Conflict Climates in Organizations

Little research to date has investigated the role that destructive and constructive conflict climates have on individual decisions to engage in conflict resolution interventions in organizations. One such widely employed intervention is conflict resolution training. The purpose of this dissertation was to test the influence of conflict climates on decisions to participate in conflict resolution training. An integrative behavioral intention model was formulated that predicted intentions to participate. The model proposed, counter intuitively, that both destructive and constructive conflict climates would positively predict reasons for and reasons against participation in conflict resolution training. On one hand, destructive conflict climates were expected to motivate reasons for participating in order to resolve conflicts in the work unit, yet simultaneously motivate reasons against participating due to concerns that training may lack sufficient power to effect such change. On the other hand, constructive conflict climates were expected to generate reasons for participating to build further morale while simultaneously generating reasons against participating due to concerns that th