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Introduction
For an organization to be successful, the employees are required to work in harmony to achieve its goals. Because leadership involves the exhibition of style or behavior by managers or supervisors while dealing with subordinates, leadership is a critical determinant of the employees’ actions toward the achievement of the organizational goals.
The presence of emotional tensions and conflicts in the organization is one dimension of organizational environment. The leaders may help to release tensions, harmonize misunderstanding and deal with disruptive behaviors (Fisher, 2000). Leaders react to problems, resolve crises, reward and punish followers, provide encouragement and support to followers. Leaders are also concerned about organizational innovation, seek to foster organizational cultures that are conducive to creativity, innovation, conflict-free and challenging environment. In the ideal and conducive environment, leaders tend to influence strategies in conflict management and enhance people to work together effectively. It becomes imperative for a leader to achieve organizational objectives, accomplished by focusing on both the rational and emotional aspects of conflicting issues while resolving disputes or conflicts that occur at any level in the organizational hierarchy.
Constructive conflict management requires considerable social skills. Managers must be able to adapt their conflict management behaviors to a given situation. In some cases, it may be best to confront conflict, and in other cases, it may be better to avoid conflict or accommodate. Conflict management research focus is centered primarily on the conflict situation and the person – situation interaction (Knapp et al., 1988). However, it is believed that conflict behavior is determined by both situational and dispositional influences.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) examined the possible links between individualistic and collectivistic cultural values and preferred conflict styles and found that there are a number of similarities and difference among these cultures. Other Studies have examined the frequently used conflict management styles in public- and private-sector managers (Anis-ul-Haque, 2004). Studies also report a connection between conflict resolution and attachment styles (Cown and Cown, 2005), setting the argument that leadership styles may influence conflict negotiation strategies.
Leadership theories are classified as trait, behavioral, contingency and transformational (Northouse, 2007). Earliest theories assumed that the primary source of leadership effectiveness lay in the personal traits of the leaders themselves. Later behavioral theories of leadership sought to explain...