Measuring Interpersonal Conflict in Organizations:

Abstract

This critique indicts conflict style literature for focusing on disagreements rather than incompatibilities, for downplaying the role of interdependence between parties in assessing interpersonal conflicts, and for failing to cast interpersonal conflict within an organizational system. This article also questions the exhaustiveness and representativeness of the two-dimensional models that form the five styles. It argues for reframing communication to include nonverbal and contradictory messages, multiple meanings, linkages between message tactics and strategic behavior, and inconsistencies between intentions and communicative tactics as conflict develops. Finally, it argues for contingency and political models of organizing to guide researchers in selecting appropriate variables and models to study interpersonal conflicts.