Conflict culture and leadership in Vilnius district municipality administration

Abstract

Employees' perception of avoidant managers' conflict behavior was related to inspirational motivation, individualized consideration and contingent reward. Contrary to our expectations, we found no significant relationship between employee's perception of collaborative manager's conflict behavior and leadership dimensions. Research limitations: this research was conducted on a relatively small group and findings may not be generalized to other populations. The purpose of this study is to investigate some aspects of conflicts and leadership in Vilnius district municipality administration. The relationship between employees' perceptions of organizational conflict culture and line managers' leadership dimensions, or components, was examined. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire MLQ was used to assess leadership dimensions. Conflict Cultures Scale and Leader Conflict Behaviors Scale (Gelfand at al., 2012) were used to assess organizational conflict cultures and measure employees' perception of their managers' conflict management behaviors. Results indicated mixed conflict culture in Vilnius municipality district administration. Most respondents identified features of collaborative and avoidant conflict culture in their organization, dominant conflict culture was less expressed, but differences among all three conflict cultures were not statistically reliable. This research results allow to state that according to employees' the most expressed manager ' leadership dimensions were management-by-exception, idealized influence, inspirational motivation. The least expressed leadership dimensions were individualized consideration and contingent reward. This research specifically showed relations of leaders' behavior and conflict cultures in organization. Results showed that leadership dimensions correlate with organizational conflict culture and employees' perception of line manager's conflict behavior. Collaborative organizational conflict culture was positively related to inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, contingent reward and laissez-faire leadership; dominating conflict culture was negatively related to inspirational motivation and contingent reward; avoidant conflict culture was negatively related to laissez-faire leadership.