Relationships between philosophical values and conflict management styles

Abstract

Purpose To examine the relationships between Boyatzis et al.’s (2000) philosophical value orientations and Rahim’s (1983 & 1995) conflict management styles through an exploratory research study. The philosophical value orientations are identified as pragmatic, intellectual and human. The conflict management styles are represented as integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. Design/methodology/approach The author collected a sample of 161 participants gathered from Amazon’s mechanical turk digital labor pool. Participants completed a survey measuring their philosophical value orientations, conflict management styles and provided information on demographic characteristics. Statistical analysis was used to explore the relationship between philosophical value orientations, conflict management style scores and demographic characteristics. Findings The study demonstrated there were significant associations between the philosophical value orientations and the conflict management styles. Significant associations regarding the philosophical value orientations and conflict management styles were also found across the demographic groups. Research limitations/implications Three philosophical value orientations were examined in this study to include pragmatic, intellectual and human; however, there are a multitude of personal and workplace values that could be further studied. Practical implications The practical implications of this study show that employees do bring into the company or organization a set of beliefs and value structures that can influence how they respond and relate to their immediate supervisor in challenging or conflicting situations. Social implications The social implications of this study indicate employees’ behavior and reactions to their immediate supervisor are directly manipulated by the value-based system they have developed prior to joining the organization. Originality/value No prior research has examined the relationship between Boyatzis et al.’s (2000) philosophical value orientations of pragmatic, intellectual and human and Rahim’s (1983 & 1995) conflict management styles of integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. This study explores how philosophical value orientations are related to the five conflict management styles manifested within the organizational leader-follower dyadic relationship.