| This study explores the conflict management styles of 20 African-American women in mid-level supervisory positions. The research seeks to identify some of the issues these participants encounter in their workplaces and how they approach or defuse issues before they expand into conflicts. However, once conflict is perceived or identified, this research examines each participant's preferred course of action or conflict management style. The five most prevalent conflict management styles were established by Blake & Mouton (1964), as accommodating, compromising, confronting, forcing, and avoiding. This research examines the participants' reactions to conflict and conflict management styles through their experiences from a mixture of perspectives (individual, interpersonal, inter-group) and addresses the following questions: (1) Which of Blake & Mouton's five conflict management styles does each participant feel best describes her way of managing conflicts? (2) How did the participants negotiate and communicate their values and/or beliefs while managing conflicts in the workplace? (3) Are the participants able to successfully resolve conflicts with their chosen methods, and if so, to what do they attribute their abilities to be successful in that area?;According to Littlejohn (1999), "Attribution theory deals with the ways people infer the causes of behavior" (p. 132). Attribution theory was founded by Fritz Heider, who outlined the causes of actions people make based on conclusions drawn from the behaviors of others. Such conclusions are also influenced by a person's environment and emotional stimulations. The study focused on attribution theory as a way to comprehend which factors participants attributed not only to the causes of a conflict situations but to their course of actions to resolve them. In-depth interviews were used to capture the conflict experiences of the participants and to analyze them, which provides implications for today's workplaces to become more cognizant of individualized differences that can relate to culture, ethnicity, race or gender, which attributes to or directly affects the choice of one's conflict management style. This study offers insight into the need for improving and developing new areas of study geared toward bringing awareness to the complexities of conflict management, especially from the perspectives of other cultures, races or ethnicities. |
