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Management style is associated with McGregor and his Theory X‐Theory Y, which he introduced in 1960. Comparatively little change in ideas about preferred styles took place throughout the sixties and seventies, once McGregor had established his approach, until around 1976 or so when social scientists began to look more closely into Japan's successful formula. As a result, one group of investigators claim to have identified an A style which grows out of American culture and a J style which grows out of the Japanese. These differ fundamentally in essential details and one new approach is to seek a hybrid style, known by the investigators as the Z style, which incorporates the best of both cultures. The terms A, J and Z, though not yet in wide usage, are beginning to creep into the literature and might eventually find their way into the manager's vocabulary, but in any case, the review of these new styles makes a valuable contribution to the study of management style. As seminar material this article is important in that it relates management style to the socio‐political environment.

The global COVID-19 crisis posed many managerial and leadership challenges for principals. More specifically, after the crisis passed noticeable changes in school climate manifested and affected principal management style. The present study examined perceptions of principals regarding school climate and its impact on management style. The research literature clearly affirms the profound impact of school climate in terms of the relationship between students and school leaders. The study focused solely on religious high schools because, in Israel, the negative impact of the pandemic was most marked there.

The study was qualitative in nature, and included semi-structured interviews with 10 religious school principals in Israel. Study participants were asked about the existing school climate and their management style in light of the COVID-19 period.

This study indicated that positive school climate and interpersonal relationships between principals and students were affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Study participants reported that principals had to work arduously in the post-COVID-19 period to restore and improve positive school climate and consequently their management style also needed altering. Specifically, restoring open lines of communication and a sense of belonging as the main components of the school climate were the main foci of principal work. The principals' management style had to be more open and inclusive to restore a sense of belonging and security among students.

The study highlights the importance of an open and inclusive management style to restore positive school climate after crises.

This paper examines how differences in management styles impact the performance of cross-border acquisitions. Two principal findings are reported. First, the study focuses on the individual dimensions of management style and highlights the particular influence that differences in risk orientation exert on acquisition outcome. This result, although unexpected, is argued to be consistent with prior literature that places risk orientation in a central role within organisational behaviour. Second, the relationship between management style compatibility and cross-border acquisition performance is found to be contingent upon the level of organisational interaction imposed by the post-acquisition process. Implications are drawn for both researchers and practitioners.

This study explores the configurations of management control systems (MCSs) while taking into account entrepreneurial cognition styles (ECSs) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to understand the impact of ECS on deployment and identify the various modes of MCS configurations employed by SMEs. The authors draw on and synthesise two theoretical perspectives relating to cognition and management control packages to understand the associations between ECS and MCS employed by SMEs in managing their business. This study was conducted using a quantitative approach that utilises a questionnaire survey to collect cross-sectional data from 150 SMEs. The authors uncovered three cognitive styles: knowing (e.g. preciseness), planning (e.g. organising), and creativity (e.g. innovativeness). Furthermore, five configurations of MCS utilised by SMEs were identified: customer focus, performance monitoring, administrative focus, strategic focus, and development focus. By combining both analyses, the authors discovered three constellations of significant association between ECS and MCS characterised by Cluster 1’s cohesive integration approach, Cluster 2’s revealing strategic approach, and Cluster 3’s multifaceted exploration. The study is significant because it uncovers the complex relationship between ECS and MCS configurations, highlighting their interdependence within the institutional context. Using a cognitive view, the authors explore how the cognitive styles of entrepreneurs facilitated imprinting institutional context into MCS configurations. These insights enable us to envisage that ECS is not mutually exclusive but forms a continuum that provides more plausible explanations that relax the direct universal relationship between MCS configurations and contextual factors.

Individual differences cause many differences in human behaviour, and the first source of these differences is personality. In various organisations, employees are encouraged to manage conflict through conflict management styles. The way people think can be an essential factor in their ability to conflict management. Difficult employees are individuals who constantly use problematic communication styles to express their feelings and thoughts to direct the behaviour of others. This empirical study aims to investigate the effect of thinking styles on individuals’ conflict management in dealing with difficult personalities.

To achieve the research purpose, a gamified situation was designed, and a survey was performed in laboratory settings and on an online platform. At first, participants’ reactions were measured in the simulated conflict management situation dealing with difficult personalities; subsequently, the dominant thinking style of participants was measured by the rational-experiential inventory (REI) and the cognitive reflection test. At the end, participants answered a series of demographic questions.

The collected data were then analysed by regression analysis. Based on the findings of this study, the rational thinking measured by the REI40 has a significant and positive effect on the performance of individuals in conflict management with difficult personalities in an organisational context; in other words, rational thinking leads to better performance in conflict management than experiential thinking.

The value of this article lies in the direct study of the impact of thinking styles on conflict management, which was done by focusing on difficult organisational personalities. Also, using gamification in research design is another research initiative.

The primary objective of this paper is to extend the Activity Reduces Conflict Associated Strain (ARCAS) model. To test the ARCAS model, the study aims to examine the effect of process conflict on employee well-being and the role of negative affect as an intrapersonal mechanism linking process conflict and employee well-being. Further, to extend the emerging ARCAS model, the study examines whether the assumed indirect effect of process conflict on employee well-being through negative affect is conditional upon levels of conflict management styles.

In total, 554 software engineers working in information technology firms responded to the administered questionnaire and hypothesised relationships were tested using Process Macros.

The findings indicate that process conflict is negatively related to employee well-being and the negative affect state mediates the relationship between process conflict and employee well-being. As hypothesised, it was found that the indirect effect of process conflict on employee well-being through the negative affect state is conditional upon levels of conflict management styles of the employees.

The study contributes to the conflict literature by establishing the detrimental effect of process conflict on employee well-being. The study also established the explanatory mechanism linking process conflict and employee well-being. Further, the study extended the emerging ARCAS model by establishing the moderating role of conflict management styles as well as the conditional indirect effect.

The study highlighted the within-individual effect of process conflict in deteriorating employee well-being. The study provides valuable insights to the managers and practitioners about how individuals’ conflict management styles influence well-being.

The study specifically examined the effect of process conflict, which was omitted from conflict literature considering it the same as task conflict, on employee well-being. The study established the within-individual mechanism through which process conflict diminishes employee well-being. Also, the study extended the ARCAS model by examining the effect of conflict management styles with the aid of Affective Events Theory.

Most studies of conflict handling styles in organizations analyze these styles separately. These studies assume that individuals are oriented towards the use of one of the styles of conflict management. As a result, different styles are compared one by one as if they were independent. In contrast, from a more all‐embracing perspective people are seen as adopting configurations of styles. The interest in this alternative perspective lies in exploring the relations between these styles, how they combine and form patterns of conflict styles. This article presents an exploratory study that seeks to identify empirically the specific combinations of conflict handling styles that result in differentiated patterns within groups of managers. By using hierarchical and non‐hierarchical cluster analyses of a sample of managers, different patterns of conflict management were identified. The effectiveness of each of the resulting patterns was analyzed in terms of its influence on the parties' joint substantive outcomes and their mutual relationship. Results show that patterns using multiple conflict handling styles were more effective than patterns based on a single style.

Despite contrary evidence, much management research treats Asians as culturally homogeneous. This study seeks to explore how managers from four Asian nations differ in conflict management and whether observed differences are linked to cultural attitudes.

A questionnaire assessed conflict management practices and cultural attitudes of managers from four nations with considerable historical, geographical, and economic differences. ANOVA and ANCOVA were used to test hypotheses about groups differences in preference for three conflict management styles – competing integrating, and avoiding – controlling for differences in demographics and cultural attitudes.

Statistically significant differences were found on all three of the conflict management styles, although the hypotheses were only partly supported. Controlling for differences in demographics and cultural attitudes had little impact on the main findings. Some similarities among the nationalities were found: “integrating” was the most preferred style, and showed the least variation, among the groups. However, there was less similarity among the nationalities regarding “competing” and “avoiding”.

Since the hypotheses – based largely on national culture differences among the nationalities – were only partly supported, future research should attempt to identify variables that better explain differences among nationalities in conflict management style.

The information on conflict management style preferences in these four nations will be valuable to those wishing to do business there. Further, refuting the common assumption of cultural homogeneity among Asians will better prepare Westerners for doing business elsewhere in Asia.

This paper demonstrates that national differences in conflict management style were not based on demographic differences in the sample or differences in cultural attitudes.

This study aims to examine the role of horizontal and vertical individualism‐collectivism in explaining conflict management styles. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 640 respondents completed the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory‐II (ROCI‐II, Form C) designed to assess five conflict management styles and the individualism‐collectivism (I‐C) scale designed to assess the vertical and horizontal aspects of individualism‐collectivism. Findings – Correlation and regression analyses provide support for a conceptual fit between cultural dimensions and conflict management styles. Horizontal and vertical aspects of individualism‐collectivism explained 5‐20 percent of the variance in the various conflict management styles. Specifically, individuals displaying an individualist orientation (horizontal and vertical) tended to give greater importance to satisfying personal needs and preferred a dominating style, rather than an obliging or avoiding style. In contrast, collectivists (horizontal and vertical) seemed more likely to sacrifice personal needs for the sake of the group and preferred an integrating style. Further, horizontal collectivists were more likely to prefer an obliging style and vertical collectivists an avoiding style of conflict management. Research limitations/implications – Generalization is limited to college student samples from the USA. Practical implications – Organizations could provide training programs to sensitize employees to their specific cultural orientations and their preferred conflict management styles. In addition, employees could learn to switch between styles depending on the situation, issue, or relationship within which the conflict is taking place. Originality/value – Highlights the importance of sensitizing employees to their cultural orientation and preferred conflict management style; raises the possibility of training them to develop alternate styles.

This paper aims to explore the psychological antecedents and processes that lead to competitive or cooperative attitudes in conflict management using the lens of construal level theory (CLT). CLT suggests that adopting a distal versus proximal psychological perspective changes the way people think and behave. This research explores the systematic effect of these abstract versus concrete mental construals on preferred conflict management styles.

First, theoretically grounded hypotheses linking different mental construals to cooperative and competitive conflict management styles were formulated. Subsequently, four empirical studies were conducted to test the hypotheses.

The studies provide support to the hypotheses showing that high construal abstract thinking is linked to preference for cooperation while low construal thinking is linked to preference for competition. Further, two different psychological processes mediate participants’ preferences for cooperative and competitive conflict management styles, the former mediated by perspective taking and empathic concern and the latter by impulsivity and aggression.

The research measures conflict management styles rather than actual behavior. Also, focus is on trait mental construals rather than priming of high or low construal thinking.

Deeper understanding of the psychology of cooperative and competitive conflict management styles can help parties attain better outcomes and can potentially contribute to training and talent development by educating conflict management practitioners.

The findings of this research can potentially inform effective interventions aimed at reducing intergroup conflicts.

Mental construals and related psychological processes are linked to conflict management styles for the first time.