is used to refer these responses.

(4)   Short-Term avoidance: (a) Avoid a person (b) Don’t talk to the person. (c) Talk behind the person.”  In the table 2, this strategy is termed as ‘avoidance’.

(5)   Emotive category: (a) Sabotage the person’s work (b) Throw things (c) Push strike or punch the person (d) Cry (e) try to get even (e) Take a drink or pill and forget about it (f) try to get the person to leave their job or the company. They mentioned that the ‘shout at the person’ response appeared to be fit in the same category.

(6)   Third-party sensemaking: involving third person in a conflict situation. This category first time appeared in Velkoma, Farquhar and Bergmann (1996).

They again conducted similar study in 1995 where they indicated overall frequency of each response. Two hundred two participants responded this study. The statistical overall frequency of each response from Volkema and Bergmann’s (1995) investigation is given in Table 2. In this study, they added two more responses, which were not included in their first study in 1989. These two added responses are (1) Make a joke and (2) Quietly do not cooperate with the person. They have not indicated where these two responses would fit in the broad categories as they did in their previous study of 1989, so the above two responses will be excluded later in this analysis. It is interesting that they had claimed in their article that they measured 24 responses whereas they provided statistics only for 23 responses. The frequency of choice of each response is given below in Table 2.

Table 2: Overall Frequency of each respons

Source: Volkema and Bergmann 1995

Objectives of the study

•  By using statistics of both studies, the first objective of the study is to highlight that responses to conflict are linked sequentially or hierarchically.

• Second, the article can also be taken as extension of Volkema and Bergman’s article published in 1989, 1995 and 1996 since the author will use their published statistics in this article.

• Third, it provides support to new trend that individuals are rational being and they adopt rational strategy to resolve the conflict. This means that process of resolving conflict is dynamic than static.

• The fourth objective of the study is to point out shortcomings of the original authors whose data is used in this study.

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Methodology

The statistics from Velkoma and Bergman (1989), which are given in Table 1, are reproduced with modifications in Table 3. In this table, the mean value has not changed for any column. However, The column ‘might use’ from Table 1 has been excluded in Table 3 because it has little relevance with the rest of the discussion. The mean values of the two columns “B” and “C” are merged and sum of these columns is shown in column ‘D’ in the Table 3. The reason of merger is that both columns B and C suggest that the responses were or are being employed. Thus, it is logical to treat them as one. The total mean value is obtained by adding ‘mean value’ of each response, which has become the ‘ mean value’ of the category. Virtually, the analysis of column ‘D’ is in the interest of this article.

Table 3*: Mean Value for Conflict responses