Are Business Students Prepared for the World of Business? Self‐interest, Conformity and Conflict Styles
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | Bui K. Petersen,Dianne P. Ford |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1523 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
Are Business Students Prepared for the World of
Business? Self-interest, Conformity and Conflict
Styles
Bui K. Petersen*
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Dianne P. Ford
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Abstract
While conflict management is a central capability in the
business world, it gets relatively little attention in most busi-
ness schools. In a study of undergraduate and graduate stu-
dents at a Canadian university, we investigate the roles
personal values play in the relationship between majoring
in business and students’conflict management propensities.
We find that business students hold more narrowly self-
interested, as well as more conformist and traditionalist,
values than students in other disciplines, with the implica-
tion that business students may be more prone to conflict
avoidance and less likely than other students to engage with
conflict collaboratively. We discuss both self-selection and
socialization as possible explanations, and the implication
this has for business education and curriculum development.
© 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Keywords: business education, conflict management,
values, Schwartz, mediation analysis
Résumé
Même si la gestion des conflits est une compétence indis-
pensable dans le monde des affaires, elle reçoit relativement
peu d’attention dans la plupart des écoles de commerce.
Dans cette étude qui porte sur des étudiants de premier et
deuxième cycles d’une université canadienne, nous
examinons le rôle que les valeurs personnelles jouent dans
la relation entre la spécialisation en affaires et les
propensions des étudiants à gérer les conflits. Nous
constatons que les étudiants inscrits en administration des
affaires ont des valeurs plus étroitement liées à l’intérêt per-
sonnel et des valeurs plus conformistes et traditionalistes
que les étudiants d’autres disciplines, ce qui les rend peu
enclins à éviter les conflits et moins prompts à s’engager
dans une démarche collaborative. Nous examinons à la fois
l’autosélection et la socialisation comme explications possi-
bles de ce comportement et mettons en évidence leur
implication sur la formation et l’élaboration des curricula.
© 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Mots-clés: formation en affaires, gestion des conflits, valeur,
Schwartz, analyse de la médiation
Introduction
Are business students prepared for the world of busi-
ness? While some scholars have raised the importance of
students’ethical and moral development (Hanson & Moore,
2014) and ability to engage in critical reflection (Tomkins &
Ulus, 2015), others have stressed that the practice of man-
agement needs more consideration (see Mintzberg, 2005).
Given that there is a finite amount of contact time with
students, the tension between practice and analysis becomes
tangible in the classroom and business programs.
An important context for business success, where these
two factors merge, is in the analysis of conflict and practice
of conflict management. For the past half century, conflict
management has been deemed one of the top ten central
roles for managers (see for instance Mintzberg, 1973;
Whetten & Cameron, 2016). Task or process conflict and
conflict management have been deemed critical for organi-
zational success; without them, organizational performance
dwindles for a variety of reasons (such as groupthink; Jehn
& Mannix, 2001). Research has shown that effective conflict
management is associated with improved individual, team,
and organizational performance (see for instance Pelled,
Eisenhardt, & Xin, 1999), decreased workplace stress (for
instance, Colligan & Higgins, 2006), and decreased turnover
*
This project received financial support from Research Council Faroe
Islands.
*Please address correspondence to: Bui K. Petersen, Faculty of Engineering
and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s,
Newfoundland and Labrador, A1B 3X5, Canada. Email: buip@mun.ca
Contract/grant sponsor: Research Council Faroe Islands.
Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences
Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration
Published online 27 December 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1523
36: 498–513 (2019)
Can J Adm Sci
© 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 36(4), 498–513 (2019)498
(for instance, De Dreu & Beersma, 2005). Furthermore, the
ability to collaboratively negotiate is important in the man-
agement of stakeholder relations on issues like corporate so-
cial responsibility and environmental sustainability (Selsky
& Parker, 2005).
Accordingly, some business schools offer conflict man-
agement, negotiation, or interpersonal skills courses, but
many do not. Even when such courses are offered or re-
quired, it is only one course (or portion thereof). This means
that the management of conflict is only a fraction of the
overall program (that is, approximately one-fortieth or less
of a four-year degree).
Training, however, is not the only factor shaping indi-
viduals’approach to conflict. Individuals vary in their gen-
eral tendency to approach conflict (that is, conflict
management styles: Rahim, 1983), which may depend on
more deeply rooted psychological factors that shape individ-
uals’behavioural choices in conflict situations. This includes
the Big Five personality traits (see for instance Antonioni,
1998), emotional intelligence (Shih & Susanto, 2010), pro-
self or prosocial motivation (for instance, Beersma & De
Dreu, 2002), national cultural (Elsayed-Ekhouly & Buda,
1996), and personal values (for instance, Daly, Lee, Soutar,
& Rasmi, 2010).
In this study, we focus on personal values because they
have the somewhat unique property of being simultaneously
a sociological and a psychological variable; they are socially
shaped while also shaping individual behaviour (Schwartz,
1992). Values are relatively stable and have a long-lasting
influence on values-based behaviours (Schwartz, 1992).
Values transcend context and can explain how the effect of
socialization transfers across contexts. Conflict cannot al-
ways be predicted, so individuals tend to respond spontane-
ously with their preferred conflict management styles.
Thus, we examine the question of whether business stu-
dents are prepared from the lens of conflict management
style: what are students’values and preferred conflict man-
agement styles while they are students in business pro-
grams? The skills, knowledge, and ability required for
successful conflict management may be strongly related to
the personal values held by the business students. If these
values promote self-interest, very different strategies will re-
sult compared to values that promote communal good. If so-
cietal and business needs require students to engage in
broader perspectives beyond simple self-interest, then the
type of training required would need to be more intensive
to shift the underlying values. Thus, before examining
whether or not business schools can effectively train conflict
management styles, we contend that it is important to under-
stand what values business students hold (compared to peers
in other faculties), and how these values relate to their con-
flict management style preferences.
To examine these relationships, we conduct a survey
of 203 students (business and non-business) at a large
Canadian university. Our results indicate that business
students differ in how they prioritize values, and that these
value differences have implications for conflict manage-
ment. Primarily, business students seem to be more narrowly
self-interested than other students and more likely to hold
conformist and traditionalist values, which relate to conflict
avoidance, not conflict collaboration. Next, we theoretically
develop our research hypotheses on the relationship between
values, conflict management, and field of study (focusing on
business). After presenting our results, we discuss the impli-
cations for future research and business education.
Literature Review
Conflict Management
According to conflict management theory, individuals
have different propensities for managing conflict (conflict
management styles; Pruitt, 1983). Most models of conflict
management styles are based on the dual concern model (see
Figure 1) with two motivational dimensions: concern for self
or concern for others (Rahim, 1983). Individuals are differ-
ently motivated in terms of prioritizing their self-interest
versus the interest of others. Individuals with a tendency
to prioritize their self-interest at the expense of others’
needs adopt a dominating conflict style, while others, who
prioritize others’interests at the expense of their own
needs, adopt an obliging style. Individuals who prioritize
both their own and others’interests adopt an integrating
style (that is, collaborating), which is associated with crea-
tive problem-solving to address both parties’needs. A
fourth conflict style, avoiding, is the opposite of integrating
in that it reflects neither concern for self nor concern for
others and describes a tendency of non-action in relation
Figure 1. Dual concern model [Source. Adapted from
Olekaln, Putnam, Weingart, & Metcalfe, 2008, p. 84;
Rahim, 1983, p. 369]
SELF-INTEREST, CONFORMITY, AND CONFLICT STYLES PETERSEN & FORD
Can J Adm Sci
© 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 499 36(4), 498–513 (2019)
To continue reading
Request your trial