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Human Resources Management

Exploring the Relationships between the Big Five Personality Factors, Conflict Styles, and Bargaining Behaviors

Exploring the Relationship between the Big Five Personality Factors, Conflict Styles, and Bargaining Behaviors Abstract The present study examines the relationship of individual differences in personality to one’s preferences for conflict handling, and further to bargaining behaviors in a negotiation setting. The investigation offers a conceptual foundation for exploring the relationship between the Big Five personality factors, conflict styles, and behavioral patterns in business negotiation, then using student sample in a simulated business negotiation to empirically test the hypothesized relationships. Results show that extraversion is positively related to confrontational conflict styles and negatively to non-confrontational styles, while agreeableness is positively related to non-confrontational styles but negatively to confrontational styles. Further, neuroticism is found to negatively influence compromising style. Moreover, competing, collaborating, and avoiding are three styles that predict bargaining behaviors and further to negotiation outcomes. Implications are also discussed, which concludes this paper.

Key Words: Personality, Conflict Styles, Bargaining Behaviors.

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Resolving conflict is one of the fundamental management tasks. The strategy one tends to employ to approach conflict situations represents one’s characteristic mode of conflict handling or conflict style (Black & Mouton, 1964; Moberg, 1998). Research in conflict management domain has generated different models of conflict styles individuals tent to use to resolve conflict (e.g., Black & Mouton, 1964; Rahim, 1983; Thomas, 1976). For example, in their managerial grid model, Black and Mouton (1964) proposed five characteristic modes for conflict handling: directly confronting a dispute, smoothing over differences, avoiding the conflict altogether, forcing one’s...