The Overview Study of Conflict Management Styles in Thai Organizations (1984-2008): Analysis in Communication Perspectives

Abstract

Conflict is a pervasive aspect of organization life. It penetrates competition for resources, co-ordination of system, work distribution, decision making and many other aspects of organizational behavior. This article aims to analyze conflict management styles in Thai organization and also to analyze the impact of communication on conflict studies in Thai organizations by using Miller’s (1999) communication perspectives approach. The data analysis was based on 49 works gathered from master degree theses, independent studies and term papers (1984-2008) which examined the topic mentioned. It was found that compromising was the most commonly used conflict management style in Thai organization followed by collaboration, avoidance, accommodation and competition, respectively. The results also showed that the human relations approach and human resources approach have dominated the studies of conflict communication in Thai organizations. Most studies focused on differential perception on conflict styles in superior-subordinate relationship.  For variables concerned, the study revealed that actor attributes and context were mostly employed in the studies in order to explain communication role in Thai organizational conflict. The analysis also showed that climate, organization size and conflict view are variables which have more predictive power on conflict strategies. On the other hand, variables such as sex, age and experience showed inconsistent findings.