Research On The Structure And Antecedents Of Interpersonal Conflict Resolution Strategies

Interpersonal conflict is an inevitable social phenomenon in social interaction, whichinfluences both personal development and organization performance. In the research area ofinterpersonal conflict, the structure and influence factors of interpersonal conflict resolutionstrategies have attracted more attentions from scholars. In west countries, the structure ofinterpersonal conflict resolution strategies has been confirmed in several studies, some of itsantecedents were also verified recently.Chinese society is typically a relationship-oriented society. As Chinese people mind a lotabout how other people view on them, they will concern much about Guanxi, Renqing andMianzi and so on when they involve in interpersonal conflict, which is totally different from theway people resolving conflict in western culture. Therefore, the research results contingent oninterpersonal conflict in western culture, which has reached impressive achievement, cannot besimply introduce for guiding the research on conflict in China.In this paper, the effectiveness of ROCI-II and the antecedents of interpersonal conflictresolution strategies in China are tested under the background of Chinese culture with thesamples of university students. A total of718college students were recruited for this study. Theresults are as follows:First，the four factors model of ROCI-II were the most suitable model for Chineseuniversity students. The four factors are named collaborating, obliging, avoiding and dominating,respectively.Second, emotional intelligence significantly correlates to their interpersonal conflictmanagement styles, specifically, social ability positively influence both collaborating style andobliging style. Avoiding style is positively influenced by emotional control. Emotionalassessment to others positively influences dominating style. Third, type A behavior pattern positively influenced dominating style.Forth, the college students’ confidence significantly correlates to their interpersonal conflictmanagement styles, specifically, while social confidence influenced collaborating positively,whole confidence positively influenced obliging style, school confidence positively influenceddominating style.Fifth, self-monitoring moderates the relationship between college students’ self-confidenceand conflict management styles. The results indicated that: when self-monitoring was high,social confidence influenced collaborating more positively; whole confidence influencedobliging more negatively while self-monitoring was slow, school confidence influenceddominating more positively.