PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Barbara Muir

Industrial/Organizational
Summer 1991

Managerial Conflict Resolution as a Function of role Status and Gender
 

    How middle-managers choose the conflict-resolution mode used with opponents of different status relationships but of the same gender was examined.  Sixty-four male and 65 female middle-managers were asked to recall a conflict situation between the manager and a co-worker of the same gender but either a superior, subordinate or peer, and then to complete the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory II, which provides a separate score for each of five conflict-resolution modes: integrating, avoiding, dominating, obliging and compromising.
    Two-way analysis of variance and Tukey tests revealed that, although there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the predicted conflict-resolution mode and the means of all of the other modes together, a significant difference between the predicted conflict-resolution mode and the mean for the other modes taken individually was found in only two cases.

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