NadTalk

Sequential Response to Conflict

Nadeem Yousaf

Abstract

It is another contribution to a new approach which considers individuals’ style of resolving conflict are dynamic and rejects the orthodox approach that treats individuals’ style of resolving conflict as static. This article ranks conflict resolving strategies and responses according to the mean value based on the secondary data given in Volkema and Bergmann (1989:1995) are used. This article has two other contributions: on the one hand it complement the work of original authors (Volkema and Bergmann 1989:1995), on the other hand, it points out the shortcomings of their work.

Introduction

The study of conflict has been directly or indirectly in the interest of philosophers and researchers, at least, from the time of Aristotle (See Rahim ). The researchers have studied conflict in organizations from different angles including types and stages of conflict (Thomas 1992; Pondy 1967, Deutsch 1973, Jonson, Jonson, Dudley and Acikgoz 1994), reasons or sources of conflict (Robbins 1993 Corwin 1969; March & Simon 1995; Perrow 1986 Pondy 1967; Carroll 1991; Chasnoff and Muniz 1985; Thomas 1976, 1992; Tjosvold 1993; Veliert 1984), functional (advantageous) and dysfunctional (disadvantageous) aspects of conflict (March and Simon 1995; Robbins 1993; French and Bell 1990; (Rahim 1985; Ohbuchi and Takahashi 1994; Robbins 1993; Tjosvold 1993; Dion 1979, Markides & Cohn, 1982; Hall and Williams 1966), and relationship between personality and conflict (Terhune 1970; Blake, Shephard and Mouton 1964; Bell and Blakeney 1977; Jones and Melcher 1982; Sternberg and Soriano’s 1984; Blake and Mouton 1964).
Individual styles of conflict are also investigated in many studies (Deutsch 1949, 1994; Rubin 1994; Vliert et.al 1994; March and Simon 1995). The most popular five behaviours of handling conflict are outlined by Blake & Mouton (1964), Thomas (REF) and Rahim (REF). (1989) are among those researchers (for example, Falbo and Peplau 1980; Hirschman 1970; Rusbult and Zembrodt 1983; Rusbult, Johnson and Morrow 1986; Withey and Cooper 1989) who have not followed the popular grid model of individuals’ styles of resolving conflicts). This article is based on the secondary statistics of Volkema and Bergman (1989, 1995) studies.

Volkema and Bergmann (1989) conducted research to obtain information about employees’ responses to interpersonal conflict at work. They studied 21 responses, which an individual may demonstrate in situations of conflict. They indicate that different responses fall in different categories. Two hundred and twenty two (222) participants of the study received a list of 21 responses. They asked respondents to recall a real conflict situation and mark their responses in sequence 1,2,3 and so on, which they employed during their conflict situations. The participants of the study were asked to (1) rank these responses in the order in which they actually responded to the conflict situation, (2) identify the responses that they were currently using, (3) identify those responses that they had not used but might use, and (4) identify those responses that they would never use.  They calculated a mean value for each response. After plotting the mean value of all responses, categories of strategies were identified. The given mean value for responses in Table 1 is taken from Volkema and Bergmann’s (1989) study.

Table 1: Mean Value for conflict responses.

No	Strategies and Response	Never Use	Might Use	Used but not Now	Now Using
1	Sabotage person’s work	.932	.014	.009	.014
2	Throw things	.928	.018	.014	.000
3	Push, strike or punch the person	.923	.032	.000	.009
4	Cry	.838	.059	.005	.014
5	Try to get even	.833	.063	.023	.009
6	Take a drink or pill and forget it	.770	.081	.036	.027
7	Try to get the person to leave their job or the company	.757	.108	.027	.023
8	Leave my job (resign)	.577	.261	.041	.032
9	Ask for a transfer	.577	.243	.041	.009
10	Shout at the person	.509	.198	.122	.045
11	Use my authority to settle the issue	.432	.252	.06	.063
12	Form alliance with other people in the organization	.410	.252	.122	.086
13	Don’t talk to the person	.311	.221	.203	.153
14	Go to the person’s supervisor or someone higher in the organization	.284	.338	.158	.117
15	Talk behind the person’s back	.279	.207	.243	.113
16	avoid the person	.194	.221	.275	.234
17	Try to convince the person	.104	.324	.243	.225
18	Discuss the conflict with people outside of work .	.090	.216	.293	.311
19	Listen carefully to the person	.045	.374	.239	.234
20	Discuss the conflict with co-workers	.032	.158	.365	.401
21	Discuss the issue with the person	.023	.356	.257	.333

Source: Volkema and Bergmann (1989)

They grouped these responses into six categories:  (1) Problem solving (2) Forcing  (3) Short-term Avoidance (4) Withdrawal or Exit or Long Term Avoidance  (5) Emotive Responses (6) Third-Party Sensemaking.

1. Problem solving: (a.) Discuss with the person. b. Convince the person c. Listen to the person.
2. Forcing:  (a). Use my authority (b) Form alliance (c) go to higher up.”
3. Long Term Avoidance or withdrawal category: (a). Leave the job (resign) (b). Transfer Hirshman (1970) includes these responses under the heading of ‘Exit’. In this article, the term Exit is used to refer these responses.
4. Short-Term avoidance: (a) Avoid a person (b) Don’t talk to the person. (c) Talk behind the person.”  In the table 2, this strategy is termed as ‘avoidance’.
5. Emotive category: (a) Sabotage the person’s work (b) Throw things (c) Push strike or punch the person (d) Cry (e) try to get even (e) Take a drink or pill and forget about it (f) try to get the person to leave their job or the company. They mentioned that the ‘shout at the person’ response appeared to be fit in the same category.
6. Third-party sensemaking: involving third person in a conflict situation. This category first time appeared in Velkoma, Farquhar and Bergmann (1996).

They again conducted similar study in 1995 where they indicated overall frequency of each response. Two hundred two participants responded this study. The statistical overall frequency of each response from Volkema and Bergmann’s (1995) investigation is given in Table 2. In this study, they added two more responses, which were not included in their first study in 1989. These two added responses are (1) Make a joke and (2) Quietly do not cooperate with the person. They have not indicated where these two responses would fit in the broad categories as they did in their previous study of 1989, so the above two responses will be excluded later in this analysis. It is interesting that they had claimed in their article that they measured 24 responses whereas they provided statistics only for 23 responses. The frequency of choice of each response is given below in Table 2.

Table 2: Overall Frequency of each response

No	Response	Frequency
1	Discuss the conflict with co-workers	175
2	Discuss the issue with the person	155
3	Discuss the conflict with people outside of work .	133
4	Listen carefully to the person	132
5	Try to convince the person	113
6	*Ignore or accept the conflict	105
7	Avoid the person	85
8	Talk behind the person’s back	65
9	Go to the person’s supervisor or someone higher in the organization	60
10	*Make a joke	59
11	Form alliance with other people in the organization	51
12	*Quietly do not cooperate with the person	44
13	Don’t talk to the person	42
14	Leave my job (resign)	27
15	Use my authority to settle the issue	26
16	Shout at the person	25
17	Cry	17
18	Try to get even	10
19	Ask for a transfer	9
20	Try to get the person to leave their job or the company	8
21	Take a drink or pill and forget it	3
21	Sabotage person’s work	2
22	Throw things	2
23	Push, strike or punch the person	0

 Source: Volkema and Bergmann 1995