The Role of Ethics on Conflict Handling Styles: A Scenario Based Study

All organizations face interpersonal conflicts due to a variety of reasons. Ethical problems are one of the most important reasons of such conflicts. It is observed that the management of conflicts which are caused by ethical dilemmas is generally neglected in the literature. Hence, this study aims to analyze people's responses to conflict situations involving ethical dilemmas in an academic setting. 373 academicians form the sample to collect responses to a scenario which reflects a dilemma in publication ethics. Rahim's Organizational Conflict Inventory - II (ROCI-II) and Multidimensional Ethics Scale (MES) are used to measure interpersonal conflict handling styles and ethical orientations. A statistically meaningful relationship is observed between the ethical approaches and interpersonal conflict handling styles.