Conflict Management Styles and Their Relationship with Managers' Occupational Personality

The present study aimed to examine the relationship between conflict management styles and their relationship with managers' occupational personality. The research methodology was descriptive-correlational. The population of the study included all male and female educational managers of high schools in Zahedan, districts 1 and 2. Census method was used for sampling. Thus, 107 subjects were sampled out of the population. The Occupational Personality Inventory by Waryszak and King (2001), containing 40 items, and The Conflict Management Styles Inventory by Grath (2005), containing 5 items, were used for data collection. Content validity was checked using Cronbach's alpha. The reliability of both inventories was calculated as 0.751 and 0.738, respectively. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. In the descriptive level, data were analyzed using statistical indicators such as frequency tables, mean and standard deviation. To answer the research questions, in the inferential level, one-sample t-test, correlation, stepwise regression analysis and one-way analysis of variance were used. Results indicated that occupational personality of the managers was somewhat purposeful and that they were mostly inclined to hard-working and change in the organization. Moreover, common conflict styles among managers were respectively cooperation, agreement and compromise styles. However, avoidance and competition styles were less common among managers. Other findings suggested that there was no significant relationship among compromise, agreement, avoidance, competition styles and occupational personality. There was only a significant relationship between cooperation style and occupational personality on 99% of confidence level (p<0.01). Results of stepwise regression for occupational personality prediction indicated that only the cooperation style of conflict management entered

Keywords: Conflict Management, Conflict Management Styles, Occupational Personality, Managers of Junior High Schools