Testing relationships between personality, conflict styles and effectiveness

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to test the direct and mediating effects of personality, conflict management style, and leader effectiveness. This was deemed necessary, given the number of studies testing antecedents and outcomes of conflict management but never within a single research design. Design/methodology/approach - Structural equation modeling was used to test a model linking personality, conflict management, and leader effectiveness for 126 managers and 624 employees from various organizations. Subjects completed the Five-Factor Personality Inventory, Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II, and selected items from the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire that measure leadership effectiveness. Findings - Findings indicate that an integrating conflict management style fully mediates the relationship between neuroticism and leadership effectiveness and partially mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and leadership effectiveness. Conscientiousness was the best predictor of effectiveness among all variables studied in this research, accounting for 10 percent of the variance. Research limitations/implications - Future studies should link both antecedents and outcomes to conflict management in the same design so as not to miss potential mediating effects. Practical implications - Although the work is preliminary, it appears that conscientious individuals tend to be most effective in organizations. Originality/value - The work represents the first study linking personality, conflict styles, and effectiveness in a single design.