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For more than 50 years, researchers and practitioners have been examining the role of conflict in organizations. The most common premise has been that conflict is a natural occurrence between individuals (and groups) and understanding conflict management strategies will lead to positive organizational outcomes (Jehn and Mannix, 2001; Pelled et al., 1999; Somech, 2008). The assertion has been made and validated that organizations should not eliminate conflict but, rather, manage it to enhance individual, group and organizational effectiveness (Rahim, 1985, 2011).
More recently, however, researchers have been examining the roles that gender and societal perspectives have on conflict-management strategies by documenting systematic differences between how women and men approach the management of conflict in the workplace (Brewer et al., 2002). There are numerous field studies examining gender differences and the strategies for handling interpersonal conflict (Baron, 1989; Cole, 1996; Kilmann and Thomas, 1975; Neff, 1986; Rahim, 1983a; Renwick, 1975; Shockley-Zalabak, 1981). These studies have generally reported weak or inconsistent relationships between gender and the strategies for handling interpersonal conflict.
A similar conclusion was reached by Wall and Blum (1991). Their literature review suggests there are marginal and inconsistent relationships between gender and negotiation outcomes. After reviewing the literature on gender differences in conflict-handling strategies, Nicotera and Dorsey (2006) concluded the following:
There is no there there. Conflict style is not driven by biological sex, regardless of how many studies try to find the effect; it simply is not there […] the search for gender differences in organizational communication and in conflict communication particularly, has little promise to produce any meaningful findings (p. 312).
In her summary of the literature, Putnam (2007) concluded that research on organizational conflict management has mushroomed in the past decade but calls for additional research on organizational conflict from the perspectives offered by other disciplines, such as management and communications. Finally, in their 10-year assessment of conflict management studies, Ma et al. (2008) modeled the structure of conflict management and concluded the need to map new relationships will potentially shed additional knowledge on the factors impacting conflict-management strategies in the workplace.
One factor increasingly being investigated with respect to work values is the generation of workers (Twenge et al., 2010). Anecdotes regarding how various generations have changed social and...