wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jonm 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1|INTRODUCTION Conflict is an essential concept for human interaction-oriented business environments. Although there is no generally agreed definition of the concept of conflict, it can be defined as 'a disagreement between two or more people or groups, which arises from various resources' (Koel, 2015). Continuous exposure to conflict in organisations leads to decreased productivity and an environment of destruction. Therefore, the success of managers in conflict management is important for organisational effectiveness (Vivar, 2006). Excessive service pressure, role uncertainty and high levels of interdependence among members of the health care team increase conflicts. This increase might influence patient and employee safety negatively (Gerardi, 2015). Cihangirolu et al. (2015) found out that clinical nurses had higher conflict perception levels, and their work commitment was weak. Nursing outcomes such as nurse Received: 15 May 2020 | Revised: 9 December 2020 | Accepted: 30 December 2020 DOI: 10.1111/jonm.13262 ORIGINAL ARTICLE The relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and their conflict management strategy preferences Ebru Gokoglan MSc, RN, Nurse1 | Ebru Ozen Bekar PhD, Assistant Professor2 1 Ministry of Health Sultanbeyli State Hospital, stanbul, Turkey 2 Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing Management, Duzce University, Duzce, Turkey Correspondence Ebru Ozen Bekar, Duzce University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Management in Nursing, Duzce, Turkey. Email: e..r@duzce.edu.tr Abstract Aim: To investigate the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and conflict management strategies. Background: Despite the important role of personality traits in conflict management strategy preferences, no study to date has addressed the relationship between personality traits and conflict management in nurse managers. Methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional design was applied. The study sample consisted of 114 nurse managers from six hospitals, and 111 participants completed forms for a total response rate of 97.36%. Results: The main findings revealed that the conflict management strategies used by nurse managers participating were as follows: integrating (39.21, range = 29-45), avoiding (38.39, range = 23-65), compromising (31.51, range = 24-40), dominating (20.05, range = 12-28 ) and obliging (19.42, range = 14-25). It was seen that managers whose personality traits were extraverted, agreeable or conscientious chose the integration strategy to manage conflict, whereas managers with emotional inconsistency in personality traits preferred the avoiding strategy. Conclusions: Nurse managers are important to effectively managing conflicts in the clinical environment. Personality trait may be linked to the successful management of conflict. Implications for Nursing Management: Revealing the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and associated conflict management strategies can help senior management organise useful training programmes to improve the conflict management capabilities. KEYWORDS conflict, hospital, nurse manager, personality traits J Nurs Manag. 2021;29:1239-1245. | 1239 GOKOGLAN and OZEN BEKAR turnover rate and quality of care may be impacted by such conditions. Effective conflict management is important to preserve the natural structure of an organisation, to offer a collaborative working environment to nurses and to reduce the turnover rate (Derin et al., 2017). Successful management of conflicts can stimulate a supportive environment to achieving organisational goals (Grubaugh & Flynn, 2018; Wright et al., 2014). There are various ways of managing conflicts at the organisational level. The various styles of conflict management are as follows: avoiding, problem-solving, smoothing, forcing, creating more comprehensive goals, making compromises, changing the parties to the conflict, manipulating the organisational relations, eliminating the majority vote and the crux of the conflict (Koel, 2015). Conflict management strategies of managers have also been listed as integrating, making compromises, forcing, and withdrawal and problemsolving. In a self-report survey, managers reported that they most prominently used an integrating strategy, whereas a strategy of avoiding was the least commonly used conflict management strategy (Al-Hamdan et al., 2019; Kdak et al., 2011). There are several factors determining managers' conflict management strategies. Personality differences have been considered as one of the most important factors (Tozkoparan, 2013). In this respect, personality is defined as 'Consistent behavior patterns originating from the individuals and in-person processes' (Burger, 2006). Personality is an important determinant in the choices and decisions people make in their professional life (Yelboa, 2006). In the previous studies conducted with some managers in other fields, it was claimed that the personality traits were an important determinant in the preferences of conflict management strategies (Erku & Tab ak, 2009). In the literature, while some studies have been conducted on conflict management strategies of nurses and nurse managers, there is no study comparing conflict management strategy preferences and personality traits of nurse managers. Thus, this study was designed to examine the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and the conflict management strategies. 2|METHODS 2.1|Study design and sample The study was carried out in a descriptive design. The study sample was selected using the simple random sampling method. The sample group included 114 nurse managers working in a training and research hospital, a private hospital and four public hospitals between September 2018 and February 2019. 111 participants completed forms for a total response rate of 97.36 per cent. 2.2|Ethical considerations Ethics committee approval (dated 04.06.2018 and numbered 2018/96) (ANNEX 5) was obtained from Non-Interventional Health Research Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty in Duzce University. 2.3|Instruments 2.3.1|Demographic information For demographic variables, information about age, gender, educational background, marital status, number of years employed as a nurse and number of years employed as a nurse manager was collected from participants. 2.3.2|Conflict management strategies scale 'Conflict management strategies scale' was first developed by zgan in 2006. The Likert scale, which is a 5-point scale consisting of 'Never', 'Rarely', 'Sometimes', 'Frequently' and 'Always' options, is used to determine the conflict management strategies included. The options were rated as 1 for 'Never', 2 for 'Rarely', 3 for 'Sometimes', 4 for 'Frequently' and 5 for 'Always'. The scale consists of five subscales, which are Integrating, Compromising, Obliging, Dominating and Avoiding. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of internal consistency reliability () for this scale was 0.90. The reliability coefficient for the subscales of the test ranged from 0.74 to 0.90 (Integrating, 0.90; Avoiding, 0.84; Compromising, 0.82; Dominating, 0.75; and Obliging, 0.74). The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of internal consistency reliability () for this scale was 0.90. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of internal consistency reliability () for the 41-item conflict management strategies scale was 0.84. 2.4|Five factor personality inventory short form Somer et al. (2002) developed this inventory using an international pool of personality items (Goldberg, 1999). The inventory consists of 220 items, 17 subscales and five factors. Likert scale is scored from 1 to 5, and additional measurements based on the total scores on subscales may be needed. According to the reliability analysis results of the inventory, Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients were found to be = 0.87 for 'Extraversion', = 0.90 for 'Agreeableness', = 0.92 for 'Conscientiousness', = 0.93 for 'Neuroticism' and = 0.87 for 'Openness to Development'. The short form of the inventory was developed by Tatar (2005). In the short form, there are five factor dimensions, a social desirability dimension and control items to determine the level of imprecise responses to the test. The social desirability dimension and control items have no effect on personality scale scores. Stability of participants in their responses is examined. In many validity studies, it has been shown that the short form reflects and represents the long form very well. According to the reliability analysis results, Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients were found to be 1240 | GOKOGLAN and OZEN BEKAR = 0.82 for 'Extraversion', = 0.82 for 'Agreeableness', = 0.85 for 'Conscientiousness', = 0.87 for 'Neuroticism' and = 0.79 for 'Openness to Development'. In this study, the Cronbach's alpha () internal consistency coefficient of the 85-item Five Factor Personality Inventory short form was 0.76. 2.5|Data analysis The relationship between two independent numerical variables (e.g. avoiding subscale scores and openness to development subscale scores) was evaluated using Pearson's correlation coefficient. The differences between two independent groups (e.g. marital status) were examined with unpaired t test. The differences between more than two independent groups (e.g. educational background) were examined with one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). When a difference was found out as a result of one-way variance analysis (ANOVA), Tukey's multiple comparison test was used to determine which group caused the difference. The significance level of 0.05 was applied. 3|RESULTS 3.1|Demographics of participants Of nurse managers participating, 83.8% were female, 58.6% were head nurses, and 79.3% held bachelor's degree and doctoral degrees. Besides, the mean age of the participants was 36.49 years, the average number of years employed was 15 years, and the average number of years employed as a manager was 5.14 years. As shown in Table 1, the conflict management strategies used by the nurse managers participating were as follows: 'Integrating' (39.21, range = 29-45), 'Avoiding' (38.39, range = 23-65), 'Compromising' (31.51, range = 24-40), 'Dominating' (20.05, range = 12-28 ) and 'Obliging' (19.42, range = 14-25). As shown in Table 2, the characteristics of the participants in the personality subscale were rated in the following order: 'Openness to Development' (4.12, range = 2.86-5.0), 'Agreeableness' (3.96, range = 2.63-5,0), 'Extraversion' (3.72, range = 1.57- 5.0), 'Conscientiousness' (3.94, range = 2.41-4.65), 'Emotional Inconsistency' (2.22, range = 1.0-3.8) and 'Social Desirability' (4.09, range = 2.30-5.0). The 'Social Desirability' subscale had no effect on the personality scale score. As shown in Table 3, there was a weak positive correlation between the 'Integrating' subscale score and the scores of 'Extraversion' (p = .046), 'Agreeableness' (p = .011) and 'Conscientiousness' (p = .002), whereas there was a moderate positive correlation between the 'Integrating' subscale score and the 'Open to Development' (p = .000) subscale score. There was a weak positive correlation between the 'Avoiding' subscale score and the 'Emotional Inconsistency' subscale score (p = .006). There was a weak positive correlation between the 'Compromising' subscale score and the 'Agreeableness' subscale score (p = .010). There was a weak positive correlation between the 'Obliging' subscale score and the 'Agreeableness' (p = .028), 'Conscientiousness' (p = .002) and 'Openness to Development' (p = .012) subscale scores. Mean SD Median Minimum Maximum Cronbach's alpha Integrating 39.21 4.17 39.0 29.0 45.0 0.772 Avoiding 38.89 7.41 39.0 23.0 65.0 0.733 Compromising 31.51 3.75 31.0 24.0 40.0 0.663 Dominating 20.05 3.45 20.0 12.0 28.0 0.597 Obliging 19.42 2.71 19.0 14.0 25.0 0.519 Total Cronbach's alpha = 0.842 TABLE 1Descriptive statistics and reliability analysis for subscales of conflict management strategies scale TABLE 2Descriptive statistics and reliability analysis for subscales of personality inventory Mean SD Median Minimum Maximum Cronbach's alpha Extraversion 3.72 0.62 3.71 1.57 5.00 0.813 Agreeableness 3.96 0.50 3.94 2.63 5.00 0.749 Conscientiousness 3.94 0.41 4.00 2.41 4.65 0.621 Emotional Inconsistency 2.22 0.61 2.13 1.00 3.80 0.804 Openness to Development 4.12 0.44 4.14 2.86 5.00 0.661 Total Cronbach's alpha = 0.759 | 1241 GOKOGLAN and OZEN BEKAR 4|DISCUSSION In the study, the findings obtained from the responses were discussed to determine the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and their conflict management strategy preferences. Conflict management strategies preferred by nurse managers were investigated in five dimensions, which were integrating, compromising, obliging, dominating and avoiding. It was concluded that the most preferred strategies were integrating (39.21), avoiding (38.39), compromising (31.51), dominating (20.05) and obliging (19.42), respectively. The conflict management strategy preferred in the first place was integrating. Integrating was a dimension that prioritized cooperation between the parties and focused on the options ensuring that all the parties would be satisfied. The result suggests that nurse managers firstly opt for cooperation to create and maintain a collaborative working area in hospitals. It is believed that mutual trust can be achieved when the nurses feel that their managers pay attention to their problems, thoughts and emotions for those problems and suggestions for the solutions. In most of previous studies, integrating was reported to be the most commonly used strategy to manage conflict by the nurse managers (Al-Hamdan et al., 2016, 2019; Kantek & Kavla, 2007; Kdak et al., 2011). According to the results, the second strategy preferred by the nurse managers in conflict management was avoiding. While the avoiding strategy was found to be the least preferred method in the previous studies, it was the second most favoured strategy in this study (Kantek & Kavla, 2007; Kdak et al., 2011; Pavlaks et al., 2011). Avoiding, as the opposite of the integrating strategy, was a dimension aimed at ignoring an actual or potential conflict situation and staying away from it, which emphasized the fear of losing among the parties. It was stated that the nurses' job satisfaction levels decreased and their trust manager decreased, when their problems and conflicts were ignored. This influenced the level of commitment to the profession (Cihangirolu et al., 2015). Moreover, this could lead to many negative results such as avoiding patient care, neglecting the safety and emotional needs of patients (Obied & Sayed Ahmed, 2016). Conflicts within the organisation take up a significant part of daily working time (Pavlaks et al., 2011). Hence, the time that nurses devote to patient care decreases. Consequently, it is alarming that nurse managers prefer the avoiding strategy. Nurse managers can make the right interventions and create some useful results for nurses and health organisations (Al-Hamdan et al., 2016). It was worthy of note that the managers participating in this study mostly preferred to use two opposite TABLE 3Investigation of the relationships between the subscales of conflict management strategies scale and the subscales of personality inventory Integrating Avoiding Compromising Dominating Obliging Extraversion r 0.190 0.086 0.085 0.044 0.072 p 0.046* 0.370 0.377 0.649 0.453 Agreeableness r 0.242 0.114 0.244 0.164 0.208 p 0.011* 0.235 0.010* 0.086 0.028* Conscientiousness r 0.285 0.035 0.168 0.059 0.288 p 0.002* 0.717 0.078 0.536 0.002* Emotional inconsistency r 0.054 0.260 0.080 0.009 0.007 p 0.573 0.006* 0.405 0.924 0.941 Openness to development r 0.382 0.103 0.121 0.035 0.237 p 0.000* 0.282 0.205 0.715 0.012* Note: r: Pearson's correlation coefficient. *p < .05. r Level of correlation Direction of correlation .00 No correlation r = , negative correlation r = +, positive correlation .01-.29 Weak .30-.69 Moderate .70-.99 Strong 1.00 Perfect Correlation 1242 | GOKOGLAN and OZEN BEKAR conflict management strategies, namely integrating and avoiding. In conflict situations, each situation comes with a different problem, so different strategies may come in useful. However, hospitals are organisations with constant stress, and ignoring or withdrawing conflicts may increase the tension. Increased tension may influence nurses and other hospital staff adversely. Tendency of managers to use an avoiding strategy may cause negative results for nurses because nurses working at hospitals with constant tension experience high levels of stress, which may be exacerbated by the avoiding strategy used by nurse managers in conflict. (Aslan, 2006). Since the present study revealed that nurse managers mostly preferred the avoiding and integrating strategies, these results conflicted with previous studies on conflict management strategies. For instance, Hendel et al. (2005) noted that the nurse managers mostly used the compromising strategy in their study. The personality traits of nurse managers were examined under six subscales, which were listed as Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional inconsistency, Openness to development and Social desirability. The mean scores for subscales were found as follows: 3.72 for 'Extraversion', 3.96 for 'Agreeableness', 3.94 for 'Conscientiousness', 2.22 for 'Emotional Inconsistency', 4.12 for 'Openness to Development' and 4.09 for 'Social Desirability'. These results showed that nurse managers participating were mostly extraverted, sociable, sensitive, conscientious people, who avoided the conflict and preferred to be more agreeable, who could take the lead in the groups, who could work with a plan, who were open to different experiences, who preferred to be more compatible and who cared about moral values (Tatar, 2016). The social desirability was a subscale indicating whether the participants exhibited the behaviours expected by the society or not, and the mean score of the nurse managers for this subscale was found to be high. This suggested that the nurse managers put the personality traits expected by the society to the fore. Considering the previous studies conducted with nurse managers, Alan and Baykal (2018) concluded that the highest scores were seen in the conscientiousness subscale and the lowest scores in the emotional inconsistency. In another study conducted with nurse managers, it was shown that the highest mean scores were calculated in the conscientiousness subscale. Lastly, Celebi akrolu and Harmanc Seren (2019) reported that the agreeableness subscale showed the highest scores, while the emotional inconsistency subscale included the lowest scores. The underlying cause of this difference might be the fact that the personality characteristic can be affected by personal experience and working environment. Also, it can be said that there was a limitation of geographical location. Since the cultural settings of working areas were similar in our study, a study of nurses from a different culture might yield different findings. The conflict management strategies preferred by the nurse managers (integrating, compromising, obliging, dominating and avoiding) and their personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional inconsistency and openness to development) were compared to determine the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and their conflict management strategy preferences. There was a weak positive correlation between an integrating strategy and three personality traits, which were extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Nurse managers mostly preferred to use the integrating strategy. Considering these results, it could be said that the nurse managers participating were outgoing, sociable, compassionate, cooperative people, who could work with a plan, aware of their responsibilities and opted for use of an integrating strategy in the case of conflict (Tatar, 2016). Since no study to date investigated on the relationship between the personality traits and the conflict management strategies with nurse participants, the results of studies using other professions are explored here. Antonioni (1998) surveyed the students and then company managers, and found a positive relationship between the extraversion dimension and integrating strategy. As a result of their study conducted with the individuals working in industry, Erku and Tab ak (2009) concluded that there was a significant positive relationship between the agreeableness trait and the strategy of integrating. The study conducted with the school principals by Yldzolu and Burgaz (2014) suggested that there was a positive and moderately significant correlation between the integrating strategy and the agreeableness and extraversion dimensions, which also supported the results of our study. In another study including bankers, Khalid et al. (2015) pointed out that there was a positive correlation between the extraversion personality trait and the integrating strategy. As mentioned above, this finding suggests that an extroverted personality trait was related to the tendency to use a strategy of integrating as we have found. As can be seen, there were differences in significance levels among the studies, but the cause of these differences might be the sample groups of different professions or size of sample groups. Another result of our study showed that an integrating strategy had a moderate positive correlation with the openness to development subdimension. The openness to development dimension was about intelligence, culture, imagination and being open to experience, and people with these characteristics prioritized cooperation in conflict (Tatar, 2016). In a study conducted with school principals by Yldzlolu and Burgaz (2014), it was seen that as the scores obtained from the personality trait of openness to development increased, the tendency to use an integrating strategy in conflicts increased. Our results were similar to the study of Yldzlolu and Burgaz. In our study, a weak positive correlation was found out between an avoiding strategy and emotional inconsistency. It has been previously demonstrated that nurse managers who were on an emotional rollercoaster and people who generally feel sensitive, emotional, anxious, resilient, impulsive, nervous at the same time preferred a strategy of avoiding conflict situations (Tatar, 2016). In the literature, Erku and Tab ak (2009) claimed that there was a significant positive correlation between the strategy of avoiding and the agreeableness dimension. They also found a negative correlation between the avoiding strategy and the personality traits of extraversion, emotional inconsistency | 1243 GOKOGLAN and OZEN BEKAR and openness to development. In contrast to our findings, it has been observed by others that individuals with extroversion and openness to experience personality traits tended to use avoiding and compromising strategies in conflict management (Ahmed et al., 2010). As opposed to our findings, a positive correlation has been found between the use of an avoiding strategy and the personality trait of extraversion (Tekin et al., 2012). Yldzlolu and Burgaz (2014) found a weak correlation between the avoiding strategy and the dimension of agreeableness. Our study revealed different results from the previous study results in the literature. The reason for this difference can be the fact that participants were from different professional groups in this previous research. An obliging strategy was found to have a weak positive correlation with the agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to development personality traits. Considering the findings, it could be inferred that the participants, who avoided conflict, were sensitive, calm, cautious, planned and open to innovations tended to obey, ignore their own goals and focus on the demands of the other party (Tatar, 2016). It was seen that the present results related to the obliging strategy were similar to some previous study findings. For instance, Tozkoparan (2013) found that the obliging strategy was positively correlated with the personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness and emotional inconsistency, while it was negatively correlated with the openness to development. In another study, it was noted that there was a positive relationship between the obliging strategy and the agreeableness and openness to development subscales (Yldzolu & Burgaz, 2014). In our current study, a weak positive correlation was found between compromising strategy and agreeableness trait. In general, people with the agreeableness personality traits are sensitive people who are prone to cooperation but avoid the conflict. In daily life, when a strategy of compromising is used, mutual concessions are made. Thus, it is not surprising that individuals with this personality trait lean towards a compromising strategy as a natural result of their personality. In the literature, Antonioni (1998) determined that the agreeableness personality trait was positively correlated with the compromising strategy. Besides, others have found a weak positive correlation of the compromising strategy with the agreeableness, openness to development and conscientiousness dimensions (Yldzolu & Burgaz, 2014). As can be seen above, the previous study supported that the agreeableness personality trait was a determining factor for tendency to use a compromising strategy. On the other hand, contrary to these data, another study has suggested that extroverts preferred the compromising strategy (Ahmed et al., 2010). 5|LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY In this study, the relationship between the conflict management strategies and personality traits was examined. Other factors that could influence the conflict management strategies of nurse managers were not addressed. How conflict management strategies used by nurse managers affect the job satisfaction and employee engagement of the nurses working with them can be investigated in the future studies. 6|CONCLUSION Nurse managers participating in this study were mostly characterized as extraverted, sociable, sensitive, conscientious people, who were inclined to cooperate, who could take the lead in the groups, who were open to different experiences, who preferred to be more compatible and who cared about moral values. It is concluded that the most preferred conflict management strategies of nurse managers were integrating, avoiding, compromising, dominating and obliging, respectively. The results suggest that personality trait of nurse managers was a determining factor in conflict management strategy preferences. The openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness can be said to be more preferable personality traits for nurses in the management position. 7|IMPLIC ATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT Revealing the relationship between nurse managers' personality traits and conflict management strategies can help to understand the dynamics between nurses and managers in units. It can also help senior management prepare useful training programmes to improve conflict management capabilities. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The study is graduate thesis. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS EB and EG designed the study concept or idea. EB and EG designed the study. EG collected and processed the data. EB and EG analysed and interpreted the data. EB and EG wrote the article. 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