The Relationship between Leadership Styles and Conflict Resolution Strategies: The Case of Selected International Ngos
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Date
2018-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between leaders’ preferred leadership styles and their preferred choice of conflict resolution strategies to handle the different organizational conflicts which prevail at work places. Leaders’ background variables (sex, age, educational qualification stream, educational status, work experience and organizational job levels) were considered to see their relationship with leaders’ preferred conflict resolution strategies. For the purpose of this study, relevant data were generated from a self-report questionnaire, which has two types; leadership styles and conflict resolution strategies assessing questionnaires. Both were administered to 181 systematically selected samples out of 263 World Vision & FH Ethiopia, Head office staffs, that is 60 & 203 respectively. Out of this figure, 39 of them were leaders at different organizational levels and 142 of them were subordinates. The obtained data were analyzed using one sample and two sample t-tests, bivariate correlational analysis and multiple linear regressions. The study findings indicated that there is significant difference in the way leaders see their leadership styles and in the way their subordinates feel about their leaders’ leadership styles. There was no significant difference observed in both sexes in making use of all of the conflict resolution strategies. Among the different background variables considered with conflict resolution strategies, work experience is found to have inverse correlation with avoiding conflict resolution strategy; age is found to have significant inverse correlation with avoiding and accommodating conflict resolution strategies. Although significant relationship was found between transformational leadership and collaborative conflict resolution strategy, there need to be strong positive relationship between leaders’ practice of all such leadership characteristics and other conflict resolution strategies to be adopted.
KEY WORDS: leadership style, conflict resolution strategies
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Keywords
leadership style, conflict resolution strategies