The Effect of Leaders’ Fear of Power Loss on Conflict Management Strategies Towards Employees and the Moderating Role of Contextual Creativity

Rosenbaum, Lilja (2023) The Effect of Leaders’ Fear of Power Loss on Conflict Management Strategies Towards Employees and the Moderating Role of Contextual Creativity. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Conflict management seems to be a critical skill for leaders. Research shows how contextual factors influence the use of different conflict management strategies. The present study investigated the effect of leaders’ fear of power loss on constructive and destructive conflict management strategies toward employees and whether contextual creativity moderated this relationship. Based on the literature, we hypothesized that fear of power loss will be positively related to the destructive conflict management strategy (forcing) and negatively related to the constructive strategies (compromising, problem-solving, and yielding). Furthermore, we hypothesized that contextual creativity will weaken this relationship. We conducted a two-wave time-lagged study and ran a moderation analysis via Process (N = 236). In contrast to our expectations, the results revealed a positive relationship between fear of power loss and the constructive conflict management strategy compromising. Moreover, contextual creativity negatively moderated the effect of fear of power loss on the constructive strategy compromising showing that low contextual creativity leads to more use of compromising in a conflict setting. For the other conflict management strategies no significant result was obtained. We conclude that fear of power loss leads to more compromising but only when the working environment does not allow creative thinking during the conflict. Yet, whether there is indeed a link between fear of power loss and constructive conflict management strategies with the moderating effect of contextual creativity should be further investigated by future research. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Fousiani, K.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	26 Jan 2023 13:57
Last Modified:	26 Jan 2023 13:57
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1587

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