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...
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)…
