Saginaw Valley State University Conflict Management Approaches Discussion

User Generated

WnaY

Humanities

Saginaw Valley State University

Description

Readings

Types and causes of conflict (2) Dealing with Conflict Instrument (Hiam, 1999)

Peer Assigned

Whole booklet

Task

The Booklet provides conflict handling styles depending on importance of relationship and relation of outcome. Read through the booklet and provide an interpersonal and team conflict situation (relationship) where each style results in the optimum (most desired) outcome.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

Do justice perceptions influence styles of handling conflict with ... Rahim, M Afzalur;Magner, Nace R;Shapiro, Debra L International Journal of Conflict Management; 2000; 11, 1; ABI/INFORM Collection pg. 9 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Empirical studies on managing conflict Rahim, M Afzalur International Journal of Conflict Management; 2000; 11, 1; ABI/INFORM Collection pg. 5 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1044-4068.htm IJCMA 26,4 Emotional intelligence, conflict management styles, and innovation performance 450 An empirical study of Chinese employees Received 4 June 2014 Revised 11 October 2014 30 December 2014 18 February 2015 Accepted 4 March 2015 Su Juan Zhang, Yong Qiang Chen and Hui Sun Department of Construction Management, College of Management of Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China Abstract Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the relationship among emotional intelligence (EI), conflict management styles (CMSs) and innovation performance, and test the mediating effects of various types of CMSs. Innovation is playing a more and more critical role in the survival and development of companies. EI is assumed to be an antecedent of employees’ innovation performance. Conflict is an inevitable phenomenon in organizations, and different CMSs have different impacts on individual performance. Design/methodology/approach – Research data were obtained from 159 employees in the construction industry in China. SPSS 19.0 was used to test and verify the hypotheses concerning the relationship among EI, CMSs and innovation performance. The authors also conducted a 500-times bootstrapping to verify the mediating roles of different CMSs. Findings – Results indicate that EI is positively and significantly associated with integrating, compromising and dominating styles, as well as innovation performance in the construction industry. In addition, the integrating style has a significantly positive relationship with innovation performance. This research also confirms the mediating effect of integrating style on the relationship between EI and innovation performance. Practical implications – The authors recommend that managers, especially in the construction industry, who are willing to maintain high levels of innovation performance of employees can provide EI training programs. In addition, to improve innovation performance, companies should provide employees with appropriate training emphasizing the importance of conflict management strategies, especially the integrating style. Originality/value – Limited research has focused on the antecedents of conflict management strategies or the relationship between EI and innovation performance. A framework integrating EI, CMSs and innovation performance is put forward and empirical evidence of the relationship between EI and employees’ innovation performance is provided. This research helps to have a better understanding of the relationship between EI and innovation performance by introducing the integrating style as a mediating variable. Keywords Emotional intelligence, Conflict management styles, Innovation performance, Chinese context Paper type Research paper International Journal of Conflict Management Vol. 26 No. 4, 2015 pp. 450-478 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1044-4068 DOI 10.1108/IJCMA-06-2014-0039 The authors would like to acknowledge funding support from the key project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Number 71231006) and project of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Number 71271143). The authors also highly appreciate the efforts from all of the respondents to the questionnaire survey. Introduction With the advent of an information-based world, knowledge and innovation are playing more and more critical roles. One of the great challenges facing companies today is to maintain a high level of competitiveness through strengthening the knowledge and innovation abilities of their employees (Prajogo and Ahmed, 2006; Chen et al., 2012). Organization innovation is considered as a fundamental element of an organization’s survival and the way it competes in today’s increasingly global market (Suliman and Al-Shaikh, 2007). As Scott and Bruce (1994) explained: “The foundation of innovation is ideas and it is people who ‘develop, carry, react to, and modify ideas’ (Van de Ven, 1986)”. It is necessary and critical to study what motivates or enables individual innovative behavior. Therefore, employees’ innovation performance and creativity play critical roles in the survival and development of companies, and ways should be found to improve employees’ innovation performance. As to the antecedents of employees’ innovative work behavior, research have indicated that different kinds of conflict handling strategies may produce different influences on innovation performance. Conflict is inevitable and dealing with conflict is a natural and pervasive part of daily activities in workplace (Brew and David, 2004). When people are interacting, misunderstandings, disagreements and tensions are common social phenomena, resulting in interpersonal conflict. If managed properly, conflict can be a positive force in organizations (Wall and Callister, 1995; Callanan et al., 2006), enhancing decision-making qualities, creativity and job performance of employees (Jehn, 1997; Tjosvold, 1998). Conflict is multidimensional, mainly including relationship conflict and task conflict (Jehn, 1997). Relationship conflict or affective conflict is rooted in the emotional aspects of interpersonal relationships and is often considered as detrimental (Jehn, 1997). While task conflict or cognitive conflict refers to disagreements or opposing viewpoints, ideas or thoughts toward tasks (Jehn, 1995, 1997; Jehn and Mannix, 2001). When conflict is functional, it is generally task-oriented and often focuses on how to achieve common objectives to deal with problems (Jehn, 1997). Task conflict plays an important role in innovation because of its involvement in generating ideas, improving decision quality and promoting creativity (Jehn and Mannix, 2001). In this research, we mainly focus on task conflict. To manage conflict, there are five kinds of conflict management styles (CMSs), namely, integrating, compromising, avoiding, dominating and obliging (Rahim, 2002). The contingency view of conflict indicates that whether conflict is constructive depends on the conflict management strategies undertaken (Wall and Callister, 1995; Rahim, 2002; Chen et al., 2012). It is how individuals approach or manage conflict, rather than the occurrence of conflict, that greatly affects whether conflict is functional or dysfunctional (Lovelace et al., 2001; Chen et al., 2005). Integrating and compromising styles could contribute to mutual exchange and open-minded discussions between employees that eventually help develop beneficial resolutions and innovative ideas, while dominating and avoiding styles frustrate communication and lead to deadlocks or unfulfilling solutions (Chen et al., 2012). Song et al. (2006) found that integrating and obliging styles are positively related to constructive conflict, which is significant to improve innovation performance, while dominating and avoiding behaviors cause the appearance of destructive conflict, reducing innovation performance. But their research was at the organizational level. Thus, we will test and verify the relationship between Emotional intelligence 451 IJCMA 26,4 452 five types of CMSs and employees’ innovation performance in the Chinese context, at the individual level. Limited studies have been conducted to investigate the antecedents of individuals’ CMSs. These include research into the roles of personality and emotional intelligence (EI) as important predicators of certain CMSs (Shih and Susanto, 2010). EI refers to an ability where people regard their own emotions and the emotions of other people as bases for framing their relationship with others (Salovey and Mayer, 1990; Mayer and Salovey, 1993). EI has substantial potential as an indispensable predicator of workplace behaviors in organizations (Jordan and Troth, 2002). Employees with high levels of EI tend to satisfy the interests of others to achieve a win-win solution, indicating a preference for cooperative CMSs. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that employees’ EI has a positive influence on their preference of CMSs, which further affects their innovation performance. In addition, though many studies have indicated that EI has a positive effect on individual attitudes and behaviors, job performance and team performance (Wong and Law, 2002; Jordan and Troth, 2002; Shih and Susanto, 2010), to our knowledge, little is known about the mechanisms involved in the relationship between EI and employees’ innovation performance, except Suliman and Al-Shaikh (2007), who find that employees with higher levels of EI are inclined to report lower levels of conflict and higher levels of readiness to create and innovate. From what have been talked above, this research aims to empirically test the relationship between EI and individual innovation performance and the mediating effects of different CMSs. Therefore, this current research mainly has two purposes: (1) one is to provide additional empirical evidence supporting the relationship between EI and individual innovation performance; and (2) another main point is to verify the mediating roles of different CMSs on this relationship. Our research is the first one to link EI, employees’ preference for various types of CMSs and individual innovation performance, to unlock the black box underlying the relationship between EI and innovation performance of employees. Findings of this research will not only contribute to expanding the literature of conflict management theory and innovation but also provide some future guidelines for both employees and managers in workplace. Data were collected from employees working in the construction industry in the Chinese context. Literature review Emotional intelligence EI has been an emerging and popular topic among social and organizational psychologists in recent years (Schutte et al., 2001; Law et al., 2004). The development of EI is based on “social intelligence”, which was first identified by Thorndike in 1920 (Wong and Law, 2002). There are two main construct models defining EI, an ability-based model and a mixed-based model (Mayer et al., 2000; Joseph and Newman, 2010). Salovey and Mayer (1990, p. 189) were among the earliest researchers to define EI as the ability of an individual to deal with his or her emotions: […] the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. Then they further revised it as a set of interrelated skills concerning: […] the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). Based on the psychological literature, Mayer et al. (2004) divided the abilities and skills of EI into four areas: the ability to perceive emotion, use emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and manage emotions. This is the so-called ability-based model of EI (Day and Carroll, 2008). On the other hand, the mixed model definitions of EI consider EI as a combination of intellect, personality and affect (Petrides and Furnham, 2001), which are often criticized for its lack of empirical bases and too broad conceptualization (Murphy, 2006; Joseph and Newman, 2010). Thus, the theoretical deduction of this paper focuses on the ability-based EI model. Based on the definition of Mayer and Salovey (1997), Davies et al. (1998) summarized the EI literature and put forward that EI is conceptualized as being composed of four distinct dimensions: (1) appraisal and expression of emotion in the self (self-emotional appraisal [SEA]); (2) appraisal and recognition of emotion in others (others’ emotional appraisal [OEA]); (3) regulation of emotion in the self; and (4) use of emotion to facilitate performance (use of emotion [UOE]). The four-dimensional definition of EI was widely accepted due to its representativeness of the entire EI literature (Wong and Law, 2002; Law et al., 2004; Shih and Susanto, 2010). Thus, we also use the definition of Davies et al. (1998) to focus on the nature and characteristics of EI construct. Conflict and conflict management styles Conflict refers to “a process that begins when one party perceives the other has frustrated, or is about to frustrate, some concerns of his” (Thomas, 1976). Rahim (2002) broadened the definition of conflict as “an interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreements, or dissonance within or between social entities (i.e. individual, group, organization, etc.)”. According to this definition, conflict is not only related to activities but also incompatible preferences, attitudes and goals. Conflict is typically divided into two dimensions: one consisting of disagreements related to task issues and the other is related to emotional or interpersonal issues. These two dimensions have various labels: substantive and affective conflict, task and relationship conflict (Jehn, 1997), cognitive and affective conflict and task and emotional conflict (Rahim, 2002). Moderate levels of task conflict contribute to generating ideas, improving qualities of decision-making and promoting creativity (Jehn and Mannix, 2001), which can be functional to the organization performance, while relationship conflict can be detrimental. This research mainly concentrates on the task conflict and the ways or strategies to deal with task-related conflict. CMSs, or conflict resolution styles, and conflict-handling approaches were put forward by a number of researchers (Blake and Mouton, 1964; Thomas, 1974; Rahim, 1983) as comprising five different ways: competing, collaborating, sharing, neglecting Emotional intelligence 453 IJCMA 26,4 454 and accommodating. Many researchers have used these styles to identify different CMSs to give suggestions for appropriate conflict management. Based on two dimensions: concern for production and concern for people, Blake and Mouton (1964) first proposed a grid of CMSs and distinguished five styles, i.e. forcing, withdrawing, smoothing, compromising and problem solving. Thomas then interpreted the grid of Blake and Mouton and classified five types, i.e. competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating and compromising, dividing them into two dimensions, namely, cooperativeness (satisfying the other party’s concerns) and assertiveness (satisfying one’s own concerns) (Thomas, 1976, 1992). Rahim used a similar conceptualization to differentiate the styles of handling conflict on two basic dimensions – concern for self and concern for others – and named the five styles as integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979; Rahim, 1983). Rahim’s model of interpersonal conflict, considered as one of the most popular revisions (Montes et al., 2012), is adopted in this research. A combination of the two dimensions results in five specific styles of handling interpersonal conflict, as indicated in Figure 1. Innovation performance Creativity is a starting point for innovation and innovation is considered as “the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization” (Amabile, 1996). Innovation refers to: […] the intentional introduction and application within a role, group or organization of ideas, process, products or procedures, new to the relevant unit of adoption, designed to significantly benefit the individual, the group, the organization or wider society (West and Farr, 1990). According to Scott and Bruce (1994), individual innovation is viewed as a multi-stage process in three stages: (1) problem recognition and the generation of ideas or solutions; (2) an innovative individual seeks sponsorship and supports for an idea; and (3) the completion of the idea. Janssen followed their definition and then considered innovative work behavior (IWB) in the workplace as complex behaviors comprising three different behavioral tasks: idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization (Janssen, 2000; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004). IWB is widely claimed to be crucial to effective functioning and long-term development of enterprises (West and Farr, 1989, 1990; Woodman et al., 1993). As Tompson and Werner (1997) stated, it is no longer sufficient for an employee to simply carry out the essential job functions. Instead, employees nowadays are expected to take High Concern for Self Low High Obliging Integrating Concern for Others Figure 1. The styles of handling interpersonal conflict Compromising Dominating Low Source: Rahim (1983) Avoiding initiative actions and come up with creative ideas to guarantee the organization performance. In the idea generation step, novel ideas are often derived from perceived work-related problems which need to be solved (Scott and Bruce, 1994), incongruities or emerging trends (Drucher, 1984; Janssen, 2000; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004). The generation of creative ideas is often the first step of innovation. Idea promotion, the second step of innovation process, means that one should promote the ideas to potential allies and market the ideas to gain support (Janssen, 2000). Usually, those who have generated an idea tend to involve in social activities to find friends, backers or supporters who can provide power or help to move the idea into reality (Kanter, 1988; Janssen, 2000). The final step of innovation process is idea realization, meaning a product, a plan or a prototype of innovation that can be ultimately applied or implemented within a work role, a group or an organization (Kanter, 1988). This research concentrates on innovation performance at the individual level. In this way, in the construction industry, innovation also includes three steps in workplace, just as in other industries. For example, employees in the project teams think of innovative ways to deal with various risks or problems occurred during the implementation of projects. More specifically, in Trans-Asia Gas Pipleline project, the engineers designed a new “internal welding plus semi-automatic welding” technique based on the practical situation. The new welding technique is very efficient and brought huge economic benefit. In this research, we only consider the construction industry as a context or background. Research model and hypotheses Emotional intelligence and conflict management styles Task conflict is inevitable in workplace and employees may have different preferences for different kinds of conflict management strategies. Among the five CMSs from Figure 1, integrating, obliging and compromising styles are the ones with a moderate to high level of concern for others and are considered as more cooperative CMSs. Avoiding and dominating are regarded as uncooperative CMSs or competitive CMSs (Rahim et al., 2000; Yu et al., 2006). Higher levels of EI may facilitate collaborative and problem-solving behaviors, in which emotions can be controlled and generated to develop new and creative solutions that satisfy the needs of both parties (Jordan and Troth, 2002; Schlaerth et al., 2013). While, lower levels of EI can lead to greater use of forcefulness and avoidance of individuals when faced with conflict, which may signal destructive conflict management (Goleman, 1995). In addition, as Goleman (1998) suggests EI at work consists of five components, one of which is social skills. Social skills are associated with one’s ability to deal with problems and not allow own or others’ negative feelings to inhibit collaboration, which help handle with conflict appropriately (Rahim et al., 2002). This means that employees with high EI have better ability to control emotions and understand the emotions of their colleagues when in conflict situations, thus they are likely to show cooperative behaviors and avoid uncooperative behaviors, indicating preferences for avoiding and dominating styles. In addition, EI plays an important role in conflict management behaviors (Jordan and Troth, 2004), because constructive solutions may require compromise which needs an ability to recognize and regulate emotions (Schlaerth et al., 2013). Effective and appropriate conflict management relies strongly on an individual’s skills in self-management and abilities to find constructive solutions (Jordan and Troth, 2002). Emotional intelligence 455 IJCMA 26,4 456 Employees who can accurately perceive and manage their emotions or feelings and understand the perspectives and emotions of others can manage conflict constructively (Schlaerth et al., 2013), which contributes to resolving conflict properly and functionally (Jordan and Troth, 2002, 2004). On the other hand, integrating and compromising styles are both beneficial to individual job performance when both parties can benefit from the solution of task conflict (Chen et al., 2012). Thus, individuals with higher levels of EI are more likely to prefer integrating and compromising styles due to their efficacy and appropriateness for producing functional or productive results (Gross and Guerrero, 2000). We therefore assume that emotionally intelligent employees would prefer more cooperative and favorable conflict resolution behaviors to handle task conflict, like integrating, compromising and obliging styles. Jordan and Troth’s (2002) empirical research found that individuals with high levels of EI are more effective in resolving conflict than individuals with low levels of EI. Previous research of Shih and Susanto (2010) has also argued that EI functions as an antecedent for employees’ preference of CMSs in terms of integrating and compromising styles when faced with conflict because they are more likely to believe that those styles can help solve conflict productively. The research of Schlaerth et al. (2013) also shows that employees with high levels of EI are able to manage conflict more constructively. Hence, H1 is put forward as follows: H1. EI is positively associated with more cooperative CMSs (integrating, obliging and compromising styles) and negatively associated with uncooperative CMSs (avoiding and dominating styles). Conflict management styles and innovation performance Innovation opportunities lie not only in breakthrough product creation or continuous product refinement but also in problem solving which occurs in everyday life (Fenwick, 2003). Task conflict in organizations, if managed properly, could produce constructive impacts on organizational outcomes (Jehn, 1995, 1997). Organizations with functional conflict tend to be more creative and have higher employee job satisfaction (Jordan and Troth, 2002). It is discovered in research and development (R&D) enterprises that integrating and obliging styles contribute to constructive conflict and thus bring higher innovation performance, while dominating and avoiding behaviors are related to destructive conflict, thus reducing organizational innovation performance (Song et al., 2006). Different types of CMSs can have different influences on innovation performance (Chen et al., 2012). Integrating style involves high concern both for self and the other party, with active collaboration to reach a solution which satisfies both individuals (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979). This style, which focuses on problem solving and collaboration, can be effective in managing conflict (Gross and Guerrero, 2000). It is characterized by openness, exchange of information and examination of differences (Rahim et al., 2000), and it can encourage each party to express their ideas and feelings and use any information to maximize the benefits (Prein, 1984). Employees using this style are inclined to express their ideas and feelings directly, face conflict and communicate the desire to resolve the conflict for mutual benefits and try to find and develop new and creative solutions to problems (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979; Rahim et al., 2002; Yu et al., 2006). In addition, the integrating strategy can make people confront conflict situations and create environments in which conflict can be discussed face-to-face. When in task-related conflict, in situations where employees can communicate with each other directly and they need to find out satisfying solutions, innovation is likely to occur and increase (De Dreu and West, 2001). With the interaction among employees and open information sharing, there is more possibility that different elements of intelligence can be combined to produce new and creative outputs (West and Farr, 1990). On the other hand, new and novel ideas, often produced from work-related problems (Scott and Bruce, 1994), are the foundation of innovation (West and Altink, 1996). Research in R&D organizations also shows the positive influence of integrating style on constructive conflict, which contributes to innovation performance (Song et al., 2006). Under this harmonious and cooperative environment, we can argue that integrating style contributes to the idea generation of innovation process and can enhance individual creativity and innovation in workplace. On the other hand, research have indicated that personalities, such as disagreeableness and open to experience, may produce significant influence on creativity and innovation (Hunter and Cushenbery, 2014). In a task conflict situation, integrating individual tend to express their ideas directly instead of always being agreeable, but in a more pleasing way. Thus, we deduce the following hypothesis: H2a. Integrating style is positively related to innovation performance. Obliging style, also named accommodating or yielding style, involves low concern for self and high concern for the other party or individual, in which there is an element of self-sacrifice that may take the form of selfless generosity or obedience to other individual (Rahim et al., 2000). Individuals with the obliging style emphasize the concern of the other party, deny or fail to express ones’ own needs and give in to the others’ positions (Rahim, 2002). Obliging behavior, characterized as neglecting an individual’s own concerns to satisfy those of others, works against the tendency to present an individual’s viewpoints and to be innovative (Chen et al., 2012). As Song et al. (2006) pointed out, information in this style tend to flow in only one direction. But innovation needs the combination of various points of views and different information sources to bring forth new knowledge (Galbraith, 1982). According to Rahim et al. (2002), obliging leads to a one-sided decision-making process which is less creative than collaborative or compromising style. Therefore, when dealing with task conflict, an obliging individual tends to submit to others instead of thinking up of creative ideas to solve problems and resolve conflict, thus leading to dysfunctional conflict and bring about a low level of individual innovation performance. This behavior will have negative impacts on idea generation of innovation process. In addition, qualities like disagreeableness may play a role in novel idea instantiation for individuals with creative suggestions or ideas might withhold from public consumption if they are too agreeable (Hunter and Cushenbery, 2014). Thus, on the basis of the deduction above, we hypothesize the following: H2b. Obliging style is negatively related to innovation performance. Dominating style, characterized as competing and controlling, involves high concern for self and low concern for the other party (Rahim et al., 2000). Dominating individuals are apt to argue fiercely against others when solving conflict and ignore other people’s needs or expectations (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979), hope to persuade others to accept his/her standpoints and aim to achieve his/her own objectives, which will hurt the interpersonal relationship between the two parties. In a task conflict situation, a dominating individual tends to use persistent argument of his/her own position (Putnam Emotional intelligence 457 IJCMA 26,4 458 and Wilson, 1982) and is likely to ignore the viewpoints of other parties. In this way, dominating individuals lack different points of views or information sources from others, and dominating behaviors are harmful to the relationship between colleagues, in which creative ideas are not likely to occur. Innovation, on the other hand, is considered to be the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization, in the situation, a construction project organization (Amabile, 1983). Though, a dominating employee may tend to take active actions and try to persuade other people to promote his/her ideas, to create opportunities to implement the ideas. This in turn may be beneficial to the idea promotion and idea realization of innovation process. Researches have indicated that individuals with innovative achievement or capable of original outcomes are likely to have qualities such as confidence, hostility and dominance (Barron and Harrington, 1981; Feist, 1998; Silvia et al., 2011). Above all, we argue that the dominating style will harm the cooperative atmosphere among colleagues and cause unfulfilling solutions to problems, which is ineffective for innovation performance. Based on the above literature, we hypothesize the following: H2c. Dominating style is negatively related to innovation performance. Avoiding style is also called the withdrawal or ignoring style, which always takes the form of postponing an issue or simply withdrawing from a conflicting situation (Rahim et al., 2000). Avoiding behavior, a kind of competitive or uncooperative conflict handling strategy (Rahim, 1983; Song et al., 2006), is regarded as showing a lack of participation, leading to incomplete information for judgments of options. People choosing an avoiding style may avoid dealing with disagreements by removing themselves from the scene of conflict or simply withdrawing or change the subject (Rahim, 2002; Song et al., 2006). He or she may even deny the fact that task conflict exists in workplace or conflict needs to be resolved (Song et al., 2006), not to mention coming up of ideas or solutions to handle with conflict. As a result, this uncooperative approach is generally ineffective and inappropriate (Gross and Guerrero, 2000). Uncooperative behavior can lead to poor relationships among colleagues and result in various negative or destructive organizational outcomes (Rahim, 2000). Just as the study of Xie et al. (1998) indicated that the avoidance resolution has a negative effect on new product success and collaborative resolution has a positive influence. Research also find that avoiding conflict handling strategy is negatively associated with constructive conflict (Dyer and Song, 1998), thus causing lower levels of innovation performance (Song et al., 2006). When faced with task conflict, we can imagine that an avoiding individual would be unwilling to search for adequate information and look for creative ideas, which is not beneficial to his/her decision quality, as well as the three steps of innovation process. Therefore, we have the following hypothesis according to the above analysis: H2d. Avoiding style is negatively related to innovation performance. Compromising style, representing the midpoint between “concern for self” and “concern for others”, shows modest interest in achieving a mutually acceptable solution for both parties (Montes et al., 2012). It is regarded as a cooperative style to handle conflict (Rahim, 1983; Song et al., 2006). Cooperative efforts are related to effective conflict resolution and harmonious relationships, which are necessary to get better performance in organizational environments, such as that of innovation (Norton et al., 1994; Song et al., 2006). This favorable climate or environment to some extent can positively stimulate innovative behavior (Scott and Bruce, 1994). In addition, compromising behavior contributes to creating a common concern for the task and increases the likelihood of individuals to voluntarily search for the information about solutions (Chen et al., 2012). Those various sources of information and knowledge help the generation of new ideas, thus contributing to the individual innovation performance. Studies also find that cooperative CMSs lead to distributive, procedural and interactive justice, organizational innovation and team effectiveness (Chen and Tjosvold, 2002; Chen et al., 2005). It is reasonable to assume that employees preferring this style would voluntarily search for information or solutions to solve problems in certain conflict situations, contributing to the idea generation process of innovation process. In addition, compromising employees can also maintain good relationship with others and get certain support to implement their creative ideas, thus contributing to the idea promotion and realization steps. On the contrary, research have showed that disagreeable qualities may help with idea promotion, getting a creative idea heard and used by others (Hunter and Cushenbery, 2014). Compromising individuals has a moderate level of concern for self and others, indicating that they may search suggestions and information and show a certain level of disagreeableness, which is beneficial to innovation. Therefore, the hypothesis concerning compromising style and innovation performance is developed as follows: H2e. Compromising style is positively related to innovation performance. EI, CMSs and innovation performance EI is considered to be positively related to team performance, work performance and employees’ attitudes and behaviors, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment or turnover intention (Goleman, 1998; Wong and Law, 2002; Jordan and Troth, 2004; Shih and Susanto, 2010). Goleman (1997) defined EI as being able to motive oneself to get jobs down and be creative. On the other hand, innovation is considered as a significant and complex dimension of learning in work, involving rational, intuitive, emotional and social processes, and emotion plays an important role in influencing employees’ readiness to create and innovate (Fenwick, 2003). Emotions could influence individuals’ thinking processes and judgments through promoting various information processing strategies (Forgas, 1995). Positive emotions could facilitate promoting heuristic processing and be useful for creative tasks (Lyons and Schneider, 2005). Park (2005) also argued that the quality of emotional environment of organizations may enhance productivity and creativity. Employees with higher EI have higher competencies in negotiation and problem solving skills (Goleman, 1998), which is the basis of creative ideas (Scott and Bruce, 1994). The generation of creative ideas is the first step of individual innovation process. Additionally, employees with higher levels of EI can have a better understanding of people’s emotions, control emotions of themselves better and rarely have negative emotions at work (Davies et al., 1998). When facing task conflict in workplace, emotionally intelligent people have the abilities to guide thinking and actions that could successfully handle with environmental demands and pressures (Van Rooy and Viswescaran, 2004), thus tend to have a better understanding of conflict in organizations and recognize it better (Pooya et al., 2013). Thus, they will manage conflict more constructively and bring about positive outcomes (Schlaerth et al., 2013). Effective and appropriate conflict management behaviors in turn are likely to improve individual Emotional intelligence 459 IJCMA 26,4 460 innovation performance (Chen et al., 2012). Furthermore, employees with high EI tend to share their ideas with others, get effective suggestions and help from colleagues and know how to maintain a long-term and cooperative relationship with their co-workers, all of which are required to be creative and innovative (Suliman and Al-Shaikh, 2007). Finally, employees with high EI know how to express their own ideas appropriately even if there is a conflict with other’s opinions and make their deprecatory novel ideas more agreeable. We can thus hypothesize that EI is associated with employees’ innovation performance. Employees encounter a variety of task conflict in workplace with their colleagues every day. To further illustrate and explain the relationship between EI and innovation performance, we introduce conflict management behaviors as potential mediating roles. In task conflict situations, emotionally intelligent individuals may help optimize cognitive processing, thus discovering and utilizing positive opportunities to resolve conflict. This may produce a beneficial influence on individuals’ innovation. As mentioned earlier, emotionally intelligent employees have the ability to perceive, manage and control emotions and have a better understanding of conflict situations which may lead to functional conflict resolutions (Jordan and Troth, 2004). Goleman’s (1988) EI model comprises several clusters, one of which is “social skills”, meaning effective handling of interpersonal relationships. Among these social skills, conflict management is one of the emotional competencies (Hay/Mcber, 2002). In conflict situations, employees with higher levels of EI are likely to select more cooperative CMSs to deal with problems (i.e. integrating, obliging and compromising styles) and have a lower preference for competitive CMSs (i.e. dominating and avoiding styles). In addition, different kinds of CMSs are likely to influence individual innovation performance (Chen et al., 2012). For example, integrating, compromising and dominating styles seem to facilitate the generation of creative ideas to deal with conflict, while avoiding and obliging styles may indicate employees’ unwillingness to solve problems. Therefore, the following hypotheses are developed: H3a. Employees’ EI is positively associated with their innovation performance. H3b. CMSs mediate the relationship between employees’ EI and innovation performance. Research model Overall, this research aims to test and verify a model linking EI, CMSs and innovation performance of employees from the level of individuals in the Chinese context. The research model combining all the hypotheses is shown in Figure 2. Method Questionnaires were used in this research. Before the formal distribution, a pretest was performed using respondents from employees in the construction industry and post-graduate students in the Department of Construction Management, Tianjin University in China. In total, 55 available questionnaires were returned in the pretest analyses, 28 from student participants and 27 from employees with an average of two years working experience. We also asked the participants to provide their comments and suggestions. According to their responses, we revised and clarified any items which + + - Integrating Integrating + Obliging - - Dominating Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence Innovation Performance + - Avoiding - + Compromising + 461 Figure 2. Research model were ambiguous. In addition, SPSS 19.0 was applied to undertake a reliability analysis of these 55 data, the results of which guaranteed the reliability of the scales. Sample Formal respondents were employees from Chinese construction industry, whose privacy was highly protected. In total, 334 questionnaires containing self-assessments on EI-related scales, CMSs scales and innovation performance-related scales were emailed to employees and 216 questionnaires were returned. The overall response ratio was 64.67 per cent. Among those, 159 data with suitable and available responses were used in the following analyses, representing an effective rate of 73.61 per cent. We used several approaches to prevent or reduce social desirability: • keep all the respondents totally anonymous and tell them that the data are used for purpose of research; • ask “neutral questions” as possible; and • send emails instead of distributing papery questionnaires. While either of these methods is partially effective, they can be beneficial for controlling social desirability in the survey, according to Nederhof (1985). Descriptive statistics of the final sample are shown in Table I. The five variables (gender, educational background, working experience, ownership type and position) are considered as control variables in the following analyses. Measures Emotional intelligence (EI). In this research, a self-report measure of Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) (Wong and Law, 2002) was used to measure the EI of Working Gender Educational background experience Ownership type Position Items M F Bachelor Master PhD ⱕ5 6-10 ⱖ11 State-owned Private CE DM EM No 122 37 109 48 2 113 32 14 132 27 3 23 133 Notes: Bachelor means Bachelor’s degree or below; Master means Master’s degree; PhD means PhD’s Table I. degree or above; CE is short for chief engineer or business manager; DM for department manager and Descriptive statistics of sample EM for general employee IJCMA 26,4 462 employees. Although there are some measures of EI in the literature, such as Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) instrument (Baron, 1997), Multifacet Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS) and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSXEIT) (Mayer and Salovey, 1997; Mayer et al., 1999; Mayer et al., 2004), Wong and Law (2002) considered them unsuitable for research in the workplace. After re-examining the definition and domain of EI construct, they developed a new, simple, practical and psychometrically sound measure of EI which could satisfy organizational research purposes. This WLEIS comprises 16 items and has been used by several researchers (Shih and Susanto, 2010). The response format was a seven-point Likert scale with 1 representing strongly disagree and 7 representing strongly agree. The coefficient alpha of EI scale was 0.908. Conflict Management Styles (CMSs). In this research, CMSs refer to the conflict management strategies between colleagues. As to the conflict management scale, we adopted a 26-item scale derived from the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II) to measure the five types of conflict management. Each respondent was asked about their way to deal with task conflict with their colleagues. Sample items included “I try to work with my colleague to find solutions to a problem which satisfy my expectations” (integrating), “I give in to the wishes of my colleagues” (obliging), “I am generally firm in pursuing my side of the issue” (dominating), “I usually avoid open discussion of my differences with my colleague” (avoiding) and “I use ‘give and take’ so that a compromise can be made” (compromising). A seven-point Likert scale was used, 1 indicating strongly disagree and 7 standing for strongly agree. Reliability estimates for the five types of CMSs: integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising which were 0.890, 0.918, 0.844, 0.869 and 0.813, respectively. Innovation performance. This research is conducted in the Chinese context and so a scale is used which was developed in a similar context. The scale measuring innovation performance of employees was adopted from Han’s research about individual innovation performance in the Chinese context (Han et al., 2007). Their scale is based on the scale of Janssen (2000, 2001) and Janssen and Van Yperen (2004), who developed a nine-item scale of individual innovative behavior in the workplace. This scale was also used in the study of Shih and Susanto (2010) to measure the innovation performance of employees, which turned out to be available and reliable. This scale contains eight items, aiming to measure three dimensions, namely, the willingness of innovation, the behavior of innovation and the result of innovation. Sample items include “How often do you create new ideas for improvements?”, “How often do you mobilizing support for innovative ideas?”, “How often do you search out new working methods, techniques, or instruments?”, etc. Each item used a seven-point Likert scale. The coefficient alpha of the eight items was 0.909. Control variables. Several control variables were considered in this research, including the demographic traits of employees, namely, gender (one means male and two means female), educational background (one refers to Bachelor, two refers to Master and three refers to PhD or above), working experience (1 equals to less than 5 years, 2 equals to 5-10 years and 3 equals to more than 10 years) and position (one means chief engineer or business manager, two means department manager and three means general employee). The ability-based model defines EI as a type of intelligence, and it should overlap with cognitive ability (Mayer et al., 2000; Joseph and Newman, 2010). A number of theoretical and empirical research have indicated the link between cognitive ability and creativity (Sternberg and O’Hara, 1999). Thus, we measured cognitive ability as a control variable. With time constraints, it is difficult to directly measure IQ. Proximal variables like GPA, SAT verbal and SAT math are often used as indicators of cognitive ability (Kuncel et al., 2005). Considering the Chinese context in this research, education background is considered as a proxy of cognitive ability, which may produce influences on innovation. In addition, we also took into account the ownership type (one means state-owned company and two means private company). We included these control variables in the testing of hypotheses to maximize internal validity and rule out some alternative explanations. Common method variance There is a potential for common method variance as with all self-report data in this research. We first conducted a Harmon’s single factor test to check it. Then, we did an exploring factor analysis on all scales in the questionnaire. The unrotated result shows that the top seven factors (we measured seven variables through the questionnaire) can explain 62.93 per cent of total variance, which is more than 60 per cent, and there is not one factor which can explain more than 30 per cent of the total variance. To further confirm the results of Harmon’s single factor test, we then added a method factor to our theoretical model and loaded all the indicators onto the method factor in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to verify the extent of the model fit changing. While the method factor did improve model fit, it only changed X2/df for 9.9 per cent, GFI for 8.5 per cent and CFI for only 6.4 per cent. More specifically, the proportion of the total variance that the method factor can explain is about 14.9 per cent, which is lower than the average level of 25 per cent observed by Williams et al. (1989) and 16 per cent of Carlson and Perrewé (1999). Therefore, common method variance is not a significant concern of this study. Results Firstly, a CFA was conducted using the AMOS statistical package to examine and validate the five dimensions of CMSs in this research: integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising styles. Results show satisfactory support for the five-factor model (CFI ⫽ 0.896, TLI ⫽ 0.883, GFI ⫽ 0.794, RMSEA ⫽ 0.076, CMIN/DF ⫽ 1.904). This indicates that the scale of CMSs is appropriate to measure the construct in this research. Table II displays the means, standard deviations and correlations among the variables in this research. Among the five CMSs, the highest value of means refers to the integrating style (5.38), followed by compromising style (4.95) and dominating style (4.31). The least chosen one is the avoiding style (3.57). It is interesting to note that the avoiding style becomes the least preference of employees and the dominating style also has a moderate level of value. Seen from the correlation coefficients, we can find that dominating style is correlated to compromising style, which is an interesting finding due to the reason that compromising style is considered as a cooperative style while dominating style is competitive and uncooperative. Multiple hierarchical regressions were applied to test the developed hypotheses. The results are shown in Table III. Among the five demographic variables, working experience is positively related to integrating style (â ⫽ 0.183, p ⬍ 0.05) and innovation performance (â ⫽ 0.185, p ⬍ 0.05). But Model 2 shows that with EI in the regression Emotional intelligence 463 Table II. Descriptive statistics and correlation matrix of all variables 5.17 5.40 4.16 4.32 3.55 4.93 5.11 Notes: * p ⬍ 0.05; ** p ⬍ 0.01 Gender Educational background Working experience Type of company Position Emotional intelligence Integrating Obliging Dominating Avoiding Compromising Innovation performance Means 0.820 0.983 1.103 0.971 1.148 0.971 0.970 SD 1 ⫺0.033 0.023 ⫺0.091 0.095 ⫺0.111 ⫺0.056 ⫺0.057 ⫺0.090 0.012 ⫺0.046 ⫺0.015 Gender 1 0.072 ⫺0.096 ⫺0.074 0.114 0.012 0.002 ⫺0.087 0.010 ⫺0.015 0.060 Educational background 1 ⫺0.090 ⫺0.472** 0.196* 0.179* ⫺0.055 ⫺0.003 ⫺0.120 0.102 0.238** Working experience 1 ⫺0.003 ⫺0.047 0.106 0.117 0.008 0.200* ⫺0.042 0.055 Type of company 1 ⫺0.110 ⫺0.071 ⫺0.020 ⫺0.077 0.020 ⫺0.043 ⫺0.211** Position 1 0.513** 0.086 0.286** ⫺0.102 0.307** 0.582** Emotional intelligence 1 0.200** 0.138 ⫺0.140 0.690** 0.484** Integrating 1 0.382** 0.675** 0.376** 0.182* Obliging 1 0.223** 0.300** 0.207** Dominating 1 0.162* ⫺0.005 Avoiding 1 0.362** Compromising 464 Variable 1 Innovation performance IJCMA 26,4 0.279 0.234 9.813*** 49.283*** 0.045 1.458 ⫺0.014 ⫺0.058 0.089 ⫺0.081 0.022 0.499*** ⫺0.071 ⫺0.011 0.183* ⫺0.097 0.020 Model 2 ␤ Notes: * p ⬍ 0.05; ** p ⬍ 0.01; *** p ⬍ 0.001; n ⫽ 159 Gender Educational background Working experience Type of company Position Emotional intelligence Integrating Obliging Dominating Avoiding Compromising R2 DR2 F DF Independent variable Integrating Model 1 ␤ 0.607 0.019 ⫺0.040 0.012 ⫺0.067 0.108 ⫺0.046 0.029 0.009 0.749 1.445 ⫺0.029 0.003 ⫺0.086 0.111 ⫺0.046 0.099 Obliging Model 3 Model 4 ␤ ␤ 0.720 0.023 ⫺0.084 ⫺0.095 ⫺0.040 ⫺0.013 ⫺0.094 0.109 0.086 3.108** 14.721*** ⫺0.049 ⫺0.123 ⫺0.096 ⫺0.003 ⫺0.093 0.303*** Dominating Model 5 Model 6 ␤ ␤ 1.747 0.054 0.037 0.036 ⫺0.124 0.196* ⫺0.038 0.060 0.006 1.608 0.915 0.028 0.044 ⫺0.109 0.193* ⫺0.039 ⫺0.078 Dependent variable Avoiding Model 7 Model 8 ␤ ␤ 0.466 0.015 ⫺0.054 ⫺0.028 0.106 ⫺0.040 0.010 0.100 0.085 2.823* 14.401*** ⫺0.020 ⫺0.056 0.050 ⫺0.031 0.011 0.301*** Compromising Model 9 Model 10 ␤ ␤ 2.523* 0.076 0.000 0.045 0.185* 0.075 ⫺0.120 0.376 0.300 15.292*** 73.188*** 0.065 ⫺0.008 0.079 0.093 ⫺0.118 0.566*** 0.450*** 0.045 0.133 ⫺0.009 ⫺0.012 0.309 0.233 6.624*** 9.985*** 0.045 0.062 0.111 0.117 ⫺0.115 Innovation performance Model 11 Model 12 Model 13 ␤ ␤ ␤ Emotional intelligence 465 Table III. Result of hierarchical regression analysis IJCMA 26,4 466 model, working experience is irrelevant to integrating style. The similar situation is also indicated in Model 12. See from the correlation between working experience and EI (r ⫽ 0.196, p ⬍ 0.05), these two variables are significantly correlated. Thus, EI may play a mediating role on the relationship between working experience and integrating style, as well as between working experience and innovation performance. H1 implies that EI is positively associated with integrating, compromising and obliging styles, whereas negatively related to dominating and avoiding styles. The results shown in Models 2, 6 and 10 indicate that EI is positively related to integrating style (â ⫽ 0.499, p ⬍ 0.001), dominating style (â ⫽ 0.303, p ⬍ 0.001) and compromising style (â ⫽ 0.301, p ⬍ 0.001), respectively. In addition, the positive relationship between EI and obliging style (Model 4, â ⫽ 0.099, p ⬎ 0.05) and the negative relationship between EI and avoiding style (Model 8, â ⫽ ⫺0.078, p ⬎ 0.05) are not significant. Therefore, a positive relationship between EI and dominating style is unexpectedly found and H1 is thus partly supported. H2a-H2e hypothesize that integrating and compromising styles were positively related to innovation performance, while obliging, dominating and avoiding styles had a negative relationship with innovation performance. However, as seen in Model 12 in Table III, only the integrating style is positively and significantly associated with employees’ innovation performance (â ⫽ 0.450, p ⬍ 0.001). Thus, only H3a is fully supported. It was assumed in H3a that there is a positive relationship between EI and innovation performance. The regression results displayed in Model 13 suggest that EI is positively and significantly associated with innovation performance (â ⫽ 0.566, p ⬍ 0.001), in accordance with H3a. To test the mediating roles of CMSs as stated in H3b, we adopted the indirect effect test methods recommended by Preacher and Hayes (2008), as Baron and Kenny’s (1986) classic three steps method – the causal steps approach – is criticized for many reasons. Researchers pointed out that the causal steps approach does not measure the indirect effect itself, which instead uses the significances of other statistics to infer the indirect effect of a mediator. This can raise the possibility to make an estimate error. Also, it cannot give the confidence interval of the mediating effect. Another mediating test method called Sobel test can overcome some of the shortcomings of the causal steps approaches. But Sobel test has a rigorous requirement that the data must be normally distributed. Out of the reasons above, we conducted a bootstrap over Sobel test, following the suggestion of Preacher and Hayes (2008), to test the indirect effects of mediating variables in our multiple mediator models. We put the indirect effect testing syntax developed by Preacher and Hayes into SPSS Processor, and run the test with all the five CMSs together in one model. The data are bootstrapped for 5,000 times, and the results show that only integrating style has a partial but significant mediating role between EI and innovation performance at the confidence level of 90 per cent (BCa CI ⫽ [0.006, 0.247], BC CI ⫽ [0.008, 0.249], Percentile CI ⫽ [0.001, 0.241]). The mediating roles of other four CMSs are not significant as their 90 per cent confidence intervals include zero (Table IV). Discussion The results in Table II show that employees prefer to use an integrating style to manage interpersonal task conflict in their workplace in the construction industry, followed by compromising. The integrating and compromising styles are more likely to be used, Total Integrating Compromising Obliging Avoiding Dominating Variables 0.1498 0.1220 0.0206 0.0080 ⫺0.0010 0.0001 0.1508 0.1199 0.0222 0.0108 ⫺0.0026 0.0007 0.0011 ⫺0.0022 0.0016 0.0027 ⫺0.0016 0.0006 0.0661 0.0735 0.0411 0.0184 0.0148 0.0285 Indirect effects of IV on DV through proposed mediators (ab paths) Data Boot Bias SE 0.0420 0.0061 ⫺0.0355 ⫺0.0066 ⫺0.0337 ⫺0.0465 0.2606 0.2471 0.1004 0.0556 0.0157 0.0467 Bias corrected and accelerated confidence intervals Lower Upper 0.0429 0.0083 ⫺0.0364 ⫺0.0063 ⫺0.0332 ⫺0.0469 0.2617 0.2493 0.0996 0.0570 0.0163 0.0466 Bias corrected confidence intervals Lower Upper 0.0437 0.0009 ⫺0.0401 ⫺0.0100 ⫺0.0301 ⫺0.0457 0.2628 0.2414 0.0951 0.0474 0.0191 0.0474 Percentile confidence intervals Lower Upper Emotional intelligence 467 Table IV. Result of bootstrap analysis IJCMA 26,4 468 which corresponds to former research (Trubisky et al., 1991; Shih and Susanto, 2010). China is a country with strong collectivistic cultural heritage, which is different from the Western context of individualistic orientation (Xiao and Tsui, 2007). Chinese individuals are inclined to safeguard and focus on the interests of the collective, team or their organizations, to maintain social identity (Tinsley and Brett, 2001). Researchers also believed that culture plays a vital role in molding people’s perceptions, attitudes and appraisals of conflict and its management (Ting-Toomey, 1985; Brew and David, 2004). An emphasis on harmony, respect for hierarchy, focus on context and dynamics, a salient sense of face-giving and reciprocity, long-term perspective and emphasis on tactics are all characteristics of Chinese culture influencing conflict management behaviors (Ding, 1996). Therefore, for Chinese employees, having a good relationship with colleagues seems to be important (Hofstede, 1980) if they want to maintain a harmonious atmosphere in workplace. Due to the influence of traditional culture norms and values, it is reasonable that integrating and compromising styles are preferred by Chinese employees to handle interpersonal task conflict. But it is unexpected yet interesting that the dominating style ranks third among the five types, followed by obliging and avoiding. Confucianist philosophy in China places emphasis on harmony and advises individuals to adopt a harmonious approach and to avoid confrontation and competition when faced with conflict. Influenced by this cultural value, harmony is likely to lead individuals to resort to conflict-avoidance tactics to maintain long-term interpersonal relationships (Leung et al., 2002). Scholars argued that Chinese individuals tend to use avoiding or compromising CMSs due to collectivism, the desire for harmony, the concern to save social face and the strong commitment to interpersonal relationship (Ting-Toomey et al., 1991). However, our results present a different picture. The difference may be due to the fact that China is changing and developing. There is a growing individualization of China and people’s expectations of freedom and individuality are increasing (Hansen and Svarverud, 2013). With the globalization of the economy, more and more people are being influenced by the Western individualistic culture, which encourages people to focus on themselves and pursue their own goals. Research by Chen et al. (2012) indicated people’s preference of conflict management strategies in the Chinese context, namely, integrating, compromising, avoiding, obliging and dominating, but they did not take account of the fact that their sample was from 18 companies in different industries. Thus, another possible reason resulting in such difference may lie in the characteristics of the construction industry. Employees in construction projects are likely to be specialized at their work and tend to be more competitive. Further research may need to find out the potential influence of industry differences. The findings also reveal that employees’ EI is significantly and positively associated with their innovation performance, as indicated in H3a. This is, to some extent, consistent with many previous studies testing the relationship between EI and organizational outcomes, such as job performance (Shih and Susanto, 2010), employees’ satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention (Goleman, 1998; Wong and Law, 2002; Law et al., 2004). Emotionally intelligent individuals are good at controlling emotions of themselves and have a better understanding of people’s emotions and feelings, which help them better maintain long-term and cooperative relationship with their colleagues and create harmonious atmosphere in workplace, which is the basis for creativity and innovation (Suliman and Al-Shaikh, 2007). In addition, it was assumed that EI was positively related to more cooperative CMSs, namely, integrating, compromising and obliging styles. But the findings revealed that EI is significantly associated with integrating, compromising and dominating styles. The relationship between EI and integrating and compromising styles is consistent with previous research (Gross and Guerrero, 2000; Shih and Susanto, 2010), which believed emotionally intelligent people are likely to put other people’s interests as an important consideration when solving conflict. The findings also correspond to the model of EI (Goleman, 1988), which includes social skills as one cluster, which is defined as effective handling of interpersonal relationships. This social skill cluster comprises various emotional competencies, one of which is conflict management, namely, negotiating and resolving disagreements (Hay/Mcber, 2002). However, the positive relationship between EI and the dominating style is worth consideration. If we try to find out the common characteristic of these three styles, they all have a high level of “concern for self” (Figure 1). The social skills aspect of EI includes several points, one of which is “Influence”, meaning to wield effective tactics for persuasion (Goleman, 1998; Hay/Mcber, 2002). Employees with high EI are thus likely to persuade others to accept their points and aim to achieve their objectives, just related to the dominating behavior. EI, characterized as “solving problems and making wise decisions using both thoughts and feelings or logic and intuition (Brackett et al., 2011)”, can, to some extent, be regarded as a leadership quality (Wong and Law, 2002). Individuals with high EI will not only have a good understanding of their emotions as well as those of others but also are good at regulating and using emotions to facilitate thinking when involved in activities, such as reasoning, problem solving and interpersonal communication (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). Hence, emotionally intelligent employees tend to use an effective way – dominating style – to solve problems. Additionally, Jordan and Troth (2004) also found a significant relationship between EI and dominating tactics, indicating that at some point in team tasks, emotionally intelligence individuals may need to dominate to complete the task in the required time. Therefore, using dominating style is also understandable. As to the relationship between various CMSs and innovation performance, we also found that integrating style has a positive and significant influence on innovation performance, which is in accordance with former research (Chen et al., 2012). People adopting an integrating style are likely to create an open discussion and think up of creative ideas to solve problems, thus resulting in innovation. Integrating style also indicates a high level of concern for self, which droves individuals to express his suggestions and ideas. This to some extent corresponds to the disagreeable qualities, which is positively related to idea promotion of innovation process (Hunter and Cushenbery, 2014). However, the relationship between compromising and innovation performance is not supported. This may due to the reason that compromising employees will sacrifice some needs for a mutually acceptable decision (Rahim, 2002), instead of coming up with the best or perfect solutions to problems. Research of Shih and Susanto (2010) also failed to verify the relationship between compromising style and job performance. Therefore, employees may not be highly motivated to generate creative and innovative ideas to solve problems when using compromising style. In addition, we assumed that there is negative relationship between dominating, avoiding, obliging styles and innovation performance, which are not supported. The theory of contingency may be applied to explain this and more investigations may be needed. As indicated in the hypothesis developing, creative individuals are low on agreeableness and often refuse to adapt to others but insist on their own way (Hoff et al., Emotional intelligence 469 IJCMA 26,4 470 2013). On the other hand, dominating individuals often refuse to take different points of views or information sources from others to bring forth new knowledge, which is harmful to innovation process. Thus, it is difficult to determine the relationship between dominating style and innovation performance. The partially mediating role of integrating style indicates that EI has both direct and indirect impacts on innovation performance in the construction industry. Emotionally intelligent employees are good at controlling their emotions and dealing with daily matters at work, thus maintaining a good relationship with other colleagues. They can face uncertainty stably and will be less troubled by bad or negative emotions, which can influence their job performance (Shih and Susanto, 2010). In this way, EI can directly influence innovation performance. On the other hand, employees with higher level of EI can make decisions based on his or her own emotions and the emotions of others. When conflict occurs, it is likely that they will choose more cooperative integrating conflict management strategies (i.e. integrating and compromising) which can satisfy both parties’ needs. While, integrating individuals may express freely their thoughts and ideas to create harmonious environment where knowledge and information are flowing. Innovation performance is thus likely to be promoted. In addition, integrating style does not mean that individuals would always be agreeable to others. Integrating employees with high levels of EI tend to express their suggestions or maintain their ideas in a harmonious way which will not harm the relationship among the group members. Thus, integrating style could explain the relationship between EI and innovation performance. Conclusions This research is an effort to figure out the relationship among EI, CMSs and innovation performance of employees in the construction industry in the Chinese context, as well as test the mediating roles of CMSs. This research is mainly conducted to test the mediating influences of different types of CMSs on the relationship between EI and employees’ innovation performance. Thus, a picture about the relationship among EI, CMSs and innovation performance of employees is formed. Data analyses from 159 employees indicate that an integrating style seems to be the most preferred choice of employees when faced with interpersonal conflict in workplace, followed by compromising and dominating styles. EI is significantly and positively related to integrating, compromising and dominating styles and is also an important predicator of employees’ innovation performance. Additionally, we also confirm the mediating role of integrating style between EI and innovation performance, which is considered as the main contribution of this research. This research has both theoretical and practical implications. First of all, this research provides additional empirical evidence in the construction industry for relationship between EI and CMSs, as well as CMSs and individual innovation performance. Our research also provides empirical evidence that EI is positively associated with innovation performance, adding to the overall body of knowledge relating to EI and innovation performance. Employees with higher levels of EI are highly recommended, for such individuals are likely to manage conflict appropriately, solve problems effectively and bring about higher levels of innovation performance. Moreover, the mediating role of integrating style on EI and innovation performance has lacked attention before. This research helps us further understand how EI influences individual innovation performance, shedding light on the innovation theory and conflict management literature. This research has some practical implications for managers, especially for employees and managers in the construction industry in China, by suggesting some ways to improve innovation performance through the increasing of EI and adaptation of appropriate CMSs. Both employees and managers should recognize the importance of EI and pay more attention to it. Scholars find that appropriate training and development could enhance employees’ EI (Goleman, 1998). Managers could provide proper EI training programs if they want to motivate the employees’ job outcomes. In addition, conflict is a common phenomenon where people are involved and managers should also pay attention to employees’ EI levels, which may influence their ways of handling conflict. Specific training should be provided to encourage employees to learn to use cooperative CMSs, especially the integrating style. Managers should be aware of the situation that employees can not only be trained with EI programs but also with conflict management programs. Limitations and future research Though this research indicates the importance of EI and adds new knowledge to the innovation literature, it has several limitations. First of all, the size of sample is limited and all the data were all from the construction industry in the Chinese context. The research findings should also be interpreted with great caution due to the generalizability of these results. Though we started to notice that industry differences may matter the way employees choose conflict management strategies, we did not compare the CMSs or innovation performance among various industries. Thus, further research should consider extending sample size and collecting data to have a comparison study within different industries. The second limitation is the measurement of cognitive ability. Concerning the Chinese context in this research and time constraints as well, we only measured education background as a proxy of cognitive ability. Though this may to some extent rule out the influence of cognitive ability on innovation performance, we expect more appropriate proxy of cognitive ability in the Chinese context. Future study can use specific measurement of cognitive ability. Additionally, the bootstrap results show that the mediating role of integrating is very partial with coefficient of EI on innovation performance decreasing from 0.704 to 0.554. This further indicates that there might be other mediating roles, such as cooperative behaviors, communicating styles, knowledge sharing, etc. Future study could introduce other mediating roles to explain and reveal the relationship between EI and individual innovation performance. Furthermore, the questionnaire survey used a self-rating assessment to measure EI, CMSs and innovation performance, which may have some shortcomings such as misleading self-perception, social desirability, common method variance, etc. (Law et al., 2008; Shih and Susanto, 2010). However, we tried to deal with the drawbacks in several ways. The anonymity of the questionnaires was rigorously maintained. We also randomly assigned the measurement items in the questionnaire. Further research may consider multiple ways to collect data to minimize such bias, such as interviews or measurement from other people. Meanwhile, considering the potential effect of common method variance caused by measuring items with one single method and in one single questionnaire, we conducted a Harmon single factor test to determine the extent of variance. As indicated in the method section, analyses show that common method variance in not a big concern in this paper. Future research had better use more procedural remedies to settle common method variance systematically, following the suggestions of Podsakoff et al. (2003). Emotional intelligence 471 IJCMA 26,4 472 Additionally, further studies are needed in this field before reaching some general agreements about the relationship among EI, CMSs and employees’ innovation performance, as well as other job outcomes or attitudes. Previous research has identified the positive relationship between compromising style and job satisfaction, the negative relationship between avoiding style and innovation performance (Chen et al., 2012), the former of which is not considered in this research and the latter is inconsistent with findings of this research. Meanwhile, the assumed negative relationships between EI and avoiding style as well as avoiding and obliging styles and innovation performance are not supported in this research. Therefore, more underlying reasons are needed to be examined to get a complete picture about the relationship among EI, CMSs and job outcomes in different contexts. One finding of this research is that EI may play a mediating role the relationship between working experience and integrating style, as well as between working experience and innovation performance. Future study can be conducted to explore this underlying relationship. We also find an interesting point which is about the correlation between dominating style and compromising style, further research are needed to explain this abnormal phenomenon. References Amabile, T.M. (1983), “The social psychology of creativity: a componential conceptualization”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 357-376. Amabile, T.M. (1996), Creativity and Innovation in Organizations, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA, Vol. 5. Baron, R. (1997), The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i), Technical Manual, Multi-Health Systems, Toronto. Baron, R.M. and Kenny, D.A. (1986), “The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 51 No. 6, p. 1173. Barron, F. and Harrington, D. (1981), “Creativity, intelligence, and personality”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 439-476. Blake, R.R. and Mouton, J.S. (1964), The Managerial Grid, Gulf, Houston, TX. Brackett, M.A., Rivers, S.E. and Salovey, P. (2011), “Emotional intelligence: implications for personal, social, academic, and workplace success”, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 88-103. Brew, F.P. and David, R.C. (2004), “Styles of managing interpersonal workplace conflict in relation to status and face concern: a study with Anglos and Chinese”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 27-56. Callanan, G.A., Benzing, C.D. and Perri, D.F. (2006), “Choice of conflict-handling strategy: a matter of context”, The Journal of Psychology, Vol. 140 No. 3, pp. 269-288. Carlson, D.S. and Perrewé, P.L. (1999), “The role of social support in the stressor-strain relationship: an examination of work-family conflict”, Journal of Management, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 513-540. Chen, G., Liu, C. and Tjosvold, D. (2005), “Conflict management for effective top management teams and innovation in China”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 42 No. 2, pp. 277-300. Chen, G. and Tjosvold, D. (2002), “Conflict management and team effectiveness in China: the mediating role of justice”, Asia pacific Journal of Management, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 557-572. Emotional intelligence Chen, X.-H., Zhao, K., Liu, X. and Wu, D.D. (2012), “Improving employees’ job satisfaction and innovation performance using conflict management”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 151-172. Davies, M., Stankov, L. and Roberts, R.D. (1998), “Emotional intelligence: in search of an elusive construct”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 75 No. 4, p. 989. Day, A.L. and Carroll, S.A. (2008), “Faking emotional intelligence (EI): comparing response distortion on ability and trait-based EI measures”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 29 No. 6, pp. 761-784. De Dreu, C.K. and West, M.A. (2001), “Minority dissent and team innovation: the importance of participation in decision making”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 86 No. 6, pp. 1191-1201. Ding, D.Z. (1996), “Exploring Chinese conflict management styles in joint ventures in the People’s Republic of China”, Management Research News, Vol. 19 No. 9, pp. 43-53. Drucher, P.F. (1984), “The discipline of innovation”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 63 No. 3, pp. 67-72. Dyer, B. and Song, X.M. (1998), “Innovation strategy and sanctioned conflict: a new edge in innovation?”, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 505-519. Feist, G.J. (1998), “A meta-analysis of personality in scientific and artistic creativity”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 290-309. Fenwick, T. (2003), “Innovation: examining workplace learning in new enterprises”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 123-132. Forgas, J.P. (1995), “Mood and judgment: the affect infusion model (AIM)”, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 117 No. 1, pp. 39-66. Galbraith, J.R. (1982), “Designing the innovating organization”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 5-25. Goleman, D. (1995), Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ for Character, Health and Lifelong Achievement, Bantam Books, New York, NY. Goleman, D. (1997), “Beyond IQ: developing the leadership competencies of emotional intelligence”, paper presented at the 2nd International Competency Conference, London. Goleman, D. (1998), Working with Emotional Intelligence, Random House Digital, New York, NY. Gross, M.A. and Guerrero, L.K. (2000), “Managing conflict appropriately and effectively: an application of the competence model to Rahim’s organizational conflict styles”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 200-226. Han, Y., Liao, J.Q. and Long, L.R. (2007), “Models of development and empirical study on employee job performance construct”, Journal of Management Sciences in China, Vol. 10 No. 5, pp. 62-77. Hansen, M.H. and Svarverud, R. (2013), China: The Rise of the Individual in Modern Chinese Society, Nordic Inst of Asian Studies, Copenhagen. Hay/Mcber (2002), Emotional Competence Inventory Technical Manual, Hay/Mcber Group, Boston, MA. 473 IJCMA 26,4 Hoff, E.V., Carlsson, I.M. and Smith, G.J.W. (2013), “Personality”, in Mumford, M.D. (Ed.), Handbook of Organizational Creativity, Elsevier, London, pp. 241-270. Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Sage, London and Beverly Hils. 474 Hunter, S.T. and Cushenbery, L. (2014), “Is being a jerk necessary for originality? Examining the role of disagreeableness in the sharing and utilization of original ideas”, Journal of Business and Psychology, pp. 1-19, available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10869-0149386-1 Janssen, O. (2000), “Job demands, perceptions of effort-reward fairness and innovative work behaviour”, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 73 No. 3, pp. 287-302. Janssen, O. (2001), “Fairness perceptions as a moderator in the curvilinear relationships between job demands, and job performance and job satisfaction”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 5, pp. 1039-1050. Janssen, O. and Van Yperen, N.W. (2004), “Employees’ goal orientations, the quality of leader-member exchange, and the outcomes of job performance and job satisfaction”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 368-384. Jehn, K.A. (1995), “A multimethod examination of the benefits and detriments of intragroup conflict”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 256-282. Jehn, K.A. (1997), “A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions in organizational groups”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 42 No. 3, pp. 530-557. Jehn, K.A. and Mannix, E.A. (2001), “The dynamic nature of conflict: a longitudinal study of intragroup conflict and group peeformance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 2, pp. 238-251. Jordan, P.J. and Troth, A.C. (2002), “Emotional intelligence and conflict resolution: implications for human resource development”, Advances in Developing Human Resources, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 62-79. Jordan, P.J. and Troth, A.C. (2004), “Managing emotions during team problem solving: emotional intelligence and conflict resolution”, Human Performance, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 195-218. Joseph, D.L. and Newman, D.A. (2010), “Emotional intelligence: an integrative meta-analysis and cascading model”, American Psychological Association, Vol. 95 No. 1, pp. 54-78. Kanter, R.M. (1988), “Three tiers for innovation research”, Communication Research, Vol. 15 No. 5, pp. 509-523. Kuncel, N.R., Crede, M. and Thomas, L.L. (2005), “The validity of self-reported grade point averages, class ranks, and test scores: a meta-analysis and review of the literature”, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 75 No. 1, pp. 63-82. Law, K.S., Wong, C.S., Huang, G.H. and Li, X. (2008), “The effects of emotional intelligence on job performance and life satisfaction for the research and development scientists in China”, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 51-69. Law, K.S., Wong, C.-S. and Song, L.J. (2004), “The construct and criterion validity of emotional intelligence and its potential utility for management studies”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 89 No. 3, pp. 483-496. Leung, K., Koch, P.T. and Lu, L. (2002), “A dualistic model of harmony and its implications for conflict management in Asia”, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Vol. 19 Nos 2/3, pp. 201-220. Lovelace, K., Shapiro, D.L. and Weingart, L.R. (2001), “Maximizing cross-functional new product teams’ innovativeness and constraint adherence: a conflict communications perspective”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 4, pp. 779-793. Emotional intelligence Lyons, J.B. and Schneider, T.R. (2005), “The influence of emotional intelligence on performance”, Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 693-703. Mayer, J.D., Caruso, D.R. and Salovey, P. (1999), “Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence”, Intelligence, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 267-298. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1993), “The intelligence of emotional intelligence”, Intelligence, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 433-442. Mayer, J.D. and Salovey, P. (1997), “What is emotional intelligence?”, in Salovery, P.A.S.D. (Ed.), Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligenc: Implications for Educators, Basic Books, New York, NY. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D.R. (2000), “Models of emotional intelligence”, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Intelligence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 392-420. Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. and Caruso, D.R. (2004), “Emotional intelligence: theory, findings, and implications”, Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 197-215. Montes, C., Rodríguez, D. and Serrano, G. (2012), “Affective choice of conflict management styles”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 6-18. Murphy, K.R. (2006), “Four conclusions about emotional intelligence”, in Murphy, K.R. (Ed.), A Critique of Emotional Intelligence, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 345-354. Nederhof, A.J. (1985), “Methods of coping with social desirability bias: a review”, European Journal Social Psychology, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 263-280. Norton, J., Parry, M.E. and Song, X.M. (1994), “Integrating R&D and Marketing: a comparison of practices in the Japanese and American Chemical industries”, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 5-20. Park, J. (2005), “Fostering creativity and productivity through emotional literacy: the organizational context”, Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 5-7. Petrides, K.V. and Furnham, A. (2001), “Trait emotional intelligence: psychometric investigation with reference to established trait taxonomies”, European Journal of Personality, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 425-448. Podsakoff, P.M., Mackenzie, S.B., Lee, J.Y. and Podsakoff, N.P. (2003), “Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 88 No. 5, pp. 879-903. Pooya, A. and Kargozar, N. (2013), “Relationship between emotional intelligence and conflict management strategies”, Research Journal of Recent Sciences, Vol. 2 No. 7, pp. 37-42. Prajogo, D.I. and Ahmed, P.K. (2006), “Relationships between innovation stimulus, innovation capacity, and innovation performance”, R&D Management, Vol. 36 No. 5, pp. 499-515. Preacher, K.J. and Hayes, A.F. (2008), “Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models”, Behavior Research Methods, Vol. 40 No. 3, pp. 879-891. Prein, H. (1984), “A contingency approach for conflict intervention”, Group & Organization Management, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 81-102. 475 IJCMA 26,4 Putnam, L.L. and Wilson, S.R. (1982), “Communicative strategies in organizational conflict: reliability and validity of a measurement scale”, in Burgoon, M. (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, Sage, Beverlly Hills, CA. Rahim, A. and Bonoma, T.V. (1979), “Managing organizational conflict: a model for diagnosis and intervention”, Psychological Reports, Vol. 44 No. 3c, pp. 1323-1344. 476 Rahim, M.A. (1983), “A measure of styles of handling interpersonal conflict”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 368-376. Rahim, M.A. (2002), “Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 206-235. Rahim, M.A., Magner, N.R. and Shapiro, D.L. (2000), “Do justice perceptions influence styles of handling conflict with supervisors? What justice perceptions, precisely?”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 9-31. Rahim, M.A., Psenicka, C., Polychroniou, P., Zhao, J.-H., Yu, C.S., Chan, K.A., Susana, K.W.Y., Alves, M.G., Lee, C.-W. and Ralunan, M.S. (2002), “A model of emotional intelligence and conflict management strategies: a study in seven countries”, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 302-326. Salovey, P. and Mayer, J.D. (1990), “Emotional intelligence”, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 185-211. Schlaerth, A., Ensari, N. and Christian, J. (2013), “A meta-analytical review of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leaders’ constructive conflict management”, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 126-136. Schutte, N.S., Malouff, J.M., Bobik, C., Coston, T.D., Greeson, C., Jedlicka, C., Rhodes, E. and Wendorf, G. (2001), “Emotional intelligence and interpersonal relations”, The Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 141 No. 4, pp. 523-536. Scott, S.G. and Bruce, R.A. (1994), “Determinants of innovative behavior: a path model of individual innovation in the workplace”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 37 No. 3, pp. 580-607. Shih, H.-A. and Susanto, E. (2010), “Conflict management styles, emotional intelligence, and job performance in public organizations”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 21 No. 2, pp. 147-168. Silvia, P.J., Kaufman, J.C., Reiter-Palmon, R. and Wigert, B. (2011), “Cantankerous creativity: honesty-humility, agreeableness, and the HEXACO structure of creative achievement”, Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 51 No. 5, pp. 687-689. Song, M., Dyer, B. and Thieme, R.J. (2006), “Conflict management and innovation performance: an integrated contingency perspective”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 341-356. Sternberg, R.J. and O’Hara, L.A. (1999), “Creativity and intelligence”, in Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, pp. 251-272. Suliman, A.M. and Al-Shaikh, F.N. (2007), “Emotional intelligence at work: links to conflict and innovation”, Employee Relations, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 208-220. Thomas, K.W. (1974), Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, Xicom Tuxedo, New York, NY. Thomas, K.W. (1976), “Conflict and conflict management”, in Dunnette, M.D. (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Rand McNally, Chicago, IL. Thomas, K.W. (1992), “Conflict and conflict management: reflections and update”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 265-274. Ting-Toomey, S. (1985), “Toward a theory of confict and culture”, in Gudykunst, W., Stewart, L. and Ting-Toomey, S. (Eds), Communication, Culture, and Organizational Processes, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. Emotional intelligence Ting-Toomey, S., Gao, G., Trubisky, P., Yang, Z., Kim, H.S., Lin, S.-L. and Nishida, T. (1991), “Culture, face maintenance, and styles of handling interpersonal conflict: a study in five cultures”, International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 275-296. Tinsley, C.H. and Brett, J.M. (2001), “Managing workplace conflict in the United States and Hong Kong”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 85 No. 2, pp. 360-381. Tjosvold, D. (1998), “Cooperative and competitive goal approach to conflict: accomplishments and challenges”, Applied Psychology, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 285-313. Tompson, H.B. and Werner, J.M. (1997), “The impact of role conflict/facilitation on core and discretionary behaviors: testing a mediated model”, Journal of Management, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 583-601. Trubisky, P., Ting-Toomey, S. and Lin, S.-L. (1991), “The influence of individualism-collectivism and self-monitoring on conflict styles”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 65-84. Van de Ven, A.H. (1986), “Central problems in the management of innovation”, Management Science, Vol. 32 No. 5, pp. 590-607. Van Rooy, D.L. and Viswescaran, C. (2004), “Emotional intelligence: a meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol. 65 No. 1, pp. 71-95. Wall, J.A. and Callister, R.R. (1995), “Conflict and its management”, Journal of Management, Vol. 21 No. 3, pp. 515-558. West, M.A. and Altink, W.M. (1996), “Innovation at work: individual, group, organizational, and socio-historical perspectives”, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 3-11. West, M.A. and Farr, J.L. (1989), “Innovation at work: psychological perspectives”, Social Behaviour, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 15-30. West, M.A. and Farr, J.L. (1990), Innovation and Creativity at Work: Psychological and Organizational Strategies, John Wiley & Sons, The University of California. West, M.A. and Farr, J.L. (1990), Innovation and Creativity at Work: Psychological and Organizational Strategies, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. Williams, L.J., Cote, J.A. and Buckley, M.R. (1989), “Lack of method variance in self-reported affect and perceptions at work: reality or artifact?”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 74 No. 3, pp. 462-468. Wong, C.S. and Law, K.S. (2002), “The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: an exploratory study”, The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 243-274. Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E. and Griffin, R.W. (1993), “Toward a theory of organizational creativity”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 293-321. Xiao, Z. and Tsui, A.S. (2007), “When brokers may not work: the cultural contingency of social capital in Chinese high-tech firms”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 1-31. Xie, J.H., Song, X.M. and Stringfellow, A. (1998), “Interfunctional conflict, conflict resolution styles, and new product success: a four-culture comparison”, Management Science, Vol. 44 No. 12, pp. 192-206. 477 IJCMA 26,4 478 Yu, C.-S., Sardessai, R.M., Lu, J. and Zhao, J.-H. (2006), “Relationship of emotional intelligence with conflict management styles: an empirical study in China”, International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 19-29. Further reading Cheung, C.C. and Chuah, K. (1999), “Conflict management styles in Hong Kong industries”, International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 17 No. 6, pp. 393-399. Montoya-Weiss, M.M., Massey, A.P. and Song, M. (2001), “Getting it together: temporal coordination and conflict management in global virtual teams”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 6, pp. 1251-1262. Corresponding author Hui Sun can be contacted at: sunhui@tju.edu.cn For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TOWARD A THEORY OF MANAGING ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT Rahim, M Afzalur International Journal of Conflict Management; 2002; 13, 3; ABI/INFORM Collection pg. 206 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached. Please let me know if you have any questions or need revisions.

Conflict Management Approaches

Name
Institution
Course
Professor
Date

Conflict Management Approaches
Many styles are used when it comes to the management of conflict in the market. The first
approach includes accommodation. Accommodation means that one can put the ego down and
entertain another individual's anger and difficult nature. For this, the individual who
accommodates another person finds himself in a loss position compared to gaining something.
The person being accommodated finds himself in a position that allows him to feel important.
The second approach has been about avoidance. Individuals have to avoid conflict at all times
despite having different positions in the situation. When a person practices avoidance, he/she
may lose, and the other person wins (Rahim, 2000). This is because the other person may feel
strong when the other individual ignores him/her. Sometimes, it is important for individuals to
compromise their personalities and what they love most to avoid con...


Anonymous
This is great! Exactly what I wanted.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Related Tags