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This paper aims to reveal the role of conflict management in the process of trust development. Specifically, this study investigates how the salience of conflict varies with different conflict-handling behaviors and behavioral outcomes and how the variation of the salience of conflict influences the trust development between contracting parties.

A questionnaire survey was undertaken to collect data from 310 experienced project practitioners. Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping with a structural equation model were mainly used to test the hypotheses.

This paper finds that the relational degree of conflict handling behaviors can influence the salience of conflict and furthermore to influence trust between contracting parties, with this relationship mediated by the behavioral outcomes; however, all these relationships are contingent on the stage where relational conflict handling behaviors are adopted and the specific type of outcomes the behaviors result in.

This study provides some specific directions for the practitioners to conduct relational conflict handling behaviors and generate positive outcomes to keep trust developing between contracting parties in conflictual situations.

This study contributes to the knowledge of inter-organizational trust development as well as conflict management, by investigating the relationship between conflict and trust in a direction, which is less examined and revealing the process of conflict management, where the conflict handling behaviors influence behavioral outcomes to further manage conflict, in trust development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the rational and experiential systems according to the cognitive‐experiential self theory (CEST) are related to conflict‐handling styles.

Using a correlational design, data were collected using an on‐line survey system examining CEST information‐processing systems and five conflict‐handling styles. A total of 426 undergraduate students, with paid jobs, complete the on‐line survey.

Results showed that the rational system, experiential system and constructive thinking had significant positive relationships with both the integrating and compromising conflict‐handling styles. Additionally, the rational system had a positive relationship with the dominating conflict‐handling style and the experiential system and constructive thinking had a positive relationship with the obliging conflict‐handling style. The rational system and constructive thinking had a negative relationship with the avoiding conflict‐handling style.

The study established a positive connection between CEST information‐processing systems and conflict‐handling styles among undergraduate students, however the results of the study may not be as directly comparable with real and established leaders.

Being the first study to examine the connection between the CEST information‐processing systems and the five conflict‐handling styles, the paper offers interesting insights about how the choice of information‐processing systems can influence the choice of conflict‐handling styles across a wide range of situations.

This study aims to develop and validate a best‐worst scaling (BWS) measure of preferred conflict‐handling styles, named the Conflict‐handling BWS (CHBWS).

The authors conducted three studies. Study 1 consisted of a sample of psychology students (n=136) from a Canadian university and was designed to assess the convergent validity of the CHBWS by comparing it with the ROCI‐II and DUTCH instruments. Study 2 consisted of a sample of psychology students (n=154) from a US university and was designed to assess the predictive validity of the CHBWS by relating conflict‐handling styles to consumer complaint behavior. Study 3 consisted of a random sample of adults registered with an online survey company in Australia (n=204) and Germany (n=214). This study was designed to assess the antecedent relationship of Schwartz's personal values to conflict‐handling styles.

The study shows that best‐worst scaling is a valid and advantageous way of measuring conflict‐handling styles. The CHBWS demonstrated both convergent and predictive validity, and was able to reproduce the structure of the dual‐concerns model. The study also showed that preferred conflict‐handling style influences the choice of complaint behavior in a retail service failure situation. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that Schwartz's personal values can influence the preferred conflict‐handling style in two individualistic cultures.

This is the first study to measure conflict‐handling style preferences using a BWS approach. Furthermore, it is the first study to relate consumer complaint behavior to preferred conflict‐handling style.

In business-to-business interactions, conflicts are inevitable, and conflict-handling strategies that consider different variables improve the decision-making process of actors. This study aims to reveal the role of power and criticality in conflict-handling research in logistics service networks.

A 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design with four different scenarios was used. One hundred sixty logistics service actors completed an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed with ANOVA and paired sample t-tests using the SPSS 28.0 program.

In comparative scenarios involving high and low power dynamics, individuals with high power and high criticality situations are more inclined to favor the dominating strategy compared to low-power and low-criticality contexts. However, when faced with specific circumstances characterized by both high power and high criticality, actors tend to prioritize the integrating strategy initially, followed by the dominating and obliging strategies in that order. Notably, the statistical analysis revealed no significant interaction effect between criticality and power concerning the integrating, obliging and dominating conflict-handling strategies.

This study used an experimental approach to investigate criticality and power as contextual elements in determining conflict-handling strategies in an inter-firm environment within logistics service networks. This study is particularly groundbreaking in its knowledge of the relationship among power dynamics, conflict criticality and conflict-handling strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between conflict handling styles (CHS) of business managers in their entrepreneurial intentions (EI). The business manager’s propensity to become entrepreneurs is a relatively unexplored area of research. The relationship between conflict handling style and entrepreneurial intention is under-researched, particularly in a developing country like Kosovo.

A self-report questionnaire containing measures of conflict handing style, entrepreneurial intention and demographics was delivered to business managers in Kosovo.

Forcing style has a positive and statistically significant relationship with entrepreneurial intention. Yielding, compromising, problem solving and avoiding have weak and insignificant effects on EI.

The relationship between conflict handling styles of managers and their entrepreneurial intention is investigated. No situational, organizational or environmental factor was considered influencing this relationship.

Conflict management is important in predicting the entrepreneurial intention of managers. Organizations should design human resource interventions aimed at effective team composition and employee retention to ensure performance.

This is the first study to investigate the relationship between conflict handling style and entrepreneurial intention using a manager sample. Furthermore, it is the first study of conflict handling styles and entrepreneurial intention of managers in Kosovo.

This paper examines the connection between influencing, negotiation and conflict‐handling. Using newly gathered data, it develops earlier articles on the relationships between negotiation and influencing by linking them to the associated area of conflict‐handling. The new data confirm the authors' view that negotiation is best seen as an aspect of influencing and that, although both are associated with conflict‐handling, they go beyond this. The new findings reinforce concerns about the role of negotiation and suggest some situations in which negotiation may be appropriate and some where it may not be suitable. As earlier, these findings have implications for the way training in these areas is carried out and how managers can make effective use of influencing, negotiation and conflict‐handling.

The purpose of this study is to show how outsourcing partners can maximise the benefits of outsourcing while containing the negative effect of destructive conflict (the “bad apple”) on trust and commitment.

The study reviewed existing literature on the benefits and limitations of outsourcing from the principal’s (outsourcer) and the agent’s (service provider) perspectives. The study further draws on empirical evidence from studies conducted across ten industries in three countries within the Asia–Pacific Rim and the Middle-East, namely, Australia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

Long-term orientation and ethical norms are robust ex-ante (i.e. before the destructive conflict) handling strategies, whereas integrative conflict handling style and (to a lesser degree) accommodating and compromising conflict handling styles are effective ex-post (i.e. after the destructive conflict) handling strategies. Forcing and avoidance conflict handling styles can escalate destructive conflict and should be completely avoided by outsourcing partners at all times.

The benefits of outsourcing outweigh its challenges. Trust and commitment are positively affected by ex-ante and ex-post (destructive conflict) strategies. Destructive conflicts (or the bad apple effect) can be contained through these strategies. Firms should leverage the upsides of outsourcing relationships and contain the downsides by integrating long-term orientation and ethical norms that can help to pre-empt and forestall destructive conflict. They should adopt an integrative conflict handling strategy in the event of a manifest conflict. Other strategies that can be applied to manifest conflict (albeit more sparingly) are accommodating and compromising strategies. Each has the potential to increase trust and commitment in the relationship.

The authors unveil before and after (the destructive conflict) handling strategies that do not depend on contextual factors or industry/sectoral differences.

This study incorporates two Chinese cultural variables guanxi (personal relationship) and xinyong (personal trust) with other relational variables that are well defined in the west, i.e. supplier competence, commitment, conflict handling and satisfaction to see how they generate partnership relationship in a sino‐western relationship marketing context.

Research objectives are achieved through a combination of model building, quantitative design, testing of hypotheses using AMOS and analysis of findings. The subject scope is imbedded within cultural impact on relationship marketing in a sino‐western context.

This study finds that Western suppliers must be competent in product knowledge, market development, and adaptation to buyers' requirements to resolve conflicts in order to establish their xinyong with the buyers. Competence allows suppliers to show psychological commitment and establish guanxi with the buyers. It also shows that guanxi has a stronger influence on xinyong than on satisfaction. Suppliers should use guanxi to generate buyer's perception on xinyong whilst maintaining a reasonable level of buyer satisfaction with their products and services. Also, relationship between xinyong and satisfaction is not significant. A buyer's satisfaction on the supplier's product and services does not necessarily mean that this buyer perceives the supplier having xinyong because Chinese mix (up) business with personal relationships together and sometimes they make trade‐off between them!

This relationship study was conducted in a single‐product relationship context within the clothing industry in the PRC environment and therefore, its findings may not be generalised to other industry. Future Chinese relationship study should increase the sample size so as to cover more industries to allow comparison across industries. This is especially valid between a manufacturing and a service‐based industry. A service‐based industry may even emphasize more on guanxi and xinyong because of its intangible aspects! Future research should include the xinyong constructs, the concepts of face and reciprocity. To what extent these important Chinese cultural values affect satisfaction and xinyong have not been determined.

Effective conflict handling skills and guanxi are vital to formulate a xinyong positioning strategy. A supplier must be competent in product knowledge, market development skills, and adapt to a buyer's requirements to resolve conflicts with the buyer to establish xinyong.

This research is an initial attempt to establish the relationship between guanxi, xinyong and partnership relationship and generates a new research area in Chinese relationship marketing.

This paper describes a study which investigated the relationship between stage of moral development and conflict handling styles in Chinese societies. A total of 996 undergraduate business students and 294 MBA students in Hong Kong and China participated in the study. The defining issue test was used to assess stage of moral development. Conflict handling styles were identified by Rahim’s organizational conflict inventory. Results showed a significant association between stage of moral development and the use of integrating conflict‐handling approach. The extent to which the Chinese culture and psychology influenced moral reasoning and conflict handling styles is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of organizational culture on the conflict handling style in non-profit organizations. Conflicts in non-profit organizations and especially in associations are more numerous, mainly because of the search for compromise in the decision-making phases and the high level of loyalty in mission that strongly stimulates the voice of one’s opinion. The authors observe that a modification of the organizational culture, through symbolic changes, can resolve the conflicts sequence.

Culture is measured through the organizational culture profile tool and the culture deciphering technique. The authors detail two cases of non-profit organizations, in which conflicts sequence resolution was handled through organizational culture change while conflicts resolution at the individual level could not bring an end to the conflicts sequence.

These cases highlight how organizational culture shapes behaviors and conflicts handling styles. These cases also give insights on how an organizational culture can be changed to setup new default conflict handling styles in an organization. The cultural change management only worked when it was planned on critical cultural change readiness factors with a strong enforcement of the change by the governing bodies.

This study complements research studies on how organizational culture shapes attitudes and behaviors and shows how and under which conditions a cultural change could resolve a conflict sequence. This study also presents a conflict resolution method when the roots of conflicts are embedded in the existing organizational culture. In such conflicts situation, interpersonal conflict resolution technique did not solve the conflicts sequence and only cultural change finally brought an end to the sequence.

A combined search on two levels, the individual level and the organizational culture level, will thus show convergent conflict sources and get a great deal of knowledge before solving individual-level conflicts.

The non-profit sector is sometimes subject to high-conflict situation and this research contributes to more efficient conflict resolution protocols with an applicable method of conflict analysis, change management and conflict resolution.

The work showed how the organizational culture is a key element in the explanation of conflict sources and conflict handling in case of high and repeated conflict situation. It is thus possible to resolve conflict sequence by changing a carefully chosen cultural trait. Nevertheless, the culture change management program is complex and risky. In a high-conflict situation, the authors identified several key conflict resolution factors: the careful identification of the organizational culture traits explaining conflict handling style; the alignment of the management team on the cultural change plan to raise up the intensity of the new set of behaviors; and the selection of the most efficient symbolic change decision.