MODELLING THE LINK BETWEEN CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLES, ORGANISATIONAL TRUST AND EMPLOYEE JOB SATISFACTION

Abstract

While past studies have established a significant and positive relationship between conflict management styles and employee job satisfaction. However, the fundamental interaction behind this link remain unclear. To address this gap, calls for further research has been suggested, particularly on the interactive process through which conflict management styles, specifically, collaborating, accommodating, compromising, avoiding and dominating styles were cast as the key dimensions of conflict management styles that are likely to influence employee job satisfaction. Hence, in the present study a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from Academic and Non-academic staff of some selected public tertiary institutions located in North-Central and North-Western parts of Nigeria. Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was adopted to test the hypothesized research model. The quantitative results indicated that collaborating, dominating, avoiding and compromising conflict management styles were significantly and positively related to employee job satisfaction. On the contrary, accommodating style demonstrated no significant effect on employee job satisfaction. The results further showed that organisational trust moderated the relationship between collaborating, avoiding, and compromising styles and employee job satisfaction. But, no significant interaction effect was found between organisational trust and both dominating and accommodating styles. Implications of the results for future research and practice, as well as the limitations of the study are highlighted.