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on conflict style inventories. Some are located on our site. Some are located on other sites and have links to them.
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What is a conflict style inventory? Here is a short introductory essay to conflict styles and how knowledge of them helps in managing relationships, by Ron Kraybill. Which conflict style to use? Go to a simple one-page summary of things to think about in deciding whether to confront or avoid conflict. For trainers, here's a free training outline by Ron Kraybill for training with Style Matters: The Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory. A remarkable collection of quotes, cartoons, and stories about conflict and negotiation can be downloaded for free from the Harvard Negotiation Project website. A full 61 pages by Joshua Weiss, PhD. It's really a treasure trove for trainers and writers on conflict and peacebuilding! "Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution in Teams", by John Ford, gives an excellent over-view of cultural issues in teams. Ford is a veteran South African mediator/trainer now based in California. He writes with the authority of one who has spent a lifetime navigating cultural differences. He gives a nice summary of the differences between individualist versus collectivist cultures, pointing out that although in America the majority culture is individualistic in orientation, in places like California nearly half the population comes from cultural backgrounds that have strong collectivistic influences. Users of the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, which has users self-identify their own cultural background and gives differing instructions accordingly, may find this essay of particular interest. Brief introductory essay to basic concepts of conflict style inventories, entitled "What is Your Conflict Style: Understanding and Dealing With Your Conflict Style," from the Journal for Quality and Participation, Summer 2004, by Conerly, Keith, Tripathi, Arvind. The essay describes the five-style framework of conflict styles devised by Mouton and Blake in the 1960s, that underlies the most widely used conflict style inventories, including the Thomas Kilmann, the Jay Hall instrument, the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, and others. Four page essay, "Addressing Conflict in the Family Business". Not extensive coverage but a decent intro. The last half of the essay draws on the five style model used by the Thomas Kilmann and the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventories as a tool to suggest constructive responses. Scholarly essay on conflict style inventories, "What Goes Around Comes Around: The Impact of Personal Conflict Style on Work Conflict and Stress", by Raymond Friedmann and Simon Tidd, in the International Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2000, pp32-55 . More than most people will want to know about conflict style inventories, but if you seek scholarly literature, with lots of references and some comparison among the inventories in use at the time of writing, here's a solid one. This article examines use of the conflict style inventory as a tool in coaching people to improve their relationships. The essay is addressed to people working in higher education, but almost everything in it can be quite easily transposed to other settings. Of special interest to trainers will be the section which includes outlines of training sessions to train people in the conflict style inventory materials. The cultural dimensions of conflict management style are examined in this essay entitled: "Conflict management style: accounting for cross-national differences" by: Morris, Michael W.; Williams, Katherine Y. Leung, Kwok, and published in the: Journal of International Business Studies v. 29 no4 (1998) p. 729-47. This scholarly research essay focuses in particular on the use of avoiding and competing as responses to conflict in Asia and the U.S. Jon Sebastian has written a lengthy scholarly study called "The Intercultural Mediation Project, The Blere Project: A Study of Conflict Management in an Intercultural Context". Researchers used the Thomas Kilmann to study and compare conflict management practices among Germans, French and Americans. The study results were inconclusive but this is a good resource for people wanting to get up to speed on the literature related to conflict style management in general and crossculturally in particular. There's a nice comparison of individualistic versus collectivist cultural responses to conflict on page 9. The gender dimensions of conflict styles are examined at "Conflict Resolution Style and Experience in Management: Moderating the Effects of Gender" at http://murphylibrary.uwlax.edu/digital/jur/2002/sutschek.pdf Another study on gender and conflict style, entitled, "A gender-based categorization for conflict resolution" by Sheryl D. Brahnam, Thomas M. Margavio, Michael A. Hignite, Tonya B. Barrier, Jerry M. Chin, suggests that women are more likely to use collaborative/cooperative strategies and men are more likely to avoid.
Findings – "Results of this study indicate that, when compared with their male counterparts, women are more likely to utilize a collaborative conflict resolution style and men are more likely to avoid conflict. As collaboration is generally considered more productive and avoidance more disruptive in the conflict resolution process, the study suggests that women may possess more effective conflict resolution attributes than their male counterparts." For more info "Predictors of women's workplace conflict management styles" is a PhD dissertation written by Gerald Dean Charbonneau, Wayne State University. The research sought to determine whether social characteristics such as feminism, race, age, single head of household status, religion, and social class explain differences in conflict management among women. Here is a brief summary of the dissertation. "Lessons Learned of Mediation in Indian Country: Exploring and comparing transformative mediation process and theory and American Indian values and processes", by Kristine Paranica is an essay on the cultural dimensions of making peace among the Sioux, the Chippewa, and several smaller groups. The essay does not deal with use of conflict style inventories, but is a useful read for anyone interested in expanding their awareness of how culture shapes expectations of how to make peace. "Give and Take: The Accommodating Style in Managing Conflict" by Dale Eilerman provides an indepth analysis of one of the five styles of conflict (called Harmonizing in the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory). Eilerman draws on the Myers-Briggs to add additional insights to this style. "Here is an excellent introduction to the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, addressed in particular to managers. Since the Thomas Kilmann is based on the same logical framework as the Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory (the Blake Mouton Axis) most of what you read here holds true for ours as well. (You just pay three times as much and get much less interpretation help with the Thomas Kilmann as with ours.)" http://www.stc.org/intercom/PDFs/2007/20070708_20-23,48.pdf Go to home page of Style Matters
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