Faculty Perceptions of conflict with administrators: An analysis of the Associations between the nature of conflict and positive and negative outcomes

Abstract

This study examines the perceptions of faculty members regarding conflict experiences with administrators. It is driven by the question, To what extent are faculty perceptions of positive and negative outcomes of faculty-administrator conflict associated with domain, nature and disciplinary context of the conflict, where domain refers to the administrative or academic area of the conflict situation and nature refers to whether the conflict is task-based or interpersonal. The analysis is based on quantitative study of survey results. The results indicate that task nature of conflicts has greater association than relationship nature with positive and negative outcomes of conflict. These findings suggest that working to remedy task-related conflicts in these domains might improve the outcomes of conflict experiences between faculty and administrators.