Relationship Between Morality Evaluation And Choice Preference For Conflict Management Style

The interpersonal conflict between superiors and subordinates is an inevitable phenomenon in the workplace.The improper handling of interpersonal conflict will lead to tension between the parties and cause their physical and mental health or work performance levels to decline.Therefore,superiors’ conflict management styles have always been one of the focuses of scholars and managers.The confrontation and avoidance are the two styles that leaders manage conflicts.These two styles are common in the workplace,but they have their own advantages and disadvantages.For example,when using the confrontational conflict management style,the superiors can directly attack subordinates’ problems.But words and deeds are rude and easily lead to resist.When using an avoided conflict management style,gentle words and deeds of the superiors make the subordinates feel kind,but they don’t understand their problems.In the workplace,in the face of these two common conflict management styles,which one is more preferred as a subordinate? This is a realistic issue that cannot be evaded.The purpose of this study is to investigate the subordinate’s preference for supervisors’ confrontational and avoided conflict management styles,and analyze the influence mechanisms of subordinates’ morality evaluation to the supervisors on their selection preferences.In addition,cross-cultural comparisons will be used to verify whether the selection preference and psychological mechanism are universal.The vast majority of graduate students have working experience in the workplace,and have personal experience in the conflicts between superiors and subordinates.Therefore,this study uses graduate students as subjects,and combines situations design and questionnaires to test empirical analysis of the research issues.A total of 389 Chinese and foreign graduate students(139 men and 250 women)were selected for this study.Firstly,a conflict management style scenario simulation questionnaire was used to initially investigate the choice preference of two different conflict management styles;then,the morality questionnaire was used to measure the morality evaluation level of the participants to explain the the choice difference of the two conflict management styles and the mediation mechanism.Results:(1)There is a significant difference between subjects’ choice preference for two conflict management styles;specifically,compared with the avoided conflict management style,the confrontational conflict management style is more welcomed by the subordinates;there is a cross-cultural consistency in the participants’ choice preference for the management styles.(2)The morality evaluation on managers influences the individuals’ choice preference for confrontational and avoided conflict management styles;the morality evaluation on managers influences participants’ choice preference for conflict management styles,and this difference has a cross-cultural consistency.