The Impact of Conflict Management on Police Officers’ Job Satisfaction

Conflict in the workplace yields both positive and negative effects. Conflict can lead to positive organizational effectiveness when it is acknowledged and managed. Private sector has emphasized the importance of conflict management, and its management methods have spread to the public sector. Previous research have studied the impact of conflict management strategies on employee’s behavioral changes and the relationships between conflict management and organizational outcomes. Despite the expansion of conflict management research, little attention has been devoted to the empirical studies on the effects of conflict management strategies in the police organization. Recently, the Korean national police agency has adopted the autonomous police system and reorganized the organizational structure, which gives rise to the conflict in the decision-making process. Therefore, manager’s of the police organization have recognized the importance of good conflict management strategies. The focus of this study in on the dynamic effects of those strategies on workplace practices, outcomes, and other behavioral dimensions such as job satisfactions, organizational commitment and effectiveness. This study examines the impact of conflict management strategies on police officer’s job satisfaction. Based on the theoretical model that depicts three types of conflict management, we examines positive and negative effects of each types on the job satisfaction. In order to verify theoretical assumptions, a survey was conducted targeting 427 police officers and multiple regression analysis was used to find a linear relationship between two variables. In addition, moderating effects of organizational justice in the relationship between conflict management and job satisfactions was examined. Results showed that compromising-collaboration strategy has a positive impact on the dependent variable. The statistical significance of the moderating role of organizational justice was found.