Examining Principals’ Conflict Management Styles - A Study of Turkish Administrators

Oct 15, 2026

Research examines principals’ conflict management styles and compares these styles across demographic variables. A descriptive survey design measures the frequency of principals’ approaches and contrasts them under different boundary conditions. The study involves 156 school principals and uses the Rahim Organizational Conflict Management Scale with 28 Likert-scale items. Results show integrating and compromising are most frequent, while forcing and avoiding are least frequent, with additional findings across school level and seniority and gender.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Defining Conflict

Conflict in Organizations

Interpersonal Conflict Handling Styles

Core Dimensions of Conflict Styles

Examining Principals’ Conflict Management Styles: A Study of Turkish Administrators Abdurrahman İLĞAN * Abstract This research is aimed to examine principals ’ conflict management styles and comparing these styles in terms of demographic variables. Descriptive survey design was used to describe the frequency of principals’ conflict management styles and comparing these styles under different boundary conditions. The target population of the study comprised 156 school principals. Rahim organizational conflict management scale was used. Organizational conflict management scale to describe conflict styles used by principals included 28 items 5-point Likert-scale. It was found that the most frequently used styles by the principals were integrating and compromising; the least frequently used styles were forcing and avoiding respectively. Integrating style was the most frequently used style compared to the other ones; compromising style was used more frequently than obliging, forcing and avoiding; obliging was used more frequently than forcing; avoiding was used more frequently than forcing. Primary and middle school principals used obliging style more frequently than general high school principals; middle school and K-8 principals used avoiding style more frequently than general high school principals. Frequency of the use of conflict management styles did not differ based on principals’ total seniority in school administration, seniority as an educator, and gender. Keywords: Conflict, conflict management styles, school principals *Associate Professor, Izmir Demokrasi University, Faculty of Education [E-mail: abdurrahman.ilgan@idu.edu.tr](E-mail: abdurrahman.ilgan@idu.edu.tr) Introduction Conflict is an inevitable situation that may occur any time in social and work life. Individuals are different fromeach other and has different paradigms, life expectancy and aims hence this nature of human cause conflict between couples, parents and children, employers and employees. A century ago, the conflict in organization was treated as a pathological manifestation of breakdowns in communication or the ego trips of unreconstructed manager while in the second half of the 1950s and in the next decade, the political-science view infiltrated both schools (Jackson & Morgan, 1978) . It is difficult to see a definition of conflict which is accepted commonly by scholars because the term has a broad influence on humans (Luthans, 2010) . Thomas (1992) described conflict as the process which begins when one party perceives that another has frustrated or is about to frustrate. Conflict is defined by (Folger, Poole, & Stutman, 2013) as interaction that when stakeholders among each other perceive something went wrong or not equal for parties while Rahim (2010) defined it as interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement, or dissonance within or between social entities.Some other scholars (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1973) defined it as an “interactive state in which behaviors or goals of some other actor”(p. 2) . Organization is one of important area for conflict that included different relationship, groups (Folger, Poole, & Stutman, 2013) departments has different working principals and culture than each other which may trigger conflict in organizations (Eren, 2016) while sometime conflicts resulted with justice and fairness (Budd & Colvin, 2014) . Conflict in organization and diary human life has potential to result with positive and negative outcomes. Clegg (2010) defined positive conflict climate in organizations as followed: i) transparency and openness in communication with diary life, ii) information flows in easy way and spontaneously along with frequent communication, iii) there are empathy (understanding others emotion and perspectives) among parties, iv) decision making based on participation, v) there is respect to equality and everyone’s while negative conflict climate in organization were defined as: I)

FAQs

What is the purpose of the study?

To examine principals’ conflict management styles and compare these styles according to demographic variables.

How was the conflict management styles measured?

Using the Rahim organizational conflict management scale with 28 items on a five-point Likert scale.

Which conflict management styles were most and least frequently used?

Integrating and compromising were used most frequently, while forcing and avoiding were used least frequently (respectively in the findings).

Do the styles differ by principals’ seniority or gender?

Frequency of use did not differ based on principals’ total seniority in school administration, seniority as an educator, and gender.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Anna Hans