Analyzing interpersonal conflict: Nature of awareness, type of initiating event, situational perceptions, and management styles

This study explored the interrelationships among three sets of variables: situational perceptions, conflict management styles, and two factors reflecting the initiation of conflict (i.e., nature of awareness and type of initiating event). While styles were not related to either initiating factor, the data indicated that the nature of awareness and the type of initiating event were related to one another and that several situational perceptions were related to these initiating factors. Analyses confirmed that situational perceptions provided a more powerful account of styles than did the initiating factors. This study also examined the associations between two methods of measuring situational perceptions and two prominent conflict management typologies. Results mostly confirmed hypotheses. With one exception, five Likert‐type measures of situational perceptions were positively related to measures developed from open‐ended descriptions of the conflict. Open‐ended measures of three types of “problem‐solving communication”; were related in the expected fashion to four Likert‐type measures of management styles derived from Putnam and Wilson's (1982) OCCI. Also, with several exceptions, the data showed that OCCI styles were related to situational perceptions in ways predicted by past research.