Conflict Management Styles in Croatian Enterprises – The Relationship between Individual Characteristics and Conflict Handling Styles

The objective of the paper, except determining the dominant conflict handling style in Croatian organizational setting, was to explore individual characteristics affecting the choice of conflict resolution style of Croatian employees. Therefore, the variables of gender, age, level of education achieved, field of work, hierarchical level, marital status and parenthood were included in the study. Compromising conflict handling style was found to be the most frequently used style among Croatian employees overall, as well as the dominant style in all 22 subgroups of respondents. Three out of seven individual characteristics surveyed were found to relate to the conflict handling style used by Croatian employees. Precisely, gender, marital status and parenthood were found to relate significantly with the respondents’ usage of accommodating, gender and parenthood were found to relate significantly with the respondents’ usage of compromising, and parenthood was found to relate significantly with the respondents’ usage of avoiding conflict handling style. Age, education, field of work and hierarchical level were not found to relate with Croatian employees’ usage of diverse conflict handling styles.