The Relation Between Organizational Conflict Management Methods and Emotional Intelligence: A Design Engineering Sample

Conflict is inevitable in social environments. Management of conflict is essential for organizations in order to have an efficient working environment. Literature shows us that there is a relationship between the conflict management styles used and emotional intelligence of the employees whose profile changes with the industry they are working. Previous research’s in the literature about conflict and emotional intelligence is performed either in education or health industries. On the other hand the motivation behind this study was to perform a research about conflict management styles and EQ within a design engineering environment in which a level of conflict is required in order to support the creativity. The relationship between organizational conflict management methods and emotional intelligence, and which conflict management styles are used on a sample of design engineering is determined and analyzed in this study. Emotional intelligence, organizational conflict strategies and conflict management methods scales were conducted to the workers (n=99) some of whom are administrators in the department of design engineering in a company in Eskişehir. Emotional intelligence is measured with Turkish version of Bar-on emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) which is a self-report survey. ROCI-II Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory is assigned in order to detect the conflict management strategies (Integration, Obliging, Dominating, Compromising, Avoiding) used according to Rahim conflict management model. Finally administrators are asked to choose the most frequently used conflict solution methods from a provided solution methods pool. The survey was applied to the whole of the population. Collected data have been analyses using SPSS 20 program. The relation between demographic properties, conflict management styles and emotional intelligence is determined by independent-samples t test and ANOVA, while correlation analyses have been used to detect the relation between conflict management and emotional intelligence. Reliability of the used tests has been determined as α=.95 for emotional intelligence test and α=.88 for conflict management test using Cronbach Alpha correlation. Results of the research revealed that there was a meaningful but poor correlation between emotional intelligence and conflict management strategies; factors like age, gender and education background didn’t relate to emotional intelligence, an organization culture in which ideas can be expressed easily and discussions are encouraged took the first place as conflict management strategies among the managers.