Empreendedorismo e Gestão Organizacional

How Servant Leadership Relates to Conflict Management Styles at Work

Abstract

Thomas B. Fields

Managing interpersonal conflict between employees and their supervisors continues to be challenging. Researchers have studied how leadership styles relate to conflict management in organizations, but little is known about how servant leadership relates to conflict management at work. Servant leadership is a management style in which one motivates his or her employees by serving them. The purpose of this study was to investigate how servant leadership dimensions exhibited by supervisors correlated with conflict management styles used by employees when employees experienced conflict with their supervisor. A web-based survey invitation was shared with social service employees resulting in a sample of 230 participants. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine if a predictive relationship existed between the servant leadership dimensions, measured by the Servant Leadership Scale, and helpful and unhelpful conflict management styles, measured by the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory–II. Servant leadership exhibited by supervisors correlated positively with both helpful and unhelpful conflict management styles used by employees.