Management & Change

The study aims to review role of conflict management within university libraries, by examining conflict management styles of library staff such as librarians, deputy librarians, assistant librarians and professional assistant in the category of lower, middle and upper managers; and to know most preferred/dominant styles of conflict management. These styles have also been investigated across the hierarchy. Null hypotheses were tested with regard to conflict management styles and between styles of library professionals with superiors, peers and subordinates. The study shows that ‘integrating’ is primary style of librarians while dealing with subordinates followed by ‘dominating’ style. Deputy librarians prefer ‘integrating’, while dealing with superiors; ‘obliging’ is used to maximum extent, dealing with peers; and ‘dominating’ is primary style with subordinates. Homogeneity is found in the styles of assistant librarians who preferred ‘integrating’ style while dealing with superiors, peers and subordinates. There is uniformity in applying conflict management strategies by professional assistants, where ‘integrating’ is followed by ‘obliging’ and ‘compromising’ styles. In overall terms, library managers used ‘integrating’ styles followed by ‘obliging’ and ‘compromising’ styles and relied least on ‘dominating’ styles while dealing with superiors, peers and subordinates. In this study, hypotheses formulations were tested using statistical tools comprising ANOVA, t-test and Z-test. Significant differences were found among conflict management styles of library professionals. Significant difference were also found between ‘integrating’ and ‘avoiding’; ‘integrating’ and ‘compromising’; ‘integrating’ and ‘dominating’; ‘obliging’ and ‘avoiding’; ‘obliging’ and ‘dominating’; ‘avoiding’ and ‘compromising’ conflict management styles. However, the same pattern was not observed while managing conflict with superiors, peers and subordinates.