Conflict Management in Leader Development: The Roles of Control, Trust, and Fairness

Abstract

This chapter presents a theory describing how leaders can effectively address leader-employee conflicts by integrating and balancing the controls they apply with then: attempts to promote organizational trust and fairness. It builds on over a quarter century of research that demonstrates how leaders can motivate high levels of employee cooperation and commitment when they apply controls in ways that their employees view as trustworthy and fair. This theory specifically shows how leaders who balance their efforts to apply controls, build trust, and promote fairness are able to address a range of employee concerns that emerge from leader-employee conflicts. By presenting a multifaceted approach to addressing these issues, the framework presented in this chapter can be used to train leaders on how to direct their employees in ways that they will view as credible, equitable, and worthy of their willing participation, cooperation, and commitment. The discussion of these ideas proceeds as follows. After outlining relatively limited perspectives on conflict management presented by existing control, trust, and fairness research, some definitions and descriptions of control, trust-building, and fairness-promotion activities as well as the roles they play in conflict management are provided. After outlining a series of propositions describing how particular control, trust-building, and fairness-promotion activities can reduce specific leader-employee conflicts, I outline how this theory can be used to enhance leader development efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)