Leader member exchange and the use of moderating conflict management styles - Impact on relationship quality

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the styles of conflict management and the quality of dyadic exchanges between leader and follower, controlling for age, gender, education, and organizational tenure. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology was quantitative and incorporated the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II and Leader-Member Exchange Version 7 survey instruments. Findings - There were significant findings with respect to quality of dyadic relationship and use of conflict management styles. The lower the dyadic relationship quality, the more moderating styles are introduced into the relationship. Research limitations/implications - The limitations of the study were: participants were selected by the vice president of human resources for this international company and were limited to current US employees; the study was limited to one company, thereby limiting the ability to generalize study findings; and the study focused on correlational data, and made no attempt to address the cause and effect issues related to conflict, conflict management, leader-member exchange, or leadership. Originality/value - The value of this study is its original contribution to the research literature, as no previous studies which incorporated both conflict management and leader-follower relationship quality could be found during the exhaustive literature review.