hypotheses would be inadequately formulated since the above mentioned studies are all conducted in Western cultures.
Culture might influence how individuals differ in their choice for preferring one style over another. Furthermore although few, there is evidence that conflict management styles do significantly differ across cultures. In an effort to investigate interpersonal conflict management styles used by Turkish managers, a survey research and compared his findings with American managers’ preferences for interpersonal conflict management styles. There are significant differences among both groups. Accordingly, integrating scored as the most preferred style among Turkish managers, whereas obliging scored the last. Dominating and compromising styles ranked as the second most preferred strategy of Turkish managers and avoiding style scored as the least preferred style before obliging.
With this perspective in mind, this research hypothesizes that in the Turkish organizational context, employees will behave in similar response patterns to those reported by the discourse of substantive conflicts. In other words, they will be more likely to demonstrate integrative, dominating and compromising behaviors to deal with interpersonal substantive conflicts. However, general report on avoidance as the least preferred style, it is expected that Turkish employees will be more likely to resort to avoidance in the discourse of affective conflicts, which are comprised of interpersonal issues and affective components and thus are by nature perceived as detrimental to interpersonal relationships. This assertion is partially supported by research findings that employees in collectivist cultures prefer avoidance more often than do employees in individualistic cultures. Thus, the research hypotheses are formulated as follows:
• H.1: Employees, who perceive their experiences of a dyadic conflict as substantive, will respond to it through integrative, dominating or compromising behaviors.
• H.2: Employees, who perceive their experiences of a dyadic conflict as affective, will respond to it through avoiding behaviors.
The literature on conflict management styles suggests that styles may also be influenced through certain other factors such as personality, power, organizational culture, referent role, gender and alike. Referent role amongst others is reported to have a substantial amount of impact on employees’ conflict management style selection for example, constantly reported that employees in Turkey were more likely to dominate conflict with subordinates, avoid (or compromise – only) conflict with peers and oblige conflict with superiors. Hence, as is indicated on research analysis and results, the above given research hypotheses are tested by controlling for the probable impact of referent role on interpersonal conflict management styles.
Finally, with reference to the previous discussions on the existence of affective components in the discourse both affective and substantive types of conflicts, and also in conformity with the integrated definitions of the two types of conflicts – as proposed, it is hypothesized here that certain affective components are not unique to affective conflicts but are also evident in the discourse of substantive conflicts. Therefore,
• H.3: Employees, who perceive their experiences of a dyadic conflict as affective, will express personal experiences of anger, dislike, annoyance, distrust and fear directed towards the other party, tension, friction and animosity among each other, and a general sense of frustration.
• H.4: Employees, who perceive their experiences of a dyadic conflict as substantive, will express personal experiences of anger, dislike, annoyance, distrust and fear directed towards the other party, tension, friction and animosity among each other, and a general sense of frustration.
