Assessment of conflict and communication style

KILMANN'S CONFLICT Management MODEL

assessment of conflict and style

Conflict management assessment using the Thomas Kilmann Mode

According to Kuhn and Poole (2000), conflict management style entails the consistent and general orientation towards a conflict situation or the other party. It manifests in the behaviors observable forming a pattern and sharing a characteristic that is common over time (Kuhn & Poole, 2000).

The conflict mode instrument by Kilmann assesses behavior of individual in a conflict situation. The mode instrument looks at conflict situations as those where individuals have differed incompatible concerns. In these situations, behaviors of individuals fall in two distinct dimensions. One is assertiveness where an individual seeks to satisfy strongly his or her own needs. Second is cooperativeness where the extent that an individual makes attempts to meet the other party's concerns. These two distinctions on observable behavior among individual in a conflict situation yield to the five styles of resolving by Kilmann.

Thomas Kilmann's five styles model for handling conflict include; competing, avoiding, collaborating, compromising and accommodating. In contrast to collaborating style, the competing style highly concerns with self. Competing style characterizes the drive to maximize personal gain at the expense of others. The collaborating style constructs conflict resolution to meet the demands of conflicting parties. The low in concern for self is the avoiding style. This style withdraws from conflict. The accommodating style makes sacrifices for self-interests to meet the needs by others. The compromising style literary spans the midpoint between assertiveness and cooperativeness invoking cohesion to attain conflict resolution (Thomas & Kilmann, 1974).

Historical overview of Thomas Kilmann conflict questionnaire

The conflict mode instrument is a result of a requirement for a doctoral program Killman and his colleague took where candidates participated in a seminar on behavioral science. In the seminar, Killman took interest in understanding the reliability and validity of assessments of human behavior. The discussion in the seminar with Kenneth W. Thomas Killman's Colleague -- a Phd Degree student from Purdue University -- incited Killman's interests in understanding conflict and conflict management (Deutsch, Coleman, & Marcus, 2006).

The intellectual discussions inside and outside class showed dissatisfaction with the measures research used to handle conflict situations. The wordings in most of the responses were full of biases allowing the respondents to pick the socially desirable response. This is opposed to what the reality presented. In the five-statement question mode, majority of the managers choose to collaborate while the least of them gave their response as avoiding. The seminar requirement contributed to the two an understanding on interpersonal values and socially desirable responses biases in existent within the conflict assessment modes in existent.

At the onset of developing the conflict model instrument, the challenge conceived was in dealing with the tendencies to apply socially desirability in their responses. According to (Kuhn & Poole, 2000) this is what discredited Blake and Mouton instrument as conflict resolution instrument. To attend to this concern, Ken and Killman created thirty questions with two choice options. These options describe both collaborating and avoiding thereby incorporating social desirability. The two options are however, equal in social desirability forcing an individual to an item solely based on the content and his/her own assessment. An individual is likely to give responses based on whether they avoid or embrace competing. The calibration made on the two options, and the thirty questions made it difficult for individuals to give a response reflects a decent image to others (Thomas & Kilmann, 1974).

The sixteen page booklet resulting from the brainstorming and subsequent follow-up by Killman and Ken was published by Xicom Publishers. This followed a period of decision-making where deliberations involved to or not to include the document as an appendix in their doctoral article or publish it as a stand-alone (Deutsch et al., 2006).

Criticisms on conflict mode instrument

Upon its, publication criticisms on the mode as an ideal conflict resolution instrument have been levied. One of the criticisms that stand out is the modes ability cut across a wide spectrum of cultural, ethnic, racial and social class diversity. These criticisms arose following the discovery that Ken and Killman in their initial research used a narrow homogenous sample of managers. This criticism was however, dispelled with when a larger sample of 8000 respondents from a diverse pool of managers was involved in the research. Further, a study using 16 countries and another using 59,000 online responses, gave result statistically indifferent from the initial studies. The result obtained from the subsequent studies, increased confidence in the model as conflict resolution measure (Deutsch et al., 2006).