A constructive Approach to Managing Faculty Conflict: An Action Research Study

Participant Interviews. Additional qualitative data collected and analyzed in the evaluation phase involved interviews of four participants from the implemented study which provided additional information regarding workshop effectiveness.


Fifth stage of the study. After the first and second conflict management strategies workshops concluded, the researcher contacted four participants from the workshops to be interviewed as the final stage of the implemented study. The interview participants were selected based on the use of maximal variation sampling, “purposefully selecting individuals that differ on some demographic or other characteristic (e.g., age, gender, education, work experience, role in the community, etc.” (Ivankova, 2015). Once the participants selected agreed to the interview, the researcher scheduled Zoom meetings with each participant and an interview protocol guide (appendix L) was used to conduct each 30-minute interview. The qualitative data from the Zoom interviews were transcribed via Sonix, an online transcription service and collected and analyzed via Dedoose, an online software program used to analyze qualitative data.
In the interview with the four participants, the researcher asked five questions from the interview protocol guide which included the following:

1. 
   Are you better prepared to manage conflict now after attending the workshop? Why or why not?
   
2. 
   Was the workshop beneficial? If so, in what ways. If not, why not?
   
3. 
   Do you intend to apply any of the conflict management strategies obtained from the workshop? If so, which one(s). If not, why not?
   
4. 
   What, if any, changes would you make to the content or delivery of the workshop to make it more impactful for participants?
   
5. 
   Do you think a conflict management strategies workshop is beneficial as a training tool for faculty on our campus?
   

To ensure the confidentiality of the participants in the interviews, the researcher will continue to use their assigned pseudonyms. When responding to the first question Roger (not real name) stated,

Having heard from others and working through the activities, I am not afraid of it [conflict] as I once was. I’m confident now that in the heat of the moment, I can handle conflict. While I do not deal with much conflict, I do feel I am better prepared if it were to ever come to the surface at some point in time.
while participant King (not real name) stated,

I've always had an approach, but not necessarily a detailed approach to conflict. It was more so in a general sense. But now I think about conflict management a little differently since I've had the workshop. Now, what that looks like, I don’t know. It’s more so that thought of being more direct about managing conflict. But I never thought about it or even considered what an approach may look like until participating in these workshops.

All four participants agreed the workshops were ‘very’ beneficial and intended to apply some of the conflict management strategies learned in the workshops.
Wanda (not real name) as an administrator in response to question number five, do you think a conflict management strategies workshop is a beneficial training tool for faculty on our campus, in which she responded,
I see a lot of value in this kind of work with us at the institution, because I think there's been a lot of conflict in the last several years. And that would help clear some of those channels.

Rosalie (not real name), a long-time faculty member of 20-plus years added to the same question,

I've had those situations of conflict and I've had them with colleagues. I've had them inside the college, outside the college with administrators in my college, with administrators at the university level. And I've had to go to
H.R. The big conflict resolution at MSU…somebody leaves. The institution needs some type of conflict resolution whether it’s a conflict management strategies workshop or even an Ombuds Office.