25-08-2017, 09:32 PM
Managing conflicts through personality management
ABSTRACT
This research integrates personality management with conflict management and examines the
relationship between interpersonal conflict and personality types selected from Big Five model. In
general, personality dimensions (extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism) were related to
interpersonal conflict. The study was aimed to uncover the moderating role of personalities to reduce
conflict. The study was cross sectional and survey research design was used. Correlation, regression
and moderation were applied to analyze the impact of personality traits on interpersonal conflict and
their moderating nature. The moderating role of personality is identified as results are significant for
conscientiousness and neuroticism whereas insignificant for extraversion.
INTRODUCTION
The researchers are taking interest in two phenomenapersonality
management (Raja et al., 2004; Rahim, 1983)
and conflict management (Tjosvold, 1998; Schneer and
Chanin, 1987; Van de Vliert and Euwema, 1994) in
organizational behavior for decades. This highlights the
importance of managing conflicts and personality
management. The present study is a unique contribution
to the literature because very limited research has been
conducted on present dimensions of this study. We are
interested in linking and integrating personality management
with conflict management, as we discuss evidences
from literature that level of interpersonal conflict depends
on personality type of human beings interacting with each
other.
Personality, conflict and personality change
Researchers are working to uncover relationship between
personality and conflict for decades. It is found that
choice of strategies for conflict reduction varies from
individual to individual (Rahim, 1983; Van de Vliert and
Euwema, 1994; Schneer and Chanin, 1987). Conflicts
are the vital part of all organizations and conflict
management is essential to solve the problems raised by
conflict and to overcome the negative impacts of conflict
(Ahmed et al., 2010). According to Tjosvold (1998),
conflicts are very important segment of organizations.
Unlike other assets of organizations, only human assets
are the parties of conflict. The human part of organization
is the most important part that is responsible to manage
other assets and resources of organizations. The conflict
is caused by human interaction. It is necessary to handle
conflict in public, employees and organizations for good
productivity, financial performance and relationship
building. Individuals can get more advantage, if they
know how to handle conflict in a proper way. It will
improve the interaction qualities, organizational
performance and group activities in organizations. The
choice of proper conflict handling technique varies from
individual to individual.
Conscientiousness
This dimension of Big Five inventory describe those
people who are responsible, dependable, persistent,
organized, disciplined, methodical, diligent, risk avers,
achievement oriented and purposeful (Robbins et al.,
2008; John and Srivastava, 1999; Goldberg, 1990). They
show high performance and job satisfaction in
organizations (Barrick and Mount, 1991; Judge et al.,
1999, 2002).
Moderator analyses
We used moderated regression analysis as suggested by
Lindley and Walker (1993) to examine the effects of
selected personality dimensions on interpersonal conflict.
First, we calculated the ‘interaction term’ between the
selected independent variable and moderator variable.
To cope with multicollinearity problem, the independent
and moderator variables are transformed into
standardized values as recommended by Tabachnick
and Fidell (2001). In the first step of hierarchical regression
model, we entered personality variables to predict
interpersonal conflict.