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

Instruments

In the exploratory pilot study, the researcher created an instrument (see Appendix R), a questionnaire to guide the exploratory pilot study interviews, with the primary objective focused on validating the existence of conflict between faculty and administrators and whether or not it was an issue that needed to be addressed. The researcher relied on the following questions to develop the questionnaire; does conflict exist between faculty members and administrators on MSU’s campus and if so, how do faculty and administrators manage conflict? The face-to-face interviews, at that time, were manually transcribed to ensure validity of the data and emersion of the researcher in the data at all times. To further the strength and support of the research a document review was conducted of institutional records regarding conflict management.

Reconnaissance Phase Quantitative Findings

Institutional Data. The results of the exploratory pilot study based on the quantitative and qualitative data collected and analyzed from the Office of Human Resources provided the following results: (1) if issues of conflict are not resolved by the parties involved, be it between two faculty members, one faculty member and one administrator, between administrators or even an employee and a supervisor; an official report at the Office of Human Resources can be filed and a grievance process started,

2. 
   if faculty or administrators do not want to file an official documented grievance report, Human Resources offers mediation as an intervention where those qualified from Human Resources can serve as a third party to assist in resolving the conflict, and
   
3. 
   Human Resources offers workshops for administrators, but not faculty, on how to manage conflict. However, these conflict management workshops for administrators
   

have not been offered since 2012. The data collected and analyzed from the Office of Human Resources did not demonstrate other alternatives for managing conflict outside of a mediation process and institutional policies and procedures to address conflict before reporting a formal grievance were not reflected.