Conflict in voluntary organizations : a field study

This field study examined the relationships among the perception of conflict, the style of conflict management, and organizational commitment in the executive teams of voluntary organizations. The study was conducted in executive teams of 17 intact voluntary organizations with at least a three-year history. The organizations were nonprofit groups of four types; religious organizations (churches), community service organizations, recreational organizations and college sororities. The executive teams, (N = 113), consisting of the boards of directors and the paid administrative staff were surveyed. Conflict awareness and style were measured using the ROCI-I and ROCI-II instruments (Rahim, 1983). Organizational commitment scores were derived from self-report inventories using a seven-point Likert scale. Comparisons of the scores of these voluntary (non-profit) executive teams were made with the published national norms for the ROCI-I and ROCI-II instruments. The results showed that voluntary executive teams reported significantly less intrapersonal, intragroup, and intergroup conflict than the managerial population. The voluntary executive teams were also more likely to use an integrative, obliging, or avoiding conflict management style than the national managerial population from which the norms were derived. The ROCI measures in the study did not significantly correlate with a measure of organizational commitment. Numerous suggestions for further research were made.