The Relationship between Conflict
Management Strategies and
Communication Skills among Managers
and Assistants of Sports Offices of Zanjan
Province, Iran
RESEARCH
RJSS
JOURNAL OF
SPORT SCIENCES
Vol 4 (4): 102-107
http://www.rjssjournal.com
ISSN: 2148-0834
Copyright©2016
Hossein Arjmandnia1, Idin Hajibaklou2, Somayeh Soleimani1, Mohsen
Dousti2*
1B.A
Graduated of Physical Education, Farhangian University Campus,
Zanjan Branch, Iran
2M.A Graduated of Sport Management, Azad Islamic University, Hamadan
Science and Research Branch, Iran
*Corresponding
Author Email: [email protected]
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article was to investigate the
relationship
between
conflict
management
strategies
and
communication skills among managers and assistants of sports offices of
Zanjan province, Iran. According to the surveys, the numbers of these
individuals were 40. Due to the limited population of the research,
census method (complete enumeration) was used. Data collection tools
were questionnaires which investigated managers’ communication skills
and conflict management strategies. The reliability of these
questionnaires in the present research was measured 0.87 and 0.80,
respectively, and their validity was confirmed using experts’ opinions.
After statistical analysis using Pearson correlation coefficient test,
results showed that communication skills had a positive and significant
relationship with conflict management strategy among managers and
assistants. Confrontational strategy was not related to listening skill, but
it had a negative and significant relationship with verbal and feedback
skills. Also, all three skills had a positive and significant relationship with
solution-oriented strategy. Control strategy was just related to feedback
skill and finally, feedback skill had a positive and significant relationship
with control strategy.
KEYWORDS Conflict Management, Conflict, Balancing, Verbal Skill,
Listening Skill, Solution-Oriented, Non-Confrontational.
INTRODUCTION
Among the issues an organization is facing, there are the issues of conflict and disagreements. This term has a lot
of meaning and is used to refer to events with a wide range such as: inner anxieties due to needs and competitive
demands (inner conflict) to open violence between the countries (war) (Greenberg & Baron, 1990). Webster
dictionary defines conflict as “battle and conflict of opposing forces and existing conflict between instincts or
ethics and religious and moral ideals” (Fayyazi, 2003). In the field of organizational behavior, conflict refers
mainly to the cases in which units or individuals inside an organization work against each other instead of
working with each other. There are three viewpoints about organizational conflict. In traditional viewpoint,
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Res. J. Sport. Sci. Vol., 4 (4), 102-107, 2016
conflict means wrong performance in group, part or organization. According to this viewpoint, conflict is
bad and damaging. So, if possible, it must be discouraged and if happened, it must be eradicated. This
viewpoint is called traditional because it arises from Hawthorne studies, which was done in the years
1924 to 1932 in America. So, traditional viewpoint looks at conflict as an unnecessary and damaging event
and believes that it is destructive and causes the reduction of job satisfaction, weakening the relations
among the units and effective reduction. In pluralism viewpoint, conflict must be accepted; because it
increases efficiency.
Interactionism viewpoint emphasizes both conflict provoking and conflict resolving. This intellectual
school argues that a group or a unit, in which there is no disagreement and acts very friendly, compatible
and harmonic, can become indifferent and apathy about the changing needs. A manager with
interactionism viewpoint always tries to provide the potential positive aspects of the conflict for the
growth of the organization and tries to reduce the negative aspects of the conflict. In simple terms, in this
view, managers are recommended not to think about eradicating the conflict, but also consider the
injection of conflict making conditions. This issue is the condition for the facilitating organization’s
development, stimulation and dynamism. So, managers’ role in this theory will include balancing the
conflicts in the performance level. Generally, there are five styles for responding to conflicts which are
known as conflict management styles and typically, each person is dominant in one of these styles. These
five styles can be shown on a diagram. Horizontal axis of the diagram is the individual’s attention to goals,
interests and personal needs (creditor's hip) and vertical axis is the individual’s attention to goals,
interests and others’ needs (collaboration).
With different combinations of these two axes, different styles of conflict management arise (Eckstein,
1998). These five styles include competition style or method, which includes the creditor's hip and lack of
collaboration behaviors. Sacrifice or agreement is the counterpart of competition. In this method of
conflict resolution, the individual always surrenders to others’ demands (Friedman et al., 2000).
Avoidance or withdrawal method includes the lack of creditor's hip and lack of collaboration behaviors.
When one of the parties involved do not pay attention to his/her demands and others’ demands, his/her
attention will be towards avoidance or withdrawal, which is simply he/she ignores the conflict (Izadi,
2000). Compromise or accommodation method includes an average level of collaboration and creditors
hip. If one or both parties partly have balanced tendency both to their interests and goals and to the
interests and demands of their counterpart, compromise or accommodation will happen. Collaboration or
cooperation method is when two parties involved have strong tendency to achieve their goals and
interests and to greatly consider the goals and interests of the other party. This style is more focused on
resolving conflict collaboratively. In this regard Putnam and Wilson divided five abovementioned methods
(competition, avoidance, compromise, accommodation, and collaboration) into three strategies:
a) Non-confrontational strategy: includes avoidance and accommodation methods
b) Solution-oriented strategy: includes collaboration and compromise methods
c) Control strategy: this strategy is the same as competitive methods (Moghimi, 2001).
One of the effective factors in conflict resolution in the organization, in addition to prevention from the
interference of mentality in organizational relations and acceptance of others’ opinions and so on, is the
manager’s communication skills possession (Soltani, 2001). If a manager can be a good speaker and a
good sender, a good listener and a good receiver, he/she will provide the participation of individuals
inside and outside of the organization through gathering pervasive trust and this issue will guarantee
his/her success in achieving the organization’s goals (Soltani, 2001). Effective relations between different
components of an organization are one of the key elements of managers’ success. Barnard says: providing
a communication system is one of the three main important executive tasks for an organization’s survival.
Every manager in an organization must be able to introduce the subject matter correctly and clearly to
his/her personnel through his/her writings, statements and lectures to be able to successes in effective
communication. If the communication is not done correctly, it will cause disorganization in the
organization. So, the root of the personal, organizational and social problems can be searched in the lack
of effective communication and misunderstandings and the misinterpretations of relationship. So, it can
be said that proper communication is necessary for managers because of various reasons which include:
coordinating and planning their time, doing the planning tasks, organizing, guiding, leading and
controlling the organization in an effective way. Organizational activities require the interaction between
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people and organization’s groups. Different people at different levels are carrying out their activities and
tasks. The requisite for carrying out these activities is a bilateral or multilateral relationship of individuals,
which can be the underlying cause of conflict. Although, there are a few researches that directly have
investigated the relationship between organizational conflicts and communication skills of the
organization’s managers, but in most of the researches that have investigated these two subjects, the role
of communication skills and the interaction between organization’s members in reducing organizational
conflict have been referred implicitly. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship
between conflict levels and schools’ organizational atmosphere. Research findings showed that the
amount of conflict is more in schools where their managers have imperative behaviors with violence and
neglecting or lack of support for teachers. Also, the results of this research showed that managers who are
more successful at solving teachers’ necessary and personal needs, collaborating and interacting with
them and there is an ethical spirit dominant in their school, their teachers have less amount of conflict.
The research findings show that two groups of school managers and supervisors of higher health centers
believed that conflict can be controlled by proper communication and clear information and managers of
nursing education centers had a contribution in managing the conflict with making a healthy
organizational atmosphere. The consensus of all groups was that the conflict must be managed according
to its particular position, circumstances and structure. He defines methods of conflict management as:
dominance, avoidance, compromise, and collaboration. The results of this research showed that the source
of all conflict is three main factors of employees’ behavior, structure and relationships, which in normal
circumstances, employees’ behavior is a half reason of any type of conflict and the factors of structure and
relationships are another half. Also, the research findings show that managers select two methods of
collaboration and accommodation more as conflict managing method. In this study, totally, 78 managers
participated. One of the results of this research was that senior managers of the area preferred to use
conflict management styles based on unity, sodality and interactionism in conflict situations. While
investigating the relation of communication skills and managers’ conflict resolution styles with
employees’ efficiency in one of the organizations of Khuzestan province, Iran. Taghipour et al (2011)
found that resolving organization’s conflicts by managers through communication skills lead to
employees’ empowerment. Ashkan (2003), by investigating the relationship between managers’
emotional quotient and their conflict management styles, showed that emotional quotient and
collaboration style and also managers’ avoidance style of resolving the conflict leads to teachers’ more and
better interaction and relation. By investigating the relation of emotional intelligence and communication
skills with conflict management strategies among educational and executive managers of physical
education faculties of Iran universities and pattern presentation, Fahim (2005) showed that there is a
positive significant relationship between managers’ emotional intelligence and communication skills and
the solution-oriented strategy in conflict management. It has a negative significant relationship with nonconfrontational and control strategies. Researches done in the field of conflict and its various aspects
show that only one preferred style for conflict resolution is not of managers’ attention; but it is possible
that in different conditions, each of these styles are used by managers more or less. So, one of the major
and at the same time the most inevitable issues in organizations is the conflict between its existing
individuals and groups, which sports organizations are not exceptional from this. It must be remembered
that this is not the conflict which causes disorder and collapse of relations in an organization, but it is the
ineffective conflict management that leads to undesirable results. Conflict, in a reasonable level, is a
natural and desirable aspect in each relationship and conflict management will be important if it is done
constructively.
So, sports organizations must be able to manage disputes, tensions and conflict effectively and usefully in
order to be able to provide principal physical education programs to secure mental and physical health of
the society, to create helpful fields for developing sport talents, and to use their employees’ maximum
physical, mental and intellectual power. Organizations’ managers are among the individual who have an
important role in identifying, guiding and resolving the conflicts in the organizations. Managers’ ability in
facing conflict and its managing has a significant effect on employees’ and their organizations’ success and
effectiveness. So, managers must accept the fact that conflict is an inevitable part of organizational life and
the organization’s management has no choice but to accept it. They must use the conflict to increase the
organization’s effectiveness (Ghorbani, 2000). There are various techniques for conflict management in
organizations. Collaboration, compromise, competition, accommodation, and avoidance are the methods
of facing conflict, which in this study they are named in format of three strategies of: solution-oriented,
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non-confrontational and control. These three strategies along with communication skills such as:
listening, verbal and feedback skills can be effective in organization’s conflict resolution. In this regard, the
present research answers this fundamental question that what kind of relationship exists between the
communication skills of the sport managers and assistants of Zanjan province, Iran, and conflict
management strategies which are planned by them?
MATERLAS AND METHODS
The present research was an analytical-descriptive research which was done in a field study form. All the
managers and assistants of the physical education offices of Zanjan province, Iran, formed the statistical
population, which according to the investigations, they were 40. Due to the limited statistical population
of the study, the census method (complete enumeration) was used. So, the number of sample for present
research included all existing subjects defined in the population; so, the sample size equaled the
population size. Data collection tools were two questionnaires which investigated the managers’
communication skills and conflict management strategies. This questionnaire has been standard and
validated by Ghorbani (2000) in Iran. The reliability of these questionnaires for the present research was
measured 0.87 and 0.80, respectively, and their validity was confirmed using experts’ opinions. All
statistical analysis of this research has been done using the latest version of SPSS. In this research,
descriptive and inferential statistics were used. In order to organize, classify the raw scores and describe
sample sizes, descriptive statistics (such as: frequency distribution table, descriptive diagrams and
measures of central tendency and dispersion like: mean, standard deviation, maximum, and minimum)
were used. In inferential statistics part, Pearson correlation coefficient test was used.
RESULTS
The research descriptive findings showed that 52.4% of managers had B.A degree, which were educated
in humanities. 71.4% of managers had less than 20 years of service and 28.6% of them had more than 20
years of service. Also, 42.8% of assistants had a B.A degree that included the greatest number and 45.5%
of them had less than 10 years of service.
Table 1. Statistical quantities of variables.
Variable
Non-confrontational
Solution-oriented
Control
Verbal skill
Listening skill
Feedback skill
Mean
4.20
4.36
4.36
24.42
23.80
24.04
Standard deviation
0.501
0.391
0.619
2.15
1.80
2.61
Minimum
3
3.36
2.86
20
21
18
Maximum
5.42
5
5.43
29
27
29
Inferential findings showed that generally, there was a positive and significant relationship between
communication skills and conflict management strategy among managers. The results of Pearson
correlation test in this regard and with regard to other variables are shown in the table below.
Table 2. Pearson correlation coefficient test.
Communication skills
Amou
Sig
Result
nt
Conflict
management
strategy
105
0.31
0.00
Rejection of
null
hypothesis
Listening skill
Amou
nt
Sig
0.26
0.00
Verbal skill
Result
Amou
nt
Sig
Rejection of
null
hypothesis
0.35
0.00
Feedback skill
Result
Amo
unt
Sig
Result
Rejection
of null
hypothesis
0.46
0.00
Rejection of
null
hypothesis
Res. J. Sport. Sci. Vol., 4 (4), 102-107, 2016
The results of Pearson correlation coefficient test showed that there was a positive and significant
relationship between managers’ communicative skills and conflict management. The amount of the
coefficient and its sign showed the intensity and direction of the relations. With this regard, the intensity
of this relation was 31% and relatively in an average level, and the direction of the relation was direct and
positive. In fact managers and assistants, who use communication skills in the organization, help more in
destroying conflicts and discrepancies. Also, conflict management in the organization was related to
communication skills, which were listening, verbal and feedback skills. With 95% of confidence, it could
be said that there was a positive and significant relationship between managers’ and assistants’ listening,
verbal and feedback skills and conflict management. Also, in the following, the results of Pearson
correlation coefficient test between conflict management strategies and communication skills are shown.
Table 3. Pearson correlation coefficient test.
Listening skill
Nonconfronta
tional
strategy
Solutionoriented
strategy
Control
strategy
Verbal skill
Feedback skill
Amou
nt
Sig
Result
Amount
Sig
Result
Amount
Sig
Result
-0.26
0.24
confirmation of
null hypothesis
-0.53
0.01
Rejection of null
hypothesis
-0.47
0.03
Rejection
of null
hypothesis
0.47
0.03
Rejection of null
hypothesis
0.44
0.04
Rejection of null
hypothesis
0.57
0.00
0.27
0.23
confirmation of
null hypothesis
0.23
0.30
confirmation of
null hypothesis
0.48
0.02
Rejection
of null
hypothesis
Rejection
of null
hypothesis
Results showed that non-confrontational strategy was not related to listening skill, but it has a negative
and significant with verbal and feedback skills. In fact, with increasing verbal and feedback skills of
managers and assistants, confrontational strategies for conflict management would decrease. All three
skills had a positive and significant relationship with solution-oriented strategy. Also, the control strategy
was just elated to feedback skills. Feedback skills had a positive and significant relationship with control
strategy.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The purpose of doing this research was to determine the relationship between communication skills and
conflict management strategies among managers of physical education offices of Zanjan province, Iran.
The results showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between communication skills
and conflict management strategies. In fact, managers and assistants of sports offices can manage the
existing conflict and discrepancy by using communication skills. In a similar finding, Schilling (1988)
found that managers who have a proper interaction and relationship with school teachers are more
successful in resolving teachers’ necessary and personal needs and their teachers have a lower amount of
conflict. So, it can be seen that abovementioned research, with regard to research type and its position
emphasized the communication skills as an effective factor in conflict management and their findings are
consistent with the present research findings. In this regard, the findings of this research were consistent
with the findings of Fahim (2005), Ashkan (2003) and Taghipour et al (2011). On the one hand, empathy
and good human relationship and on the other hand, tensions and disagreements are seen abundantly in
an organization, which if they are identified, analyzed and used properly, certainly in next time intervals,
we will have a fresh organization and employees with high level of performance and efficiency. According
to this, if society managers and supervisors possess enough communication skills, along with knowledge
and experience, they can communicate correctly with their employees by selecting an appropriate
management style, and they can minimize the existing conflicts in the organization and realize the
organization’s goals with lower costs and better quality and increase the efficiency by increasing the
collaboration spirit and creating the motivation for work and activity in them.
According to this, running the communication skills training courses for managers, assistants and
supervisors is emphasized. Also, emphasis on communication skills as an independent variable affecting
many other organizational variables such as: commitment, job satisfaction and running training courses
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Res. J. Sport. Sci. Vol., 4 (4), 102-107, 2016
for managers and assistants in order to correctly use conflict resolution styles, are emphasized. Totally, it
can be concluded that methods, which managers and assistants select and run to communicate with
employees will be effective in decreasing the existing tension and conflicts and will play an important role.
This issue reminds the authorities the necessity of managers’ communication skills training and suggests
education operators of the organization to plan the necessary training programs to learn these kinds of
skills. In addition, conflict resolution method also has a great impact on empowering the employees. Also,
methods which are used for conflict resolution are more important. These styles can be taught to learners
in order to gain the greatest growth opportunities from conflict and this issue is of organizations
authorities’ responsibilities.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest
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