Conflict Approaches of Effective and Ineffective Project Managers: A Field Study in a Matrix Organization[1]

The conflict approaches used by project managers in a matrix organization were described by 135 project team engineers. In project teams where the managers used a combination of co‐operative and confirming approaches to conflict, conflicts were judged to have a constructive impact and management was judged to be effective. Conflicts were seen as counterproductive and management was seen as ineffective when the project manager relied upon a combination of competitive and avoiding approaches to conflict. These results provided field data support for a theory of conflict management which has been tested and refined through extensive laboratory research.