THE CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS WHILE CONFLICTING WITH THEIR SUPERVISORS

Conflict is everywhere as there are conflicts at educational organization. One of the most affected groups from conflicts is administrators who are a bridge between teachers and parents, supervisors. The aims of this study are to determine which strategies the school administrators use and how often they use these strategies and whether their strategies change according to their genders, educational situations and managerial status. 370 school administrators participated in this study and they were applied Organizational Conflict Management Instrument developed by Putnam and Wilson. Lisrel 9.0 and SPSS 20.0 programs were used during analysis. As a result, compromising strategy is the most used one while dominating is the less used strategy by school administrators while they were conflicting with their supervisors. Although the frequency of avoiding and dominating strategies differ according to their genders significantly, there aren’t any significant differences among administrators in terms of their educational situations. Their reasons for conflict management strategies can be examined through qualitative research method.