improving employees' job satisfaction and innovation performance using conflict management

Improving employees’ jobsatisfaction and innovationperformance using conflict

managementXiao-Hong Chen, Ke Zhao and Xiang Liu

School of Business, Central South University, Changsha, China, and

Desheng Dash WuRiskLab, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Abstract

Purpose – The major aim of this study is to explore the mechanism through which conflictmanagement behavior impacts job satisfaction and innovation performance, and to verify thisrelationship with the empirical analysis in the context of China.

Design/methodology/approach – A model of the relationship among conflict managementbehavior, job satisfaction and innovation performance was developed and empirically tested. Based ona survey composed of 333 questionnaires designed for Chinese employees, the authors examine theeffects of conflict management behavior on job satisfaction and innovation performance in Chinesecontexts.

Findings – Results show that integrating and compromising conflict management behaviors arepositively related to job satisfaction; integrating conflict management behavior is positively related toinnovation performance; and avoiding conflict management behavior is negatively related toinnovation performance.

Research limitations/implications – This study does not take the industry differences intoconsideration, though how to maintain job satisfaction and promote innovation might differ from oneindustry to another. This study only studied on the personal level, therefore future studies can beextended to the team level.

Originality/value – This paper offers some useful suggestions for business managers as well asemployees to improve employees’ job satisfaction and innovation performance.

Keywords Conflict management, Job satisfaction, Innovation performance, China

Paper type Research paper

IntroductionConflict is the most common social phenomenon in organizations. Friction betweenemployees, conflicts among departments, and confrontation among organizations canthreaten the development of enterprises (Wall and Callister, 1995; Jehn, 1997).Interpersonal conflict is one of the most important factors, and has a great impact onstaff relationships at work (Barki and Hartwick, 2001; Rahim, 1983). Conflicts can leadto compromised job satisfaction, reduced motivation, and lack of engagement; and thuslower employees’ performance. With more and more modern enterprises advocating

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This work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (GrantsNo. 70971139, and No. 70631004).

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International Journal of ConflictManagement

Vol. 23 No. 2, 2012pp. 151-172

q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1044-4068

DOI 10.1108/10444061211218276

for building human-oriented enterprises, methods for handling and solving staffinterpersonal conflicts matters a great deal for corporate long-term objectives.

In modern organizations, one of the most common reasons for employees to leave ajob is unresolved conflicts in their work – resulting in high employee turnover, andalso job dissatisfaction causing low productivity (Hom and Kinicki, 2001). Previousstudies have proposed that conflicts are the detrimental factors, which have negativeimpact on employees performance and job satisfaction (Barki and Hartwick, 2001). DeDreu and Van Vianen (2001) pointed out that conflict was negatively related tobusiness performance and staff satisfaction. If there are too many conflicts, it is boundto affect staff motivation and relationships, which in turn will affect their jobsatisfaction (De Dreu and Van Vianen, 2001; De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). Jehn (1995,1997) pointed out that knowledge about the levels of conflict could stimulateconstructive debate, which might enhance employee knowledge and competence. Thiswill not only improves an individual’s loyalty and job-satisfaction, but also createsimproved individual and corporate performance.

Some researchers are inclined to promote the contingency view which states thatwhether conflict is good or bad depends on the way of conflict management is used byemployees (Rahim, 1986, 2002; Callanan and Benzing, 2006; Wall and Callister, 1995). Ifproperly managed, conflict can increase innovativeness and productivity. If managedappropriately conflict can increase interpersonal relationship satisfaction, creativeproblem solving, and lead to improved efficiency, creativity, and profitability (Chenet al., 2005). On the other hand, mishandled conflict causes organizational inefficiency,reduced productivity, and stymied innovation (Chen et al., 2005; De Church and Marks,2001; Liu et al., 2008). The contingency view has been supported by many scholars( Jehn and Bendersky, 2003; Lovelace et al., 2001).

Although these studies concern staff job satisfaction, they focused on the impact ofconflict on employee’s job satisfaction (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). Recently, Lee(2008) found that subordinates were more satisfied with their superiors’ supervisionwhen they use certain conflict management behaviors. They found that subordinateswere more satisfied with their superiors’ supervision when they exercised integrating,compromising, and obliging styles. On the other hand, subordinates who perceivedtheir superiors as primarily utilizing dominating and avoiding styles viewed them asincompetent in supervision and thus lowering their level of job satisfaction. That studymainly focused on the relationship of superior and subordinates in Malaysia. Bycontrast this paper focuses on the relationship among peers in China.

With the advent of the information-based economy, the world is entering a neweconomic period. Ways of creating wealth are being changed by knowledge andinnovation. So it is the great challenge of enterprises to create a core competencies andto maintain a high levels of performance through strengthening the knowledge andinnovation ability of their staff. Previous studies indicate that when conflicts aremanaged effectively, it will greatly enhance personal and corporate performance (DeDreu and Van Vianen, 2001). Song et al. (2006) discovered that integrating and obligingbehaviors of conflict management will bring higher innovation performance; whiledominating and avoiding behaviors will reduce innovation performance. However,they only focused on companies invested heavily on research and development (R&D),which means they were companies that pay more attention to creative work, whileignoring other types of companies which do not rely on their R&D in order to succeed.

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This paper studies the relationship among conflict management and innovationperformance with samples from ordinary companies.

Thus far, however, the empirical studies of the relationship among conflictmanagement, employees’ job satisfaction and innovation performance have largelybeen limited to the Western context of individualistic orientation. Research in othercontexts with different cultural norms remains largely untapped, even though muchconflict research has shown that conflict management behavior is fundamentallydifferent in its nature and effects across different cultures (Kim et al., 2007; Tinsley,2001; Tinsley and Brett, 2001).

While the cross-culture difference between China and the West is relatively easy tocomprehend, the major aim of this study is to explore the mechanism through whichconflict management behavior impacts the job satisfaction and innovationperformance, and to verify this relationship with the empirical analysis in thecontext of China.

Literature reviewConflict management behaviorsCurrently, there are four main perspectives of conflict management. The first is theone-best-way perspective – cooperation behavior (Kuhn and Poole, 2000; Alper et al.,2000). That is, only by cooperating can the group gain the best performance. Becausecooperation recognizes the identity of others and serves the joint welfare best, solvingproblem by this method can balance factors on all dimensions and lead to the bestresult. The second is the contingency perspective (Rahim, 1986, 2002; Callanan andBenzing, 2006; Wall and Callister, 1995). This line of research states that the answerregarding what is effective can only be given in the light of situational realities, andthat each mode of conflict management is appropriate under some circumstances. Thethird is the time perspective. A representative scholar of this view is Thomas (1992),who argues that the contingency approach provides answers to the short-termquestion, while the “one-best-way” approach deals with the longer term task, andchoosing different way based on different questions can result in different levels ofperformance. The fourth is the conglomerated perspective. Scholars (De Dreu and Vande Vliert, 1997; Euwema et al., 2003) holding this view state that, generally, people willnot adopt a single way to manage conflict, but combine various actions. Although thereare various conflict management perspectives, we believe that each person has adominant behavior which is like a habit of that person, that they will tend to use intheir daily work.

Referring to the types of conflict management behavior, Blake and Mouton’s (1964)managerial grid has recently made a striking comeback as a leading thesis in theliterature on conflict management. Building on the basis of dual concern theory,concern for people and for production, Blake and Mouton (1964) classified conflictmanagement behavior into five types: problem-solving, smoothing, forcing,withdrawal, and sharing. Thomas (1992) divides conflict management styles intofive similar categories: competition, integrating, avoiding, compromising andaccommodation. Rahim (1983) differentiated the styles of handling conflict on twosimilar dimensions: concern for self and concern for others. The combination of the twodimensions results in the following styles: integrating/cooperating (high concern forself and others), dominating/competing (high concern for self and low concern for

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others), compromising (intermediate concern for self and others), obliging (low concernfor self and high concern for others), and avoiding (low concern for self and others).These sets of categories are more or less the same, and studies have shown that everyconflict management style can adapt to particular situations, and also that theintegrating style is the best way to solve complex irregular tasks. Morris et al. (1998)indicated that cultural differences cause different conflict management behaviors.Chinese managers rely on an avoiding style because of their relatively high value onconformity and tradition; but US managers rely more on a competing style because oftheir relatively high value on individual achievement.

At present, the most widely used measurement method for the conflict managementis the Thomas and Kilmann’s MODE scale and the ROCI-II scale of Rahim. Van deVliert and Kabanoff (1990) indicated that compared with others, ROCI-II survey has thebetter stability and internal consistency.

In China, Bao compared the five classical survey scales of conflict management:

(1) Conflict management survey (CMS).

(2) Conflict management-of-differences instrument (MODE).

(3) Organizational communication conflict instrument (OCCI).

(4) Conflict management message style (CMMS).

(5) Organization conflict inventory-II (ROCI-II).

The results support the predictive validity of MODE, CMMS, and ROCI-II; and both thereliability and validity of ROCI-II are better than MODE (Bao and Zhao, 2008).

In this study, Rahim’s classification is adapted, as shown in Figure 1 (Rahim, 1983).Integrating refers to the conflict management style in which employees have a highdegree of caring about themselves as well as the others. It means that employees aim topursue a win-win situation through integrating. Dominating is the style in whichemployees have a high degree of caring for themselves and ignoring others’ feelings, italso means that employees try to meet self-interest and take no consideration into howconflict would affect others. Avoiding means neither integrating nor dominating.People with the attitude of avoiding often tend to overlook the inconsistencies between

Figure 1.Classification of conflictmanagement styles

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the two sides, or remain neutral to allow the conflict to run its course. Obliging is thestyle in which the others’ interests are highly concerned while self-interests are oftenignored, or put other’s interests above self-interests in order to maintain therelationship. In the compromising style employees give up things for sharing commoninterests with others and there is an appropriate degree of concern for others andthemselves.

Job satisfactionJob satisfaction is one of the most important and significant variables in organizationalbehavior and in the field of psychology. Job satisfaction means one’s general attitude tothe job. The higher the job satisfaction, the more likely he/she will hold a positiveattitude toward his job (Wang and Feng, 2003). Job satisfaction has been linked topositive workplace outcomes such as increased organizational commitment (Brownand Peterson, 1993). Workers with high levels of job satisfaction are more likely to becommitted to the organization. Furthermore, individuals with higher levels of jobsatisfaction demonstrate decreased propensity to search for a job and decreasedpropensity to leave (Wright and Bonett, 2007). Turnover is a major issue for manyorganizations. It is a problem of considerable importance because of the costsassociated with hiring and training new personnel. These findings suggest that jobsatisfaction is one of the most important attitudinal issues in the workplace thatmanagers face.

The research about job satisfaction mainly focuses on three aspects: the first aspectis the measurement of job satisfaction. A relatively widely used measure of jobsatisfaction is the Michigan organization assessment questionnaire (MOAQ). MOAQconsists of only three items, appears to better assess the affective component ofjob-satisfaction (which means the face-validity of the MOAQ is good), and it has shownrelatively strong relationships with emotion-related variables. This indicates that theMOAQ is a reliable and valid measure of global job satisfaction, it may in manysituations offer advantages over other popular measures of job satisfaction (Nathanand Gregory, 2008). The second is the relationship between job satisfaction andvariables such as job performance. The main concern of this study is conflictmanagement’s impact on job satisfaction.

Innovation performanceInnovation is “the intentional introduction and application within a role, group ororganization of ideas, processes, products or procedures, new to the relevant unit ofadoption, designed to significantly benefit the individual, the group, the organizationor wider society” (West and Farr, 1990, p. 9). Thus, innovation is different fromcreativity because of the application component (Amabile et al., 1996; Shalley et al.,2004) and because innovation only has to be new to the relevant unit of adoption – anaspect that has been termed relative as opposed to absolute novelty in the innovationliterature (Anderson et al., 2004).

Organization innovation is the basic element of an organization’s survival thatdetermines whether an organization has vitality and competitiveness. When anorganization chooses to pursue innovation as a pathway to ongoing success, thestarting point is to develop and publish its definition of innovation. Innovation is theprocess that transforms ideas into commercial value. The current article aims to

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contribute to our understanding of individual innovation performance. Therelationship between the definition of innovation and innovation performance isbased on fast and how well ideas are implemented, and how much value is created.Janssen (2000) put forward the individual innovation performance concept and scalesof innovation behaviors. Individual innovation performance includes three dimensionsthe: generation, promotion, and realization of innovative ideas. Based on this, Han et al.(2007) divided job performance into four dimensions including task performance,contextual performance, learning performance, and innovation performance, andconsidered innovation performance as a very important aspect of staff’s jobperformance.

When conflict is generally task oriented and focused on judgmental differencesabout how best to achieve common objectives, this type of conflict is always calledcognitive conflict (Amason, 1996). Previous studies indicated that cognitive conflictcould make employees treat issues more dialectically and bring about innovativethought (Schweiger et al., 1989; Schwenk, 1990; Amason, 1996). But excessive cognitiveconflict will often cause difficulty in drawing to conclusions consistently and result inlow efficiency (Olson et al., 2007).

Research model and hypothesesConflict management behavior and job satisfactionJob satisfaction is staff’s psychological perception arising from the interactiveinfluences of their work. Wall et al. (1987) performed an experiment of 129 subjects thattook part in a task requiring a group product. Their data suggested that satisfactionwas negatively related to conflict. That study also found that integrativeconflict-management strategies were more often associated with higher qualitysolutions than were distributive strategies which emphasize the achievement of theoutcomes and demonstrates a high concern for self and low concern for others(Quaddus and Tung, 2002).

Wall and Nolan (1987) performed a descriptive study of 71 task-oriented groups toassess the relationships among group satisfaction and types of conflict and styles ofconflict management. The results of that study provided support for the propositionthat group satisfaction is more strongly associated with integrativeconflict-management styles than avoidance styles.

Lee (2008) found that subordinates were more satisfied with their superiors’supervision when they exercised integrating, compromising, and obliging styles. Onthe other hand, subordinates who perceived their superiors as primarily utilizingdominating and avoiding styles viewed them as incompetent in supervision, and thuslowering their level of job satisfaction.

They main focus on prior research was on the relationship between superior andsubordinate. But what about the relationships among employees? Most previousresearch about job satisfaction concerns objective factors (such as office equipment,working environment, office hour per day and so on) while it neglects factors related toa person’s behavior (Wang and Feng, 2003). When the employees adopt integratingbehavior, they could express their own points and integrate others’ viewpoints. In thisprocess, they would be more likely to achieve fulfillment and satisfaction.

China, a country with a strong collectivistic cultural heritage is quite different fromthe western context of individualistic orientation (Xiao and Tsui, 2007). In this

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situation, the avoiding conflict management strategy is particularly important. Inwestern countries, this kind of strategy is considered as nearly useless, even more,researchers believe that its use contradicts people’s expectations (Kuhn and Poole,2000; Morris et al., 1998). Nevertheless, in Chinese society, which is characterized ascollectivistic, research demonstrates that the avoiding strategy is an effective solution(Morris et al., 1998). This difference between the west and China indicates thatdiversity of culture and values can significantly impact conflict strategy and conflictresolution (Ye, 2004).

Although Morris et al. (1998) concluded that Chinese prefer to choose avoidingbehavior, Wang et al. (2007) indicated that Chinese prefer to use integration as a tool tohandle conflict. When contradictions occurred in the workplace, if integrating behaviordoes not work, then employees may tend to ask managers for mediation. That meansthat integrating is the first choice for Chinese to handle conflict, avoiding andcompromising behavior will be taken only under the condition that they cannotintegrate into a unified view. Chen et al. (2005) also indicated that in the context ofChina, avoiding is not good for improving performance.

Employees with compromising behavior tend to keep the balance between theirinterests and others’ and try to find an expedient, mutually acceptable solution thatpartially satisfies both parties. This is a moderate level of integrating, which can alsosatisfy employees’ sense of achievement and bring relatively higher job satisfaction.However, avoiding or obliging behaviors can cause the opposite effect: employees willtake a retreat attitude to conflicts and make little contribution to the work, whichreduces their sense of achievement and job satisfaction. In addition, the dominatingstaff tend to argue fiercely against others when solving problems, hoping to persuadeothers to accept their opinions. This behavior will cause others’ repugnance and bringmany emotional disagreements, which can impair the staff’s interpersonalrelationships and unity. This will result in a low job satisfaction.

Therefore, some scholars consider integrating and compromising behaviors aspositive conflict management behaviors, while they consider dominating, obliging, andavoiding as negative conflict management behaviors (Song et al., 2006).

Based on the above analysis, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H1a. Integrating and compromising conflict management behaviors are positivelyrelated to job satisfaction.

H1b. Dominating, obliging, and avoiding conflict management behaviors arenegatively related to job satisfaction.

Conflict management behavior and innovation performanceIt is generally believed that integrating and compromising conflict managementbehaviors contribute to creating a common concern about the task and also increasethe likelihood of individuals voluntary searching for information about solutions, bothof which can lead to positive performance for the organization. Meanwhile, dominating,obliging, and avoiding conflict management behaviors are usually thought to showlack of participation, which could result in incomplete information for judgments ofoptions, and then, the decline of decision quality and are therefore useless forimproving team performance. Competitiveness reflected by dominating behaviors, is

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also viewed as detrimental to conflict resolution and may destroy team cohesion andperformance (Friedman et al., 2000; Kurtzberg and Mueller, 2005; Bao and Wang, 2008).

Some researchers proposed that moderate levels of cognitive conflict could boostemployee motivation to work together to solve their mutual problems and to benefitfrom new ideas and insights (Anderson et al., 2004; Amason, 1996; Chen et al., 2005;Jehn, 1995, 1997; Schweiger et al., 1989; Shalley et al., 2004). But they also proposed thathigh compared to moderate levels of cognitive conflict could produce stress,interpersonal tension, and distrust that prohibit people from focusing on problems andfrom open-mindedly generating ideas. High levels of cognitive conflict also reducesemployees’ motivation to work together in selecting and implementing adequateproblem solutions. Therefore, it is important to manage conflicts to moderate levels.

Song et al. (2006) discovered that integrating and obliging conflict managementbehaviors induce the appearance of constructive conflicts and bring about higherinnovation performance; while dominating and avoiding behaviors cause destructiveconflicts and reduce innovation performance. However, they only focused on companiesthat invested heavily in R&D while ignoring other types of companies which do not relyon their R&D to succeed. Further studies are needed to extend their research.Nevertheless, while that study confirmed the positive effects of obliging behavior,obliging behavior also works against a tendency to present an individual’s viewpoint andto be innovative. Therefore, obliging behavior is not beneficial to the innovation process.

As stated above, compromising behavior is a moderate level of integratingbehavior, and people with this attitude can easily get a good resolution by balancingtheir own and others’ proposals. Compromising behavior is an effective way to dealwith conflicts especially when the integration of organization members has failed.

In addition, when in conflict, in situations where employees have a chance tocommunicate to each other face to face and they need to find collectively satisfyingsolutions, it will increase innovation (De Dreu and West, 2001; Nemeth and Staw, 1989).However, if they do not communicate, they will be distracted and focus on each otherinstead of on their task, and conflict-related stress and emotions will prohibit straightand analytic thinking, and these will hurt innovation (Brown, 1983; Wall and Callister,1995).

Based on the analysis above and the work done by others such as Song et al. (2006),the following hypothesizes are proposed:

H2a. Integrating and compromising conflict management behaviors are positivelyrelated to innovation performance.

H2b. Dominating, obliging, and avoiding conflict management behaviors arenegatively related to innovation performance.

Figure 2 represents the theoretical model of this research.

MethodologyPre-test scale constructionForeign scales may not effective in China because of differences in culture (Zhang andFu, 2000; Chen et al., 2006). However, asking subjects to answer questions in bothforeign language and in Chinese can improve the consistency of the language and bethe basis for assessment of measurement equivalence and functional equivalence(Zhang and Fu, 2000). Because China is still forming scales on conflict management, we

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draw together some mature foreign language scales and delete items using rationalscientific methods.

In Chinese contexts, where empirical research of conflict management is nascent,the need for theory-based valid research instruments takes on even greater urgency.First, there is a paucity of measures with demonstrated validity for this context.Second, most measures in use are Chinese translations of western conflict managementscales. Therefore, questions may be raised about the suitability of these translated oradapted scales for accurately capturing constructs in Chinese contexts. These concernsgo well beyond language differences or the quality of translation procedures. Culturalfactors as well as institutional factors can have an impact on organizational research,and make instruments originally developed for western settings unsuitable fororganizational research in China (Farh et al., 2006). In order to align with westernconflict management research, this paper has developed a set of scales that fit Chinesesituation.

The scale of conflict management derives from Rahim’s ROCI-II, Morris et al. (1998)cross-culture comparison scale, and Chen’s scale of conflict management betweensubordinates and superiors (Chen et al., 2006). Forty-four items that were repeatedacross these scales were removed. The remaining items were given to twonative-Chinese members of the research team who translated into Chinese. To ensureconceptual consistency, the questionnaires were back-translated into English to checkfor possible deviation (Brislin, 1970). Scales of job satisfaction and innovationperformance were not involved in the pre-survey, since they have been validated manytimes in previous research.

Analysis of pretest resultsThe respondents were MBA students in Central South University in China. A total of120 questionnaires were distributed and 103 valid questionnaires were returned. Eachrespondent was given a U-disk as a token of appreciation. Using scale purification, thevalidity of the scale was tested. During scale purification, we removed items for which

Figure 2.Research model

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the corrected item-total correlation (CITC) was less than 0.4 if the total reliability isimproved by removing them. The examination continued until the total reliabilitycould not be improved. As a result of this process, items c5 and c43 were deleted(Table I).

Corrected item-total correlation Cronbach’s Alpha if item deleted

c1 0.296 0.910c2 0.378 0.909c3 0.353 0.909c4 0.422 0.909c5 0.221 0.912c6 0.359 0.909c7 0.394 0.909c8 0.331 0.910c9 0.359 0.909c10 0.351 0.909c11 0.535 0.908c12 0.559 0.907c13 0.336 0.910c14 0.509 0.908c15 0.212 0.911c16 0.385 0.909c17 0.522 0.907c18 0.243 0.911c19 0.414 0.909c20 0.539 0.908c21 0.284 0.910c22 0.598 0.906c23 0.459 0.908c24 0.656 0.906c25 0.408 0.909c26 0.483 0.908c27 0.504 0.908c28 0.402 0.909c29 0.530 0.907c30 0.477 0.908c31 0.361 0.909c32 0.518 0.907c33 0.397 0.909c34 0.597 0.907c35 0.457 0.908c36 0.373 0.909c37 0.435 0.908c38 0.362 0.909c39 0.593 0.906c40 0.423 0.909c41 0.340 0.909c42 0.524 0.908c43 0.171 0.912c44 0.314 0.910

Note: Overall validity ¼ 0.911Table I.Item-total statistics

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After the scale purification process, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) wasconducted, and factors were extracted by principal component analysis. TheKaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value is 0.803 and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is 1335.811,which indicates that the scale is appropriate for factor analysis. Factors whoseloadings are less than 0.5, or the cross-loading is more than 0.35 were removed. Thefinal scale contains four factors and 30 items. Table II lists the results of EFA. Thecumulative variance of four factors is 62.413 percent.

Differing from the initial assumptions, four items of the compromising factor weredistributed into integrating and obliging factors. This is not contrary with Rahim’sconflict management theory, because compromising itself means appropriate concernfor oneself and others, which then overlaps with the other four factors to some extent.

The survey sample and scalesSample. The respondents are from 18 companies in Hunan Province, China, and theirprivacy was protected. We first obtained cooperation from the their company’s topmanagement, who then held a meeting encouraging department supervisors toparticipate. Four hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed and 376questionnaires were returned. Of these, 333 questionnaires contained suitableresponses that were used in our analysis. The overall response ratio was 74 percent.Each respondent was given RMB 10 as a token of appreciation. Descriptive statistics ofthe final sample are shown in Table III.

The sample contained 193 men and 140 women and accounting for 57 and 42percent respectively. A total of 96 were less than 25 years-old, accounting for 29percent, 178 were between 26 and 35 years-old, accounting for 53 percent, 48 werebetween 36 and 45 years-old, accounting for 14 percent, 11 were more than 46years-old, accounting for 3.3 percent, 103 had college degrees or below, accounting for31 percent, 182 had bachelor’s degrees, accounting for 55 percent, and 48 had master’sdegrees or above, accounting for 14 percent.

Scales. The conflict management scale adopted the retained 30 items from thepretest, among which, eight items were used to measure integrating, six items wereused to measure dominating, five items were used to measure obliging, seven itemswere used to measure avoiding, and four items were used to measure compromising(Table II). The job satisfaction scales included three items that derived from MOAQscale. As an example, one of the item is “all in all I am satisfied with my job.”Innovation performance scales were crafted according to measures from Han et al.(2007), which included 8 items. One representative example is “I only offer my newthoughts if I want to change the current situation.” All the scales used five-point Likertscales, 1 ¼ strongly agree, 5 ¼ strongly disagree.

Analysis of resultsAnalysis of reliability and validityStructural equation modeling was used to examine the construct of conflictmanagement behavior and its dimension: integrating, dominating, compromising,obliging, and avoiding. This analysis served to assess the factorial structure of conflictmanagement. Confirmatory factor analysis was used first to analyze the 30 items of theconflict management scale by employing LISREL 8.70 software. This is generally

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Item 1 2 3 4

c26 I try to bring all our concerns out in the open so that theissues can be resolved in the best possible way 0.82

c21 I exchange accurate information with others to solve aproblem together 0.77

c31 I collaborate with the other person to come up withdecisions acceptable to us 0.74

c36 I try to investigate an issue with others to find a solutionacceptable to us 0.72

c30 I usually propose a middle ground for breaking deadlocksa 0.70c11 I try to integrate my ideas with the other person to come up

with a decision jointly 0.69c6 I try to work with the other person for a proper

understanding of a problem 0.67c16 I usually seek a solution with my partners that will be

good for all of us 0.64c10 I try to find a middle course to resolve an impassea 0.63c25 I try to play down our differences to reach a compromisea 0.58c1 I try to work with others to find solutions to a problem

which satisfy our expectations 0.55c32 I generally avoid an argument 0.84c17 I try to stay away from disagreement with the other person 0.78c27 I try to keep my disagreement with others to myself in

order to avoid hard feelings 0.78c22 I avoid an encounter with others 0.71c12 I usually avoid open discussion of my differences with the

other person 0.67c7 I attempt to avoid being “put on the spot” and try to keep

my conflict with others to myself 0.59c37 I sometimes avoid taking positions which would create

controversy 0.51c14 I usually accommodate the wishes of others 0.70c34 I generally try to satisfy the needs of the other person 0.68c19 I give in to the wishes of others 0.67c42 I often go along with the suggestions of others 0.64c24 I sometimes help the other person to make a decision in his

favor 0.63c35 I negotiate with others so that a compromise can be

reacheda 0.50c28 I use my expertise to make a decision in my favor 0.80c41 I try to show others the logic and benefits of my position 0.66c18 I use my authority to make a decision in my favor 0.60c44 I am generally firm in pursuing my side of the issue 0.57c38 I am usually firm in pursuing my goals 0.56c3 I usually hold on to my solution to a problem 0.52

Percentage of variance 30.56 15.92 9.23 6.70Total variance explained 62.41

Note: aThe item is measuring compromising factor initially, but it was loading on other factors inexploratory factor analysis

Table II.EFA of conflictmanagement scale

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recommended as a first step in to assess how well proposed constructs have beenmeasured (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988).

All the fit indexes of the four-factor model mentioned above, and the five-factormodel based on classical theory are presented in Table IV. We can see that both of themodels’ fit indexes are satisfactory, though the five-factor model is slightly better thanthe four-factor model. The result of the five factor model revealed that x 2 was 1670.13( p , 0.001), degrees of freedom was 395, root mean square error of approximation(RMSEA) was 0.05, normed fit index (NNFI) was 0.96, comparative fit index (CFI) was0.96 and goodness of fit index (GFI) was 0.91. RMSEA was smaller than 0.08, andNNFI, CFI and GFI were larger than 0.90, which meant that the fit of estimates wasacceptable. From the CFA factor loadings, all loadings of the five-factor model werehigher than 0.5. However, in the four-factor model, one item of compromising factor’sloading was less than 0.5. We adopted the five-factor model, since it agrees with thetheory better. After this step, we calculated the average variance extracted (AVE)estimate value of each factor. AVE varies from 0 to 1, and it represents the ratio of thetotal variance that is due to the latent variable. According to Dillon and Goldstein(1984) and Bagozzi (1991), a variance extracted of greater than 0.50 indicates that thevalidity of both the construct and the individual variables is high. From Table V, wefind that the AVE values of five factors are higher than the diagonal correlationcoefficient, which shows that five-factor model has satisfactory discriminatory validity(Espinoza, 1999).

Integrating Dominating Avoiding Obliging Compromising

Integrating 0.914Dominating 0.078 0.928Avoiding 0.090 0.010 0.882Obliging 0.005 0.078 0.036 0.874Compromising 0.303 0.029 0.026 0.004 0.936

Table V.Average variance

extracted (AVE) estimatevalue for each factor

Fit index x 2 df RMSEA NNFI CFI GFI

Four-factor model 910.50 * 399 0.06 0.94 0.95 0.90Five-factor model 870.13 * 395 0.05 0.96 0.96 0.91

Note: *p , 0.001

Table IV.The results of

confirmatory factoranalysis of different

models

Gender Age Education backgroundMale Female #25 26-35 36-45 $46 College Bachelor Master

Account 193 140 96 178 48 11 103 182 48Percent (%) 57.96 42.04 28.83 53.45 14.42 3.30 30.93 54.65 14.42

Notes: College means college’s degree or below; Bachelor means Bachelor’s degree; Master meansMaster’s degree or above

Table III.Descriptive statistics

from the final sample

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Reliability is the accuracy or precision of a measurement instrument and is a necessarycondition for validity (Kerlinger, 1986). Reliability may be calculated in a number ofways, but the most commonly accepted measure in field studies is internal consistencyreliability using Cronbach’s alpha (a) (Price and Mueller, 1986). After assuring goodvalidity of conflict management scale, we use SPSS to calculate every variable’s theCronbach’s a coefficient. Integrating, dominating, avoiding, obliging, compromising,job satisfaction and innovation performance all had good Cronbach’s a coefficients,which were respectively 0.899, 0.850, 0.747, 0.741, 0.909, 0.786, 0.913. Many studiessuggested that the internal consistency reliability should be considerably higher than0.70 (Hinkin, 1998), and all the scales in this study have high reliability.

Hypothesis testsDescriptive statistics and correlation coefficient matrix of the variables in this studyare shown in Table VI. From the correlation matrix, it is clear that integrating andcompromising are positively related to both job satisfaction and innovationperformance; while dominating is negatively related to both job satisfaction andinnovation performance. Finally, avoiding is negatively related to innovationperformance. In order to test the relationships between variables, the multipleregression analysis was performed, in which job satisfaction (model A) and innovationperformance (Model B) were chosen as the dependent variables. The results of thatanalysis are shown in Table VII.

H1a proposed that integrating and compromising behaviors are positively relatedto job satisfaction. As shown in Table VII, integrating and compromising behaviorsare significantly positively related to job satisfaction (b ¼ 0.22, p , 0.01; b ¼ 0.14,p , 0.05). Thus, H1a is supported. As indicated by our data, integrating andcompromising account for an average of 12 percent of the variance of job-satisfaction.

H1b proposed that dominating, obliging, and avoiding behaviors are negativelyrelated to job satisfaction. However, the results of multiple regression analysis, indicateno significant relationship between these variables and job satisfaction. Therefore, H1bis not supported.

H2a proposed that integrating and compromising behaviors are positively relatedto innovation performance. From Table VII, we can see that integrating behavior issignificantly positively related to innovation performance (b ¼ 0.55, p , 0.001), butthere is no significant correlation between compromising behavior and innovationperformance.

H2b proposed that dominating, obliging, and avoiding behaviors are negativelyrelated to innovation performance. From Table VII, it is clear that avoiding issignificantly negatively related to the innovation performance (b ¼ 20.19, p , 0.01),but there is no significant correlation between any other conflict management behaviorand innovation performance.

Therefore, H2a and H2b partly supported. We can see that integrating and avoidingbehaviors of conflict management accounted for of 26 percent of the variance ininnovation performance.

DiscussionFrom the means of conflict management style in Table VI, we can see that people choseconflict management strategies in the following order: integrating, compromising,

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correlation matrix

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avoiding, obliging, and dominating. This is different from the West, where dominatingis the first choice (Morris et al., 1998).

As we mentioned above, the effect of conflict management behavior is closelyrelated to cultures. China is a typically community-oriented society, and most peoplepursue interpersonal harmony (Kim et al., 2007; Tjosvold et al., 2003). Harmonyenhancement is positively related to the use of integrating and compromising during aconflicts with peers in collectivistic societies.

As a consequence, Chinese staff often adopt integrating and compromisingbehaviors while dominating is their last choice, and this is consistent with collectivistvalues in Chinese culture.

In this study, our research results show that employee job satisfaction depends agreat deal on how organizations handle conflicts. From the regression analysis inmodel A in Table VII, we observe that integrating and compromising are positivelyrelated to job satisfaction. These two factors can explain 12.3 percent of total variance.These results are in accord with the previous research mentioned in the part ofliterature review. However, dominating, avoiding, and obliging behavior do not affecton job satisfaction significantly. One possible reason is that the three styles areuncooperative behaviors, and there is no chance to make individual contributions withthese behaviors, which in turn affects the individual’s job satisfaction.

Model B indicates that both obliging and dominating behavior show no significantrelationship with innovation performance, but integrating behavior is positivelyrelated to innovation performance. Employees who favor integrating behaviors areoften relationship-oriented and object-oriented. They take responsibility to pursuecommon goals and are open-minded at the same time. They often have goodinterpersonal relationships. This creates frequent open discussion, which is significantfor viewpoints integration and innovation. Therefore, employees who favor integratingusually have high innovation performance. On the other hand, avoiding behavior isnegatively related to innovation performance. Avoiding is often considered as thenegative behavior of conflict management. Once employees have an avoiding attitude,it will be very difficult to create open discussions and generate new ideas. Avoiding isnot beneficial to the long-turn development of teams or enterprises, and it also leads togroupthink (Turner and Pratkanis, 1998). Groupthink will cause conformity andcompliance pressures, both of which are not conductive to innovation, and will lead toinefficiency (McCauley, 1989).

Model A Model BJob satisfaction Innovation performance

Integrating 0.22 * * 0.55 * * *

Dominating 20.05 0.00Avoiding 0.06 20.19 * *

Obliging 20.07 0.00Compromising 0.14 * 20.10F 9.18 * * * 23.03 * * *

R 2 0.12 0.26

Notes: *p , 0.05; * *p , 0.01; * * *p , 0.001

Table VII.Result of multipleregression analysis

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In contrast to the research of Song et al. (2006), this study does not verifydominating behavior’s destructive influence or compromising’s positive influence onthe innovation performance. This may be due to the fact that we have differentdemographic samples. This study mainly focused on general staff whereas Songresearched department managers. Future studies could explore the different impact onthe innovation performance when the general staff and the department managers arecompared.

ConclusionThis study tested the relationships among conflict management behaviors, jobsatisfaction, innovation performance using 333 questionnaires. The results show thatemployees who favor integrating and compromising have higher job satisfaction; andintegrating behavior is positively related to innovation performance, while avoidingbehavior is negatively related to innovation performance. However, this does not meanthat integrating is the uniquely effective way to deal with conflict. Sometimes avoidingresponses are associated with high team functioning and effectiveness (De Dreu andVan Vianen, 2001).

Our study is relevant and useful in several ways. First of all, it provides furthersupport for significant relationships among conflict management behaviors, jobsatisfaction, and innovation performance, which means that executives should payattention to conflict management behaviors. In addition, results of this study can beprovide useful suggestions for business managers. Conflict management is an importantjob skill for employees, and business managers should carry out programs to train andincrease the employees’ conflict management ability. Training programs can teachcross-cultural knowledge, communication skills, and so on. These programs will helpemployees learn how to deal with interpersonal relationships and how to self-manage.For example in China, integrating is not the only way to manage conflict, sometimes ifdisputes continue, compromising will be a good way to handle conflict. However, itwould be unwise for managers to use avoiding since this can be bad for innovation.Based on these observations, managers should encourage employees to use integratingor compromising behavior while dealing with conflict. It is also essential for enterprisesto take cultural-differences into consideration while handling conflict, and they shouldtry their best to maintain a good working atmosphere and working environment.

Since all the variables in this study were measured by the same method, it may raise alegitimate concern that the reported results were influenced by response bias andcommon method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003) which could affect the conclusions ofour research results. In order to remove these systematic biases, this study used rigorouscontrols in research methods and procedures, such as the use of anonymous respondentmanner, and the application of research questionnaire constructed using two-waytranslations. Although we tried our best to remove these systematic biases, the nature ofstudies like ours makes it very difficult to completely remove systematic biases.

Through principal component analysis, this study found that the cumulativeloading of the four factors was 0.624, all of the cross-loading were below 0.3, and theexplanatory variation amount was 30.56 percent (below 40 percent). Hence, commonmethod biases may not impact on this research severely. It is of critical importance forfuture researchers to conduct research using a variety of measurement methods toreduce systematic biases.

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Furthermore, this study does not take the industry differences into consideration,even though the methods to best maintain job-satisfaction and promote innovationmight differ from one industry to another. Beyond these two issues, future researchcould also explore other factors that have an impact on conflict management, such asemotional intelligence, and factors that can guide staff behaviors to improve workallocation and reform organizational structure (Kaushal and Kwantes, 2006; Sulimanand Al-Shaikh, 2007). Future research could explore the different levels of training ofconflict management skills. In addition, most modern enterprises have multiple teams,and the relationships among the teams quite often are critical to staff job-satisfactionand the enterprise’s innovation competence. This study only studied individual levelfactors. Therefore future studies can be extended to the team level in order to give amore complete picture on how behaviors are correlated to job-satisfaction andinnovation competence.

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About the authorsXiao-Hong Chen is the Dean and Professor of Management Science and Engineering, in theCentral South University, China. Professor Chen is also the Assistant President of Central SouthUniversity, and Dean of School of Business, Central South University. Her research interests aregroup decision making, decision support system, and conflict management. She has publishedmore than 170 research papers in authoritative publications in China and abroad, among them,more than 40 papers have been searched by SCI and EI.

Ke Zhao is a PhD candidate in the Department of Management Science and Engineering,School of Business, Central South University, China, and visiting student in RiskLab, Universityof Toronto (2009.9-2010.9). His field of research interest is conflict management, group decisionmaking and risk management.

Xiang Liu is a graduate student in the Department of Management Science and Engineering,School of Business, Central South University, China. His research interests are group decisionmaking and conflict management.

Desheng Dash Wu is the Affiliate Professor at RiskLab of University of Toronto and Directorof RiskChina Research Center at University of Toronto. His research interests focus on riskmanagement, and decision analysis. He has published more than 70 journal papers in suchjournals as Risk Analysis, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Operational Research,IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering et al. He has co-authored three bookswith David L. Olson. He is the editor-in-chief of a Springer book series on enterprise riskmanagement. He has served as editors/guest editors/chairs for several journals/conferences. Heis a member of PRMIA (the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association) AcademicAdvisory Committee and ethics committee member. Desheng Dash Wu is the correspondingauthor and can be contacted at: DWu@Rotman.Utoronto.Ca

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