INTRODUCTION:

Leadership has been actively engaged as a new, effective approach to conflict resolution, workplace management, and the company as a whole (Guttman, 2004). “A leader gives subordinates direction and social backup depended on the styles to fit the context” (Jenkins, 1988). A widely applicable theory of leadership has been the Blake and Mouton's "managerial grid". The theory states that the optimal strategy for managers is to maximize behaviour’s underlying both dimensions (Blake, R., and Mouton, J., 1964). This study aims at identify the relationship along with differences between leadership styles and conflict management styles in various universities of Bangladesh.

This research focused on the leadership and conflict management styles used by the leaders (particularly teachers’considered as leader) of universities across level of individual, subordinates’ and students’. Academic leadership involves influencing, managing, coaching modelling, counselling and solving conflict towards improving educational processes at all levels of educational institution. Now, teachers as a leader tend to go above and beyond just providing lecturers and administrative tasks, but also taking an important part in resolving conflict such as to what extent they met students, subordinates and peers expectations and if any differences existed between faculty and student perceptions consider other issues.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESIS:

This quantitative causal comparative study involved investigating administrative leadership efforts and conflict management approaches and the relationship among individuals, subordinates and students in Bangladesh. The research question for this study were-

RQ1: Do leadership styles have a statistically significant impact on the choice of conflict management styles?

H1: There is positive relationship between leadership styles and conflict management styles at the total.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:

A conceptual framework based on the literature review, hypothesis, Pearson correlation analysis and overall findings of the previous studies was personally drawn. It is presented in order to understand the whole subject in a precise manner. In this study the independent variable would be Leadership Styles, at the levels of country club, team leader, middle of the road, improvised and production. The dependent variables would be conflict styles, at the levels of collaborating, competing, accommodating, avoiding and compromising. The analysis will show the variance in choosing styles across level and their homogeneity. (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Initial conceptual Framework (source: Author).

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Theories of Leadership:

The definition of leadership is typically a set of acts which affect the goals and undertakings of a community (Feyerherm and Rice, 2002). It explains the guide's relationship with those who follow the leader. There is little consensus about the best approach to leadership (Blanchard, 2008; Muczyk and Reimann, 1987; Weib, 2005). Leaders are most likely to change their style of leadership based on specific conditions, issues, or state of affairs(Hersey and Blanchard, 1982). Leaders should choose a style that depends not only on the situation but on their own preferences, as well as those of their team members (Hershey and Blachard, 1969; Kay, 2004). A leader must have a high level of emotional intelligence to make the best choice when choosing a leadership style to evaluate them, others, and the situation. (Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso, 2004).

The Leadership grid: A Model of Leadership Style:

Robert Blake and Jane Mouton originally developed "Grid" between 1958 and 1960, and first published in 1964 (Mouton and Blake, 1964). Fleishman's work on initiating structure and consideration (Blake, Mouton and Bidwell 1969; Blake and Mouton 1982b) particularly influenced the model. Fleishman argued that there were two fundamental aspects of leadership conduct called "consideration" and "structure of initiation" (Fleishman 1957a, 1957b; Fleishman and Peters 1962). High concern was argued to be correlated with high subordinate satisfaction and high initiating structure was associated with high productivity but also high levels of grievance and absenteeism. The attitudinal aspects of Blake and Mouton have been called "Concern for Performance," reflecting an implicit attitude towards achieving results, and "Concern for People," relating to the thoughtfulness demonstrated to others when leadership is practiced. These two dimensions, as described, would give rise, according to Blake and Mouton, to a high leadership style that was a synergistic combination of high levels on both dimensions (Blake and Mouton 1982b).

Figure 2: Leadership grid model.

[Source: Grid works by Robert R. Blake, Jane S. Mouton and Walter Barclay, Scientific Methods Inc.1993]

Theories of Conflict Management:

Organizational conflict can cause frustration and adverse effects on individual and group results. Roloff (1987) also agrees with Deutsch and Rahim that organizational conflict arises when the participants engage in activities that are incompatible with those of their network colleagues, members of other groups, or non-affiliated persons who use the organization's services or products (p. 496). According to Pondy (1967), the conflict process has four conditions: the pre-conflict environment, the emotional status of those involved their mental state, and the level of conflict behaviours (from passive opposition to overt belligerence).

Relationship of Conflict Management Styles and Leadership: Romero (1983) presented two conflict inventories and a Lead-Self Instrument (Hersey and Blanchard, 1969a, 1969b, 1974, 1982, 1996) to 28 heads of secondary schools to explore the relationship between approaches to conflict management and the four types of situational management. When circumstances change, Principals don't change their leadership or style of confrontation, according to Romero's findings (p. 125). Holt (1986) looked at the links between leadership approaches and conflict management as opposed to Romero's study (1983). Participants at the study headed by Sayeed (1990) have led and handled conflicts supports the evaluation of leadership style based upon the form of conflict management.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

The study is based on Quantitative. Primary data has been collected from the two hundreds respondents (Teachers, students, subordinates) of four universities namely Patuakhali Science and Technology University, Barishal University, Khulna University and Jagannath University through providing them 5-likert questionnaire. Out of 300 questions, 250 surveys were returned and 50 surveys were incomplete. For this study, wechose sample areas because of fewer distances among universities, among four, one is renowned as nation’s best university. In this study we used judgmental sampling technique, a non-probability sampling technique.

The descriptive statistics, factor analysis, statistical tools were applied in order to analyse the data, interpret and draw conclusions with respect to the objectives set.

RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS:

Relationship between Leadership Styles and Conflict Management Styles at the total:

For examining the relationship between each of the leadership and conflict styles, correlation was done. Table 4.5 describes the correlations between dependent variables (Collaborating, Accommodating, Competing, Avoiding, and Compromising) and independent variables (Team, Country club, Authority, Improvised, and Middle of the road).

Table 01: Profile of Respondents:

Characteristics

Teachers

(Individuals)N=40

Students

N=120

Subordinates

(Staff) N=40

Gender

Male

Female

Age

20-25 Years

26-30 Years

31-35 Years

36- 40 Years

41 years and above

110

Designation

Teachers

Professor

Associate Professor

Assistant Professor

Lecturer

Staffs

Deputy Registrar

Assistant Registrar

Section Officer

Senior Assistant Officer/ Junior officer/ Attendant

Student

Post Graduate Student

Graduate Students

Academic Qualification

Bachelor/ Honours Degree Masters/MBA

Both Honours and Masters

Work Experiences

1-5 years

6-10 Years

11-15 years

15 years -20 years

20 years and above

Table 02: Relationship between Leadership Style and Conflict Management Styles at the total

		Collaborating	Accommodating	Competing	Avoiding	Compromising
Team	Pearson Correlation	.615^**	.255^**	.254^**	.495^**	.339^**
Countryclub	Pearson Correlation	.507^**	.322^**	.312^**	.388^**	.270^**
Authority	Pearson Correlation	.405^**	.139^*	.386^**	.274^**	.184^**
Improvised	Pearson Correlation	.337^**	.232^**	.343^**	.267^**	.226^**
Middle	Pearson Correlation	.133	.313^**	-.181^*	.149^*	.252^**
Middle	N	200	200	200	200	200
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.01level (2-tailed). . Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

According to Sekaran (Sekaran and Bougie 2016) if the correlation is closer to 1.0, the relationship is considered very significant positively and if it is closer to -1.0, the relationship is very significant negatively. This study uses the scale that is shown in Table 2 to examine the relationship between dependent and independent variables through the values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r).

DISCUSSION:

Researchers have studied leadership qualities and grid how they affect the choice of conflict management strategies at large. Leadership styles in university affect student outcomes and enhance the learning process as it is associated with the ability to resolve conflict. The study involved a quantitative correlational approach to compare each style of leadership and conflict to determine the relationship and compare mean across level to examine the consistency. The survey method allowed for the collection and analysis of research data from the population. The main statistical tool to analyze responses was SPSS. The results from the study provided information regarding the relationship between leadership and conflict resolution styles. Based on the analysis calculations, a sample of 200 participants were deemed sufficient for the study.

INTERPRETATION OF FINDINGS:

Eighteen questions related to leadership styles perspective, which identical to four factors which were denoted as Team, Country club, Authority and Improvised but Middle of the road show insignificant factor loading. Only 8 statements of conflict perspective with a factor loading greater than or equal to 0.5 are get focused on this study. These four factors were competitive style, collaborating style; avoiding style and Accommodating. In response to conflicting situation leaders have great influence in get ideas accepted. Compromising style should ideally be the least preferred style of conflict resolution.

Research question 1 was: Do leadership styles have a statistically significant impact on the choice of conflict management styles? According to the result of the correlation at the total, leadership styles have statistically significant impact on the choice of conflict management styles (See table 5). At the student level almost all leadership and conflict management styles are moderately positive correlated with each other, except middle of the road and compromising. From team to improvised, there was a significant moderate correlation. Middle of the road showed a negligible correlation. Only team was highly correlated with collaboration. Overall hypothesis (H1) was ‘There is positive relationship between leadership styles and conflict management styles at the total is accepted with low correlation’. Low correlation show relation but not strong enough.

CONCLUSION:

The study concluded that with the exception of team and collaboration styles, there is positive relationship between leadership and conflict management styles at the total but low. At leadership perspective team is followed most along with collaboration style of conflict resolution across level (individuals’ subordinates’ and students’) of the university. So, it is clear that the leaders tend to use approaches varied across levels. Most of the leadership and conflict management styles they followed but there is no concrete specification. This mean they use styles based on the situation; somehow related to the contingency approaches. Leadership and conflict management perspectives showed significant difference among individuals, subordinates and students on team, country club, authority and Middle of the road at leadership side; Collaborating, accommodating, avoiding and compromising at conflict management side. Compromising and middle of the road should ideally be the least preferred style of conflict resolution and leadership approach. Overall consistency of preferred styles was not achieved across levels. Usually leadership grid and conflict resolution approaches inter-related with each other based on correlation but strength of the correlation is not strong enough. So, researcher recommended further research.

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Received on 21.11.2023 Modified on 23.02.2024

Asian Journal of Management. 2024;15(2):132-136.

DOI: 10.52711/2321-5763.2024.00022