Gender, age and nationality: assessing their impact on conflict resolution styles

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conflict resolution styles used by university students in handling conflicts, and to determine the effects (if any) of age, nationality and gender on how students respond to conflicts. Design/methodology/approach - The Thomas-Kilmann conflict mode instrument was adopted to assess the conflict resolution styles (accommodating, avoiding, collaborative, competitive and compromising) of post graduate students in a University in Malaysia. Both ANOVA and t-test analyses were utilized to investigate the relationship between, nationality, gender, age and conflict resolution styles used by students. Findings - Results of this study indicates that female students used competitive style more than male students, while male students are more likely to avoid conflicts. The older students were discovered to use more avoiding, while younger students are more likely to be competitive in nature. The findings did not reveal any significant differences in nationality. Originality/value - This paper expands its focus from gender (which is the most commonly tested category) to other categories such as age and nationality, thereby giving room for these new categories to be tested extensively in future researches. The results reveal that students not only use different conflict resolution styles to address conflicts, but also there exists differences in the styles used by students of different age groups and gender.