Conflict Management Strategies as Moderators or Mediators of the Relationship Between Intragroup Conflict and Job Performance

Afzal Rahim Center for Advanced Studies in Management 1574 Mallory Court Bowling Green, KY 42101 Phone/Fax: 270745898/2601 Email: mgt2000@aol.com Clement Psenicka Management Department Youngstown State University Youngstown, OH 44555 Phone: 3307578188 Email: cpsenick@cc.ysu.edu

Keywords: Conflict, Conflict strategies, Effectiveness

February 16, 2004

Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Association for Conflict Management, Pittsburgh, PA, June 1518, 2004

Conflict Management Strategies as Moderators or Mediators of the Relationship Between Intragroup Conflict and Job Performance
Abstract There were numerous studies on conflict or conflict management styles (Jehn, 1997; Rahim, 2001) and individual and group outcomes, but no study, to our knowledge, investigated the moderating or mediating effects of the conflict management strategies on the relationship between conflict and job performance. This study was an attempt to bridge the gap. The moderating and mediating effects of conflict management strategiesproblem solving and bargainingon the relationship between intragroup conflict and job performance are shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2, respectively.

Figure 1 Conflict Management Strategies as Moderators of the ConflictPerformance Relationship

Conflict Management Strategies Intragroup Conflict Job Performance

Figure 2
Conflict Management Strategies as Mediators of the ConflictPerformance Relationship

Intragroup Conflict

Conflict Management Strategies

Job Performance

Procedure and Sample One thousand names were selected from a data base of managers who had attended continuing education seminars in mid-management development sponsored by a business school in a large university. A cover letter explaining the study and the requirements to be in the study was sent to managers. In order to be in the study, managers had to have at least three subordinates. They needed to provide the names of three subordinates who could be informed about the study and indicate whether they were willing to participate in the study. A total of 423 managers indicated that they would participate in the study. Subordinates of these managers were sent a letter asking them if they were willing to participate in the study. Subordinates of 411 managers agreed to participate in the study, and managers were mailed a copy of the questionnaires. This is part of a larger study in which the managers distributed the questionnaires on conflict and conflict styles to each of their subordinates along with directions for completing the instruments and a preaddressed envelope. Managers also received directions regarding how to fill out the job performance scale for each of their subordinates. Three hundred ninety-eight managers and their 1,116 subordinates returned the completed questionnaires. Each subordinate's response was matched with his or her supervisor's response, resulting in a data set of 1,116 dyads. To determine if there were group differences between the respondents and nonrespondents, 100 managers were randomly selected from each group and compared on education, management level, work experience, and gender with the chi-square and one-way analysis of variance tests. The results indicated no significant difference between the two groups at the .05 level. Therefore, we conclude that there was no significant nonresponse bias. The average age and work experience of the respondents were 39.06 (SD = 9.85) and 17.01

(SD = 9.75) years, respectively. Their average work experience with the present supervisor and educational level were 9.40 (SD = 8.22) and 13.14 (SD = 1.37) years, respectively. They represented top (n = 24), middle (n = 471), lower (n = 362) management, and non-management (n = 183) levels (missing = 76). The average age, work experience, and education of the respondents' supervisors were 41.83 (SD = 8.04), 19.49 (SD = 8.23), and 13.81 (SD = 1.61) years, respectively. The dyads were in different industries (manufacturing, transportation, merchandising, education, hospitality industry, financial services, and service), and functional areas, such as production, marketing, finance and accounting, R/D, etc. Measures We used three published questionnaires for the present studyRahim Organizational Conflict InventoryI and II (ROCII and ROCIII), and Minnesota Satisfactoriness Scale (MSS). Intragroup Conflict. The ROCII was used to measure intragroup conflict that has been shown to have adequate psychometric properties (Rahim, 1983a). The instrument uses a 5point Likert scale to measure the perceptions of employees regarding the intensity of conflict in their respective groups. A higher score indicates a greater intensity of ingragroup conflict. In the present study, the Cronbach for the subscale was .87. Several studies have provided evidence of adequate psychometric properties of the instrument (cf. Rahim, 2004). Styles of Handling Conflict. The styles of handling interpersonal conflict with a supervisorintegrating, obliging, dominating, and avoidingwere measured with 24 of the 28 items of the ROCIII (ROCIII) (Rahim, 1983b). The items of the ROCIII use a 5point Likert scale to measure the conflict-handling behavior of subordinates. A higher score indicates greater

use of a style of handling interpersonal conflict with a supervisor. Cronbach s for the subscales ranged between .77 to 85. Scores from the ROCIII were utilized to construct the two dimensions as follows: Problem solving Strategy = Integrating style Avoiding style Bargaining Strategy = Dominating style Obliging style Since the ROCIII measures the styles with a 5point scale, the subscales for problem solving and bargaining styles range between + 4 and 4. In the problem solving subscale, whereas a score of + 4 represents a party's attempts to provide high satisfaction of concerns for both parties, a 4 score represents a party's attempts to provide little or no satisfaction of concerns received by both parties as a result of the resolution of their conflict. A value of + 4 in the bargaining subscale indicates a party's perception of high satisfaction of concerns received by self and little or no satisfaction of concerns received by the other party. A value of 4 indicates little or no satisfaction of concerns received by self and high satisfaction of concerns received by the other party. Several studies have provided evidence of adequate psychometric properties of the instrument (Lee, 1990; Rahim & Magner, 1995; Ting-Toomey, 1991). Job Performance. Supervisory rating of job performance of the individual employees was measured with the MSS (Gibson, Weiss, Dawis, & Lofquist, 1970). The MSS is a 28item questionnaire designed to be completed by an employee's supervisor. The items are cast on a 3 point Likert scale. The four subscales of the MSS are performance, conformance, dependability, and personal adjustment. The present study used the 9 items of the performance subscale that measure the subordinate's promotability and the quality and quantity of work. The instrument has evidence of adequate psychometric properties of the instrument. In the present study, the

Cronbach internal consistency reliability of this subscale was .89. Grouped Data. The data for this study were collected from 398 managers and their 1,116 subordinates. This means that clusters of employees were reporting to the same supervisor, but each cluster was reporting to a different supervisor. Hence, it is possible that subsets of responses in the data set are correlated, which violates the independent observation assumption of most statistics. Furthermore, each supervisor reported on the performance of three subordinates, and response bias could lead to the supervisor reporting evaluations of the three that are highly correlated and nonindependent. To deal with this issue, we analyzed the data after aggregating the scores of all the subordinates associated with a given manager (N = 398). Analysis The moderating and mediating effects of conflict-management strategies were tested with Hierarchical Regression Analysis and LISREL. Moderating Effect. We computed a Hierarchical Regression Analysis to test the moderating effects of conflict-management strategiesProblem solving (PS) and Bargaining (BA)on the relationship between intragroup conflict (IC) and job performance. In Step 1 and Step 2, we entered the IC subscale and PS and BA subscales, respectively, in the regression equations. In Step 3 and Step 4, we entered the two-way interactions (IC x PS and IC x BA) and the three-way interaction (IC x PS x BA), respectively, in the regression equations. Results showed that intragroup conflict was negatively associated with job performance in Step 1 and problem-solving strategy was positively associated with job performance in Step 2. The remaining main effect (in Step 2) and interaction effects (in Step 3 & 4) were nonsignificant. These results did not provide support for the hypothesis that conflict management strategies moderate the relationship between intragroup conflict and job performance.

Mediating Effect. We tested a structural equations model (as shown in Figure 2) with LISREL 8 (Jreskog, & Srbom, 1994) to explore the mediating effects of conflict management strategies on job performance. The results showed that intragroup conflict was negatively associated with problem solving, but not with bargaining. The relationship between intragroup conflict and bargaining was positive, but it was nonsignificant. The relationship between problem solving and job performance was positive and significant and the relationship between bargaining and job performance was negative and significant. The RMSEA for the model was less than .04. Other fit indexes, such as Normed Fit Index (.97), Nonnormed Fit Index (.99), Parsimony Normed Fit Index (.56), Comparative Fit Index (.99), Incremental Fit Index (.99) and Relative Fit Index (.95) were satisfactory. The results from this analysis indicate that problem solving strategy, but not bargaining strategy, is a significant mediator of the relationship between intragroup conflict and job performance. Implications of the Study. The implication of this study is that managers can encourage subordinates to manage their intragroup conflict with problem solving strategy to improve their job performance. The employees should also be encouraged to minimize their bargaining strategy to improve their job performance. This would require conflict management training of the employees (Rahim, 2001). Managers may be trained to encourage their subordinates to use more integrating and less avoiding styles of handling conflict to improve job performance. To attain this goal, appropriate changes in leadership, organization culture, and design would be needed. Limitations. The limitations of this field study should be noted. The self-reports of conflict and conflict styles were taken from each respondent present the problem of common method variance, i.e., the lack of independence between criterion and predictor variables. An attempt was

made to overcome the problem of common method variance by involving the supervisors in providing a measure of subordinate performance. Doing so should minimize this type of problems. We aggregated data on conflict, conflict styles, and job performance for each supervisor, which will also overcome the problem of common method variance. Data were collected from a convenience sample that might limit generalizability of our results. It should be noted that the relationships found in this study are correlational and not causal. Directions for Future Research. Further research is needed to enhance our understanding of the interrelationships of conflict, conflict-management strategies, and job performance. An important area of future research concerns carefully designing and evaluating the effects of intervention on conflict and conflict management strategies on individual and group outcomes. Field experiments are particularly useful in evaluating the effects of improving conflict management strategies on individual and organizational outcomes. There is also need for scenario-based studies and laboratory studies that control some of the extraneous variables to better understand the effects of conflict and conflict styles reported in the present study. References Gibson, D. L., Weiss, D. J., Dawis, R. V., & Lofquist, L. H. (1970). Manual for the Minnesota Satisfactoriness Scale. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Jehn, K. A. (1977). A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions of organizational groups. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 741763. Jreskog, K. G., & Srbom, D. (1994). LISREL 8: Structural equation modeling with the SIMPLIS command language. Chicago: Scientific Software International. Lee, C. (1990). Relative status of employees and styles of handling interpersonal conflict: An

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