Is Ting-Toomey's Five Approaches To Conflict Resolution?

As social beings, people have innate tendencies to work in groups or relate with objects and people in their environment. The intra and inter relationships with people, at times, generate conflict which synonymously used as dispute, fight, war, battle, disagreement, and clash. It is described by American Heritage Dictionary of English Language (2004).
Conflict as a form of intense interpersonal and/or intrapersonal dissonance between two or more interdependent parties based on incompatible goals, needs, desires, values, beliefs, and/or attitudes Ting-Toomey (1985, p.72).
For instance, Livestrong (2010) listed seven types of conflict which included relationships, interests, values, leaderships, personality, styles, and ethics. Men and Women
could respond to conflict differently as a result of various factors. Such as emotional difference and behavioural differences.
In this paper, we focused on two factors that differ men and female in conflict situation.
Emotional difference
Behavioural differences

Emotional differences
Research suggests men and women may differ in the amounts and types of their emotional behaviour. There is evidence that girls and boys are socialized to express emotions that are socially appropriate for their gender. Specifically, the expression of aggression and anger is viewed as acceptable for men but not for women, and the expression of happiness and negative emotions such as sadness and depression is more acceptable for women than for men (Brody, 2000; Cancian and Gordon, 1988; Hochschild, 1983).
In particular, women tend to express positive emotions and smile more than men, while men tend to limit their emotional expressiveness (Alexander and Wood, 2000; Hochschild, 1983; Jansz, 2000; LaFrance and Hecht, 2000). These observed differences in emotional expression may contribute to the stereotype that women are more emotional than men (LaFrance and Banaji, 1992).
In powerful jobs, workers are expected to express themselves in a manner most consistent with a man’s emotional style. For example, while the expression of anger is viewed as more acceptable in a man than a woman, the expression of anger is also more acceptable in a individual of high status compared to one of lower status (Brody, 2000; Cancian and Gordon, 1988; Hochschild, 1983; Sinaceur and Tiedens, 2006).
Women are seen as naturally nurturing and caring and more suited than men for jobs that require such skills (Cliff et al., 2005; Hochschild, 1983). Accordingly, In the workplace conflict situation, compared to men, women more frequently managed their anger at work and less frequently managed their happiness. In other words, men were more expressive of anger while women were more expressive of happiness in the workplace.

Behavioural differences
Williams and Best (1990) demonstrated that there were widespread beliefs that men are more adventurous, aggressive, daring, autocratic, forceful, dominant, enterprising, stern, robust, independent and strong, and that women are more sensitive, dreamy, sentimental, affectionate, submissive and superstitious.
This difference would affect workplace conflict resolution between men and women. For example:

Gender seems to be a factor in preference for conflict resolution styles. Gender has been an issue of controversy and a global one Ome, B.N. (2013). There are five approaches to conflict resolution.
1. Threat to the other party - when one of the parties in conflict notifies the other party of an intention to publicize the other party’s action, and thus, damage the other party’s image and reputation.
2. Accepting the situation - one of the parties complies with the demands of the other party which enables one to avoid the risk or effort associated with confrontational strategies.
3. Negotiating with the other party - parties seek compromise in order to reach a solution acceptable to both parties. Mediation – This is when the parties seek the assistance of a third party to assist them in negotiation and they try to reach a settlement by following the mediator’s
guidance.
4. Seeking the assistance of a third party - This is when the parties seek the assistance of a third party to assist them in negotiation and they try to reach a settlement by following the mediator’s guidance.
5. Seeking the assistance of an arbitrator - This is when parties seek the assistance of an arbitrator (someone who has the power and authority to settle disputes decisively) so that both parties will explain their viewpoints and the final decision made by the arbitrator must be followed by involved parties. (Heuer & Penrod, 1986; Sternberg & Dobson, 1987; Gire & Carment, 1993a; Ojiji, 1998).
Based on these five style, the study revealed that males were higher in preference for threats, while females were higher in preference for negotiation.
However, males and females significantly differed in their preference for negotiation, mediation and arbitration in intergroup conflict situation, with males showing higher preference for the styles.
This finding is consistent with the findings of Sutschek (2001) who found that females did not use the integrating and obliging conflict resolution styles more often than males when confronted with the same conflict scenario.
However, this finding is in line with the findings of Duane (1989) who found that women were less inclined to avoid grievance-related issues, tended to be more competitive, and were less likely to accommodate their opponents’ demands compared with men.

Some of the findings
In a study conducted by Antonioni (1998) it was revealed that gender in general had little relationship with the variance of the conflict-management style.
Gender was non-significant in all models after controlling for the personality variables. Korabik et al (1993) came to the same conclusion a few years earlier when they stated in their study that women managers do not differ from their male counterparts in preferred conflict-handling style.
The study demonstrated that there is no significant difference in male and female attitude towards using mediation to resolve conflict just as male and female were not gender sensitive to resolving conflict through
mediation.