Conflict Management Style Analysis

Conflict management styles refers to the key perspective of how an individual deals with conflict in order to strike a balance in satisfying personal needs and goals between self and the other party,(refer to text book). The key argument is the different conflict required different management style, an individual free to choose anything style that is suitable to his or her conflict, but if the wrong style is deployed, the conflict could be worsen or remain unresolved, (Weeks, 1994 as cited in Ang, 2013). There are five primary orientation of conflict management styles, “avoidance”, “competition”, “compromise”, “accommodation” and “collaboration”, (Blake & Mouton, 1964; C. Brown, Yelsmer, & Keller, 1981; L. Brown, 1983; Canary & Cupach,

The result shows that most commonly used style is avoidance for both staff nurses and nurse managers, this suggested that in a clinical setting which every second might be life and death for the patients, personal conflicts should be delayed to more suitable time, (Cavanagh, 1991). Or it could also mean that staff nurse associated their freedom of speech to their social class, on the assumption that raising issue with the doctor will result in a disagreement, hence totally avoiding the conflict; it means there is a risk of ideas not being shared and things are decided by “default” and patient-care might be compromised, (Cavanagh, 1991). Uniquely to nurse manager, they uses compromise style as much as avoidance, this could be mainly for staff retention and motivation, (Cavanagh,

As results for both articles contrasted each other, FA 's research shows that preferred style of the nurse manager is avoidance followed by compromising but SA 's research reflected the preferred style of collaborating followed by compromising. It is suggested that the “Omanification process” of that enable an Omanis to take on management roles might be a factor in contribute in the differences in the two results, (Al-Hamdan et al.,