Nurse educators'/administrators' ways of handling conflict

Using women's standpoint research to analyze the data, a qualitative, retrospective case study was undertaken to study the group process among 27 female nurse educators/administrators who met from 1987 to 1990. The group was engaged in making major changes to integrate nursing education programs from a variety of institutions. Part of the research involved studying the group's conflict-handling strategies. These strategies were compared and contrasted with strategies found in traditional, feminist, and nursing management literature. In the traditional management literature, five conflict-handling modes are described: competing, compromising, avoiding, integrating, and accommodating. Although the research results indicated similarities between the conflict-handling modes used by the group studied and those reported in the research literature, there also were significant differences. One unique strategy identified was not competing. Competing as a strategy was rejected. Compromising and avoiding were used frequently by the group. Integrating, the most efficacious strategy, was used to resolve only two issues, whereas accommodating was not identified as an obvious strategy, although two aspects of it were apparent. One conclusion is that conflict management theories based on men's behavior do not adequately explain nurses' (women's) conflict management behavior. This study suggests that nurse educators/administrators may have a distinct approach to conflict management that has not been recognized.