Effects of work experience and opponent's power on conflict management styles

The study examined the effects of two context variables, such as work experience and opponent's power on the styles of handling interpersonal conflict. 480 subjects were asked to consider a short critical incident describing an interpersonal conflict in an organization and to indicate their response to the situation in terms of the five conflict management styles: integrating, obliging, avoiding, dominating, and compromising. The results suggest that under the low-power opponent condition there was a higher preference for dominating and a lower preference for avoiding, obliging, and integrating. Inexperienced subjects did not change their choice of using the different conflict management styles in view of their opponent's power. The results also showed significant interaction effects of the two independent variables. The implications for the study are discussed.