Relationship between leadership style and Conflict Management among the Managers of the Hospitals sponsored by Lorestan university of medical sciences

Background: Hospital as the gravitational center of the health and treatment system and an open system involving complex processes and various (qualitative and quantitative) resources, needs an effective leadership style and an approperiate strategy to solve the organizational disagreements and conflicts in order to achieve its basic objectives. The object of this research is to study the relationship between leadership style and conflict management among the managers of the hospitals, which sponsord by Lorestan university of Medical sciences during the year 2004. Materials and Methods: This research is a descriptive – analytical study. The necessary information was gathered by three different questionnaires (personal information, leadership style using Fiedler’s LPC method and conflict management), and also by interviewing the subjects. The collected data were analyzed using statistical software. The research sample consisted of 177 managers from 13 hospitals, which were sponsored by Lorestan university of medical sciences. Results: The findings demonstrated that 54.2 percent of the subjects had a duty-oriented leadership style, 35.6 percent had a relationship – oriented leadership style, and 10.2 percent of the subjects had an independent – social leadership style. Considering conflict management strategies, 49.7 percent showed a non – confrontational strategy, 44.6 percent demonstrated a control-oriented strategy and 5.7 percent had a problem- solving strategy. The subject’s leadership style had a significant statistical relationship with their job experience (p=0.043). Also, there was a significant statistical relationship between conflict management strategies and the sex of the subjects (p= 0.036). Age of the subjects and their control-oriented strategy also demonstrated a significant statistical relationship(p=0.01). Conclusion: Determining the leadership and management styles and identifying the methods of dealing with disagreements and conflicts in hospitals is crucial. Since some of the factors involved in leadership style and conflict management have been studied in this research, it is suggested that the effect of other factors such as organizational culture , social culture , race , personality , etc. on the leadership style of people be studied more comprehensively.