Conflict occurs when needs and desires of two
individuals or parties are contradicting, consciously or
unconsciously. In other words, conflict happens when parties
are not getting what they want. Consequently, proper
resolution is inevitable to avoid tensions and stresses that
conflict may cause. Awareness of how people generally prefer to
deal with conflict in an organization seems extremely crucial for
leaders to play their leading role properly.
Thomas-Killman Conflict Mode Instrument is broadly
implemented to evaluate how people deal with conflict.
Assertiveness and cooperation are two key parameters that are
used by this instrument to assess people’s preference for how to
deal with conflict, resulting in five distinguishable modes:
avoiding, compromising, accommodating, competing and
collaborating. 36 engineering students and 21 experienced
engineers from Iran along with 25 Swedish students answered
questions of this instrument.
Results imply both Iranian naive engineers and experienced
engineers mostly prefer to avoid conflict. Similarly, both of
them generally showed a lack of interest in competing mode.
However, the results indicate that gaining experience intensifies
the interest to avoid and disinterest to competing mode. On the
other hand, the general preference of Swedish students for
dealing conflict purports a profound contradiction with Iranian
case showing a great sense of assertiveness rather than
cooperativeness. The difference between the Iranian and the
Swedish public preference is justified by their cultural
dimensions.