human resource management unit II case study

Current Topics in Management, Vol. 18,2016, pp. 201-212

Research Note

REDUCING JOB BURNOUT THROUGH EFFECTIVE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

STRATEGY

M. Afzalur Rahim Western Kentucky University

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationships of effective conflict management strategy (i.e., higher uses of the integrating and obliging styles and lower uses of the dominating and avoiding conflict-handling styles) and less effective conflict management strategy (i.e., higher uses of the dominating and avoiding styles and lower uses of the integrating and obliging conflict-handling styles) to the three components of job burnout (emotional exhaustion, deper­ sonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment). Data for the study were collected from a collegiate sample of 869 employed MBA and undergraduate students. A MANCOVA analysis showed that respondents who used effective conflict management strategy reported lower job burnout than those who used less effective strategy. Implications for management, limitations, and directions for future research were discussed.

Keywords: conflict-handling styles, effective conflict-management strategies, job burnout

Conflict is inevitable in organizations. It is a natural outcome of human inter­ action that begins when two or more employees come in contact with one another in attaining their objectives. Relationships among such entities may become incompatible or inconsistent when two or more of them desire a similar resource that is in short supply; when they have partially exclusive behavioral preferences regarding their joint action; or when they have different attitudes, values, beliefs, and skills (Rahim, 2011).

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Conflict among employees can have both functional and dysfunctional consequences (de Wit, Greer, & Jehn, 2012; Jehn, Jonsen, & Rispens, 2014; Pelled, Eisenhardt, & Xin, 1999). Constructive management of organizational conflict, such as the conflict between employees and their supervisors that is the focus of this study, requires that its negative consequences be minimized and its positive consequences maximized. The value-added contribution of the present study is that it is designed to show how a mixture of certain conflict­ handling styles can lead to reduction in job burnout of employees.

The Dual Concern Model of Conflict Management Styles

One factor that has an important impact on the effective management of organizational conflict is the style employees use to handle conflicts they are involved in. The styles of handling interpersonal conflict in organizations were first conceptualized in 1926 by Mary P. Follett (1940). She discussed three main ways of handling organizational conflict—domination, compromise, and integration—as well as other, secondary ways of handling conflict, such as avoidance and suppression. Blake and Mouton (1964) first presented a con­ ceptual scheme for classifying the modes for handling interpersonal conflicts into five types: forcing, withdrawing, smoothing, compromising, and problem solving. They described the five modes of handling conflict on the basis of the attitudes of the manager: concern for production and for people. Their scheme was reinterpreted by Thomas (1976) who considered the intentions of a party (cooperativeness, i.e., attempting to satisfy the other party’s concerns; and as­ sertiveness, i.e., attempting to satisfy one’s own concerns) in classifying the modes of handling conflict into five types.

Rahim and Bonoma (1979) and Rahim (1983) differentiated the styles of handling interpersonal conflict on two basic dimensions: concern for self and concern for others. The first dimension explains the degree (high or low) to which a person attempts to satisfy his or her own concern. The second dimen­ sion explains the degree (high or low) to which a person wants to satisfy the concern of others. It should be pointed out that these dimensions portray the motivational orientations of a given individual during conflict. Studies by Ruble and Thomas (1976) and Van de Vliert and Kabanoff (1990) yielded general support for these dimensions. Combination of the two dimensions results in five specific styles of handling interpersonal conflict, as shown in Figure 1. The five-category nomenclature of the styles of handling interpersonal conflict is described as follows.

1. Integrating Style. This style is associated with high concern for self and others. It involves collaboration between the parties (i.e., open­ ness, exchange of information, and examination of differences to reach a solution acceptable to both parties). This style has two distinctive

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s Reducing Job Burnout through Effective Conflict Management Strategy 203

Figure 1 Problem Solving and Bargaining Strategies for Managing Interpersonal Conflict

Bargaining Strategy

Problem Solving Strategy

elements: diagnosis of and intervention in conflict. Diagnosis involves open communication, clearing up misunderstanding, and analyzing the underlying causes of conflict. Intervention in conflict involves solution to a right problem identified in the diagnosis phase to provide maximum satisfaction of concerns of both parties.

2. Obliging Style. This style indicates low concern for self and high concern for others. This is also known as accommodating and is associated with attempting to play down the differences and emphasizing commonalities to satisfy the concern of the other party. There is an element of self- sacrifice in this style. It may take the form of selfless generosity, charity, or obedience to another party’s order. An obliging person neglects his or her own concern to satisfy the concern of the other party.

3. Dominating Style. This style indicates high concern for self and low concern for others. This is also known as competing and has been identi­ fied with a win-lose orientation or with forcing behavior to win one’s position. A dominating or competing person goes all out to win his or her objective and, as a result, often ignores the needs and expectations of the other party. Sometimes a dominating person wants to win at any cost. Dominating supervisors are likely to use their position power to impose their will on the subordinates and command their obedience.

4. Avoiding Style. This style indicates low concern for self and others. This is also known as suppression and is associated with withdrawal, buck-passing, sidestepping, or “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” situations. It may take the form of postponing an issue until a better time,

Concern for Self High Low

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or simply withdrawing from a threatening situation. An avoiding person fails to satisfy the concern of self as well as the other party.

5. Compromising Style. This style indicates moderate concern for self and others. It involves give-and-take or sharing whereby both parties give up something to make a mutually acceptable decision. It may mean splitting the difference, exchanging concession, or seeking a quick, middle-ground position. The present study did not use this style of handling conflict.

The literature indicates that more cooperative conflict management styles, such as integrating and obliging (in which a meaningful amount of concern is shown for the other party) are likely to produce positive individual and organi­ zational outcomes, while less cooperative styles like dominating and avoiding (in which little concern is shown for the other party) frequently result in the escalation of conflict and negative outcomes (Korbanik, Baril, & Watson, 1993; Rahim, Antonioni, & Psenicka, 2001; Johnson, 1989).

Problem Solving and Bargaining Styles

Follett’s (1940) conceptualization is the forerunner of Walton and McKersie’s (1965) distinction between integrative and distributive bargaining. It has been suggested by Thomas (1976) that further insights into the five styles of han­ dling interpersonal conflict may be obtained by organizing them according to the integrative and distributive dimensions of labor-management bargaining suggested by Walton and McKersie. These two dimensions have been described as cooperation and competition by Deutsch (1949), the principle of creating value for all and the principle of claiming value for each by Lax and Sebenius (1986), and mutual gains and concession-convergence by Rubin (1994). These two dimensions may be reconceptualized as problem solving and bargaining strategies for managing conflict and are represented by the heavy lines in the diagonals of Figure 1.

The problem solving style (integrating minus avoiding) represents the extent (high or low) of satisfaction of concerns received by self and others. The bargaining style (dominating minus obliging) represents the satisfaction of concerns received by self or others. In the problem solving strategy, the integrating style attempts to increase the satisfaction of the concerns of both parties by formulating problems and finding effective solutions for them. The avoiding style leads to the reduction of satisfaction of the concerns of both parties as a result of their failure to confront and solve their problems. In the bargaining style, whereas the dominating style attempts to obtain high satisfac­ tion of concerns for self (and provide low satisfaction of concerns for others), the obliging style attempts to obtain low satisfaction of concerns for self and provide high satisfaction of concerns for others.

Reducing Job Burnout through Effective Conflict Management Strategy 205

The problem solving and bargaining strategies are portrayed in Figure 1. The present investigation wants to find out if greater use of the problem solving strategy plus lower use of the bargaining strategy leads to lower job burnout.

Job Burnout

Job burnout is a syndrome of physical and mental health caused by pro­ longed exposure to stress involving emotional responses. People who work in human services, such as nursing, emergency and trauma, and police services are susceptible to higher job burnout than others. Some of the symptoms of job burnout are irritability; hopelessness; unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical problems; lack of energy to be productive; and disillusionment about job. Maslach and Jackson (1982) and Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001) described job burnout as a tripartite syndrome involving feelings of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment. These three components are factorially independent of each other.

Emotional Exhaustion

This is associated with a syndrome of depletion of physical and mental energy.

Depersonalization

This refers to negative attitudes toward supervisor, subordinates, colleagues, clients, and the other people that one has to work with.

Lack of Personal Accomplishment

This is associated with an employee’s feelings of reduced job performance and other contribution to the organization.

Scholars have generally neglected to investigate how interpersonal conflict influences job stress and burnout. There is a study that reported a significant positive relationship between conflict and job burnout (Rahim 1990). There was no published study that investigated how conflict management strategies can influence job burnout. Rahim’s (2011) literature review suggests that conflict management (involving greater use of the problem solving style and lower use of bargaining style) should lead to desirable individual outcomes. Conflict management strategy (involving greater use of the bargaining style and lower use of the problem solving style) leads to relatively higher job burnout.

It is expected that a higher score in problem solving strategy and a lower score in bargaining strategy will be associated with lower job burnout.

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A higher job burnout will be associated with lower score in problem solving and higher score in bargaining. Therefore, the hypothesis for the present study is as follows:

Hypothesis: Employees who use higher problem solving strategy plus lower bargaining strategy will report lower job burnout than employees who use higher bargaining strategy plus lower problem solving strategy.

Method

Sample

Data were collected from a collegiate sample (N = 869) of MBA and undergraduate students who had jobs. The average age and work experience of the respondents were 22.71 (SD = 4.82) and 4.19 (SD = 6.07) years, re­ spectively; 42% of the respondents were female. The respondents reported working in various industries, including manufacturing, service, IT, healthcare, and education.

Measurement

Conflict Management Styles. (Time 1). The four styles of handling conflict with a supervisor (integrating, obliging, dominating, and avoiding) were measured with 24 of the 28 items of the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II), Form A (Rahim 1983). The instrument uses 5-point Likert scale (5 = Strongly Agree ... 1 = Strongly Disagree) to rank each item, and the index of each style was computed by averaging responses to its items. A higher score indicates greater use of a style to handle conflict with supervisor. Rahim (1983) and Rahim and Magner (1995) provided evidence of adequate internal consistency and retest reliabilities and convergent and discriminant validities of this instrument in domestic and cross-cultural samples. These and other studies (e.g., Rahim, Antonioni, & Psenicka, 2001; Ting-Toomey et al„ 1991) provided evidence of construct validity of the instrument. The instrument was free from social desirably responding. The scales for the problem solving and bargaining styles were computed as follows:

Problem Solving strategy = Integrating - Obliging Bargaining strategy = Dominating - Obliging

Effective Strategy. This is a higher-level strategy that indicates a positive score on the problem solving strategy and a negative score in the bargaining strategy. Putting it in another way, this strategy involves using more integrating and obliging styles and using less dominating and avoiding styles.

Reducing Job Burnout through Effective Conflict Management Strategy 207

Less Effective Strategy. This is a lower-level strategy that indicates a positive score on the bargaining strategy and a negative score on the problem solving strategy. In other words, this strategy involves using more dominating and avoiding styles and using less integrating and obliging styles

Job Burnout. (Time 2). The three components of job burnout—emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment—were measured with the 23 items of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) (Maslach & Jackson, 1982). The items are ranked on a 7-point Likert scale (7 = Very Much Like Me ... 1 = Very Much Unlike Me), and the index of each burnout component was computed by averaging responses to its items—a higher score indicates a greater level of burnout in one of the three components. Maslach and Jackson (1982) and Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter (1996) provided evidence of psychometric properties of the instrument. The instrument was completed at Time 2, which was four weeks from Time 1.

Effective and Less Effective Strategies

Respondents who had a positive sign in the problem solving strategy and a negative sign in the bargaining strategy were put in the effective strategy group. Respondents who had a negative sign in the problem solving strategy and a posi­ tive sign in the bargaining strategy were put in the less effective strategy group.

Figure 1 shows a broken line in the middle of the matrix in the dual con­ cern model that separates the effective strategy from less effective strategy. The effective strategy (indicated by a happy face) is located above the broken line. The measure of less effective strategy (indicated by a sad face) is located below the broken line.

Analysis and Results

The relationships of conflict management strategies to the three components of job burnout were tested with Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MAN- COVA). The analysis was done with the effective-less effective strategies as a categorical independent variable, gender and age as covariates, and the three components of job burnout as dependent variables. The analysis shows a significant multivariate relationship between the two strategies—effective and less effective—and the three components of job burnout ( Wilks’ X = .70, F (3, 863) = 1.30, p < .005). The effects of control variables—gender and age—on job burnout were not significant. Descriptive statistics and the results from MANCOVA are presented in Table 1.

The three components of burnout were significantly different between ef­ fective and less effective strategies. The results show that respondents who were in the effective strategy group reported lower emotional exhaustion,

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Table 1 MANCOVA for Effective and Less Effective Conflict-Management Strategies

and the Three Components of Job Burnout Criterion Variables Mean SD a F

Emotional exhaustion .83 3.01*

Effective strategy 2.88 1.19

Less Effective strategy 3.06 1.15

Depersonalization .72 8.43***

Effective strategy 2.53 1.05

Less Effective strategy 2.71 1.01

Lack of personal accomplishment

.65 4.19**

Effective strategy 3.23 .98

Less Effective strategy 3.44 .89

Note: N= 869. Wilks’ A, = .70, F (3, 863)= 1.30,p<.005. * p< .05. ** p < .01. ** p < .001.

depersonalization, and lack of personal accomplishment than respondents who were in the less effective group. This provided full support for the study hypothesis. The Cronbach as for the three components of job burnout were .83, .72, and .65, respectively, are acceptable.

Discussion

The study contributes to our understanding of the relationships of the conflict management strategies to job burnout. It shows that a mixture of appropriate conflict-handling styles by subordinates can lead to a functional outcome, such as reduced job burnout. It is also expected that the use effective conflict management strategy by employees will lead to other beneficial outcomes for the organization.

Implications for Management

The implication of this study is that supervisors can encourage employees to enhance their problem solving conflict management strategy and reduce their bargaining conflict management strategy through education and train­ ing. The challenge for a contemporary organization is to enhance the conflict management skills of their members through appropriate training that will involve case analysis, exercises, survey feedback, and readings (see Rahim

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2011). Training should be made available to both management and nonman­ agement employees.

Organization members should also be encouraged to enhance their conflict management skills through continuous self-learning. Organizations should pro­ vide appropriate reinforcements for learning and improving employees’ conflict management skills so that they can handle various situations effectively. To attain this goal, appropriate changes in organization design and culture would be needed (Rahim, 2002). Changes in organization design would require cre­ ating flatter, decentralized, and less complex structures. Also, there should be appropriate changes in organizational culture that provides rewards for learning new behaviors. These changes will encourage employees to acquire conflict management competencies needed for reducing job burnout and probably improving their job performance and other desirable outcomes.

Limitations

The limitations of this field study should be noted. The self-report mea­ sures of conflict styles and job burnout that were taken from each respon­ dent present the problem of common method variance, that is, the lack of independence between criterion and predictor variables. An attempt was made to overcome the problem of common method variance by separat­ ing the measures of conflict styles and the criterion variable by four weeks (Podsakoff and Organ 1986).

It should be noted that a study by Spector (1987) concluded that properly developed instruments are resistant to the method variance problem. In the pres­ ent study, two well-developed and published measurement instruments were used that probably minimized the effect of common method variance. Data collected from a convenience sample might limit generalizability of the results.

Directions for Further Research

Further research is needed to enhance our understanding of the interrela­ tionships of conflict management styles and job burnout of employees. An important area of future research concerns carefully designing and evaluat­ ing the effects of intervention in enhancing effective conflict management strategies. Field experiments are particularly useful in evaluating the effects of training to enhance effective conflict management strategies on individual and organizational outcomes. There is also need for scenario-based studies and laboratory studies that control some of the extraneous variables to better understand the effects of conflict management strategies reported in the pres­ ent study. Attempts should be made to obtain independent measures of some of the criterion variables.

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Biographical Note

M. Afzalur Rahim (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is a University Distin­ guished Professor of Management and Hays Watkins Research Fellow, Western Kentucky University. He is also the Founding Editor of Current Topics in Man­ agement and is the founder of the International Journal o f Organizational Analy­ sis, International Journal o f Conflict Management, International Association for Conflict Management, International Conference on Advances in Management, International Conference on Social Intelligence, and Bangladesh Academy of Business Administration. Dr. Rahim is the author/editor of 23 books; 117 articles, book chapters, case studies, and research instruments; and 96 confer­ ence papers. His articles were published, among others, in the Academy o f Management Journal, Intelligence, Journal o f Applied Psychology, Journal o f Management, and Multivariate Behavioral Research. His current research interests are in the areas of conflict management, leaders’ emotional, cultural, and social intelligence. His citation index is over 7,200 in scholar.google.com. (1988mgmt @ gmail.com)

Accepted after two revisions: November 12, 2015

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