International Journal of Conflict Management

A process model of social intelligence and problem-solving style for conflict

management
Afzalur Rahim, Ismail Civelek, Feng Helen Liang,
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Afzalur Rahim, Ismail Civelek, Feng Helen Liang, (2018) "A process model of social intelligence and
problem-solving style for conflict management", International Journal of Conflict Management, https://
doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-06-2017-0055
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Conflict
A process model of social management
intelligence and problem-solving
style for conflict management
Afzalur Rahim, Ismail Civelek and Feng Helen Liang
Department of Management, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green,
Kentucky, USA Received 20 June 2017
Revised 28 November 2017
8 March 2018
25 March 2018
Accepted 26 March 2018
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to explore the relationship between social intelligence (SI) and problem-solving
(PS) style of handling conflict.
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Design/methodology/approach – Data on SI and PS were collected with questionnaires from 406

faculty members, and the data were averaged by departments. This resulted in a sample of 43 departments,
and all the data analyses were performed with this sample of 43. SI is defined as the ability to be aware of
relevant social situations, to handle situational challenges effectively, to understand others’ concerns and
feelings and to build and maintain positive relationships in social settings.
Findings – Data analyses with LISREL at the department level suggest that SI is positively associated with
PS.
Research limitations/implications – Data were collected from only one public university in the USA,
which might limit the generalizability of the results. The department chairs need to acquire the four
components of SI to improve faculty members’ PS. This will hopefully lead to constructive management of
many faculty–department chair conflicts.
Originality/value – One of the strengths of this study is that the measures of endogenous and exogenous
variables were analyzed at the department level, not individual level. This study contributed to our
understanding of the relationships of situational awareness, situational response, cognitive empathy and
social skills with each other and to PS.
Keywords Leadership, Problem solving, Intelligence, Conflict, Social intelligence
Paper type Research paper

Intelligence and conflict management are two significant constructs in social sciences, and
there is great interest among scholars on these constructs that is evidenced by the
theoretical and empirical studies that are coming in steady streams in specialized journals.
Unfortunately, there is no empirical study that investigated the relationship between them.
To our knowledge, there is no study that explored the relationship between supervisors’
social intelligence and subordinates’ engagement in problem-solving behavior to deal with
interpersonal conflict.
People generally associate intelligence with IQ which is a measure of cognitive, academic
or mathematical–logical intelligence. Grade point average, scholastic aptitude test and other
admission tests are surrogates of cognitive intelligence (Rahim, 2014). Academic institutions
offer programs that are generally associated with this intelligence. Unfortunately, literature
on management generally acknowledges the inadequacy of cognitive intelligence as a
predictor of one’s success in life or effective leadership. Judge et al. (2004) meta-analysis
suggests that there is low correlation between cognitive intelligence and leadership. Is it International Journal of Conflict
Management
possible that there are other types of intelligence that are necessary for successful © Emerald Publishing Limited
1044-4068
leadership? DOI 10.1108/IJCMA-06-2017-0055
 IJCMA In recent years, scholars have been discussing other dimensions of intelligence:
emotional intelligence, social intelligence and cultural intelligence that may be positively
correlated with PS (van Dyne et al., 2009; Gardner, 1999; Mayer et al., 2008; Sternberg, 2002).
Social intelligence (SI) is differentiated from general, emotional and cultural intelligence, but
there are some overlaps among these constructs. The value-added contribution of the
present study is that it develops and tests a process model of the relationships of academic
department chairs’ SI components to each other and to faculty members’ use of the PS. In the
present study, academic leaders’ SI is linked to faculty members’ PS with data collected with
questionnaires from 43 departments at a public university in the USA.

Social intelligence construct

John Dewey (1909) was the first psychologist to suggest that the “ultimate moral motives
and forces are nothing more or less than social intelligence—the power of observing and
comprehending social situations” (p. 43). It is generally recognized that Thorndike made a
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significant contribution by popularizing the construct through an article that appeared in

Harper’s Magazine in 1920. He suggested three components of intelligence: abstract (the
ability to understand and manage ideas and symbols), mechanical (the ability to learn to
understand and manage things) and social (the ability to manage and understand men and
women, boys and girls, and act wisely in human relations) (p. 228). This definition of SI had
both cognitive and behavioral components. Sternberg (2002), in his numerous studies
provides empirical evidence that there are three types of intelligence – creative, analytical
and practical – that are needed for one’s success. Sternberg’s practical intelligence is very
similar to SI. Recent theories suggest similar concepts – intrapersonal (emotional) and
interpersonal (social) intelligence (Gardner, 1999) and emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998;
Mayer et al., 2008).
Scholars now agree that SI is associated with one’s ability to understand thinking,
feelings and behaviors of other people; to interact with them properly; and to act effectively
in various situations (Kihlstrom and Cantor, 2000; Sternberg, 2002; Thorndike, 1920). It is
appropriate to build on this definition and broaden the concept of SI. For the present study,
we have adopted the definition of SI suggested by Rahim (2014, p. 46) as the ability to be
aware of relevant social situational contexts; to deal with the contexts or challenges
effectively; to understand others’ concerns, feelings and emotional states; and to speak in a
clear and convincing manner knowing what to say, when to say it and how to say it and to
build and maintain positive relationships with others. This definition consists of four types
of abilities
situational awareness, situational response, cognitive empathy and social
skills. This four-category SI nomenclature is used in the present study. The first two
abilities, situational awareness and situational response, are necessary for one’s career
success and effective leadership and were classified as primary abilities (Rahim, 2014).
Situational awareness refers to one’s ability to collect information for the diagnosis and
formulation of problem(s); situational response refers to one’s ability to use this information
to make effective decisions to obtain desired results. These primary abilities are essential for
success as a leader in an organization. The secondary abilities are cognitive empathy and
social skills, refer to the abilities to understand the feelings and needs of people, to
communicate with them effectively and to build and maintain relationships. These two
abilities can help a leader to remain aware of various social situational contexts, thus
improve their situational response competence. Next, this study presents a description of the
theoretical basis of the four SI components and interrelationships among them.
 Situational awareness Conflict
This component of SI is associated with one’s ability to comprehend or assess relevant social management
situational contexts. This ability is also described as social perceptiveness by Zaccaro et al.
(1991) and alternately as contextual intelligence by Sternberg (1985), Bennis and Thomas
(2002). Albrecht (2007) defines situational awareness as the ability to read situations and
comprehend social context influencing behavior, and to choose effective strategies, and
includes situational awareness as one of the five components of SI, along with presence,
authenticity, clarity and empathy.
To diagnose situations timely and to formulate a problem correctly, leaders in
organizations need to collect relevant information. However, not all leaders possess the
capability to make an appropriate assessment of situational variables. If leaders lack
situational awareness, they will not be able to understand the relevant situational variables
and formulate the problems correctly. When leaders formulate a problem wrongly, it could
lead to Type III error, defined as the probability of solving a wrong problem when one
should solve the right problem (Mitroff, 1998; Mitroff and Silvers, 2010). Only those leaders
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who possess this ability are able to collect necessary information and formulate a problem
correctly, thereby reducing the incidence of this error.
Existing research found that, by enhancing situational awareness, the effectiveness of
problem-solving can be significantly improved in team work, after controlling for the
difficulties of the tasks and the initial problem-solving skills of the teams (Pedaste and
Sarapuu, 2006). In addition, O’Brien and O’Hare (2007) found that participants in training
programs with high situational awareness performed well, irrespective of the training
conditions. Mayo and Nohria (2005) suggest that a leader’s ability to understand and adapt
to different situational contexts is associated with successful leadership.
When leaders do not have adequate information on a problem or a potential business
opportunity, they are likely to engage in internal and/or external environmental scanning. In
addition, the leaders may seek help from experts to gain an overall understanding of the
problem. When experts have different and even contradictory assessments of a problem, it is
up to the leader to decide which problem formulation reflects social reality and is to be
accepted. Again, this task requires the leader to possess adequate situational awareness.
Hence, we suggest that leaders with higher situational awareness ability are better able to
recognize patterns associated with their work environment and formulate the problem
correctly.

Situational response
This component is associated with one’s competence or ability to adapt to or deal with any
social situations effectively. Previous literature describes similar leadership capabilities
such as behavioral flexibility of leaders (Zaccaro et al., 1991) and adaptive capacity (Bennis
and Thomas, 2002). Empirical studies have provided support to the positive relationship
between organizational performance and leadership flexibility, measured by subordinates’
rating or by the mastery of opposing but complementary behaviors (Kaiser and Overfield,
2010).
However, situational response is a broader concept than behavioral flexibility or
adaptive capacity. Situational response is also different from situational awareness
(Albrecht, 2007; Mayo and Nohria, 2005). These two components have overlaps, but are
conceptually independent. It is possible for leaders to recognize or diagnose a situation or
problem correctly, but not be able to make a decision leading to desirable outcomes. In other
words, it is possible for a leader to have high or low abilities associated with these two
 IJCMA components. A high–high leader is more effective than a high–low, low–high or low–low
leader.
These two abilities are often utilized in typical two-step processes in organizational
learning: detection and correction of error (Argyris and Schon, 1996), diagnosis and
intervention in conflict (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979) and capabilities “to diagnose an issue and
its causes” and “to decide on the best course of action” (Schmidt and Tannenbaum, 1960).
The two steps in these learning processes – diagnosis or detection of error and intervention
or correction of error – correspond with the two components of SI – assessment and
responses to situational contexts.
Existing literature on leadership is focused on matching leadership styles with
situational variables to improve followers’ job performance and satisfaction, but not enough
research has been done to identify the unique situations for which creative responses
(leadership styles) would be needed to improve outcomes. Even if a leader can diagnose a
situation correctly, he or she may not possess the necessary competence to make an effective
decision to deal with it. Leaders need to possess both situational awareness and response
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competencies to define the situational variables and respond to them appropriately.

Situational awareness and situational response are two distinct abilities that are essential
for effective leadership. The following sections continue to discuss how the other two
components, cognitive empathy and social skills, can help leaders to improve their
effectiveness.

Cognitive empathy
Empathy is associated with understanding the emotions of others and being sensitive to
changes in their feelings and thoughts (Goleman, 2005; Albrecht, 2007; Ang and Goh, 2010).
Empathy has four components: cognitive, intellectual, behavioral and affective. In this
study, we particularly use cognitive empathy, which refers to one’s ability to consciously
put oneself into the mind of another person, who can be either inside or outside the
organization, to understand what that person is thinking or feeling (Batson, 2009; Decety,
2015; Decety and Yoder, 2016).
Regarding the focus on SI, Kaukiainen et al. (1999) suggested that the cognitive empathy
is an essential part in forming SI (p. 83). In organizations, leaders should have cognitive
empathy to be aware of feelings and thoughts of subordinates, colleagues and people from
the outside of the organization. Using cognitive empathy to connect people should help
leaders in using their social skills effectively. Therefore, cognitive empathy should be
positively associated with social skills.

Social skills
This component of SI is associated with one’s ability to speak in a clear and convincing
manner that involves knowing what to say, when to say it and how to say it. Social skills
also include building and maintaining positive relations and act properly in human relations
(Rahim, 2018, pp. 121-122; Riggio, 1986). Literature review by Baron and Tang (2009; see
also Riggio and Throckmorton, 1988) shows that social skills can positively influence a
number positive outcomes in organizations. Some of these outcomes are higher job
performance (Hochwarter et al., 2006), faster promotions and higher salaries (Belliveau et al.,
1995) and better results in negotiations (Lewicki et al., 2005). Negotiation is a part of conflict
management, and we are suggesting that social skills and other components of SI are
positively associated with PS.
Leaders in an organization use social skills to continuously gather relevant information
from inside and outside the organization to improve their situational awareness.
 Competency in social skills helps leaders communicate and justify their decisions and vision Conflict
to subordinates effectively. Within an organization, people, who have high social skills management
create or recognize opportunities, can gain acceptance for projects involving cross-divisional
resources through social networks (Kleinbaum and Tushman, 2007; Hitt et al., 2011).
Moreover, Baron and Markham (2000) and Baron and Tang (2009) suggested that
entrepreneurs’ social skills competencies might play a role in their success due to effective
interactions with others. Hence, entrepreneurs who possess well-developed social skills gain
important competitive advantages in success of their new ventures over others who are
lower on this competency.
In the previous section, we suggested that cognitive empathy directly affects social skills
and indirectly influences situational awareness. In other words, social skills mediate the
relationship between cognitive empathy and situational awareness.

Problem-solving approach to conflict management

Conflict is inevitable in organizations, and academic institutions are no exception to this.
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One of the least investigated area of interpersonal conflict is between department chairs and
faculty (Hancks, 2014; Smith and Hellige, 1998). The present study is an attempt to show the
extent to which department chair’s SI influences faculty members’ problem-solving
approach to conflict management (PS). The PS involves a collaborative process through
which parties, who see different aspects of a problem, can constructively explore their
differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is
possible (Gray, 1989, p. 5; see also Rahim, 2011). Using a problem-solving strategy to
manage conflict leads to higher job performance and satisfaction (Rahim et al., 2001).
An effective problem-solving approach to managing conflict may lead to creative
processes. These processes may lead to the diagnosis and intervention in existing and new
problems. Diagnosis involves open communication, clearing up misunderstanding and
identifying the causes of conflict. Intervention refers to the solution of the real problem(s) to
provide maximum satisfaction of concerns of both parties. SI and PS involve positive affect,
and we are suggesting that SI will lead to affect like problem-solving approach to conflict
management.
Based on previous discussion, the following hypotheses were formulated:
H1. Social skills mediates the relationship between cognitive empathy and situational
awareness.
H2. Situational awareness mediates the relationship between social skills and
situational response.
H3. Situational response mediates the relationship between situational awareness and
faculty members’ problem-solving approach to conflict management.
The relationships proposed in the hypotheses in this study are presented in Figure 1. The
solid lines indicate significant relationships, and broken lines indicate indirect relationships.

Method
Sample and procedure
Data were collected from a collegiate sample of 406 faculty at a state university in the
USA where the usable response rate was 48 per cent. Average age, teaching experience
and working experience with the present departmental chair (DC) in years were 45.10
(SD = 3.82), 14.4 (SD = 10.99) and 4.61 (SD = 5.26), respectively. About 50.5 per cent of
 IJCMA the respondents and 35.2 per cent of the DCs were female. About 84 per cent of the
respondents were white, 5 per cent black, 4.8 per cent Asian, 3.6 per cent Hispanic and
3.6 per cent other. About 18.1 per cent of the respondents were professors, 23.8 per cent
associate professors, 24.1 per cent assistant professors, 15.9 per cent lecturers, 11.2 per
cent adjunct professors and 6.8 per cent part-time. About 55.7 per cent of the
respondents had doctoral degrees, 38.3 per cent had master’s degrees and 6 per cent had
other qualifications.

Measurement
Social intelligence. The four components of supervisors’ SI were measured with 28 items of
the Rahim Social Intelligence Test (RSIT) developed by Rahim (2014). The RSIT items were
changed to measure faculty perceptions of their respective department chair’s SI. The RSIT
was designed on the basis of repeated feedback from respondents and faculty and an
iterative process of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of various sets of items in
multiple samples. Considerable attention was devoted to the study of published instruments
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on SI. The final revision of the instrument was made on the basis of a confirmatory factor
analysis of items.
The RSIT uses a five-point Likert scale (5 = strongly agree [. . .] 1 = strongly
disagree) for ranking each of the items, and a higher score indicates a greater SI of a
supervisor. The subscales were created by averaging responses to their respective
items. Sample items are: “Our DC can size up a situation, he/she finds himself/herself in,
rather quickly (Situational awareness)”; “Our DC usually adapts appropriately to
different situations” (situational response); “Our DC understands people’s feelings
transmitted through nonverbal messages” (cognitive empathy); and “Our DC interacts
appropriately with a variety of people” (social skills). Rahim (2014) and Rahim et al.
(2014) provided evidence of internal consistency and indicator reliabilities and
convergent and discriminant validities of the instrument, and that it was free from
social desirability response bias.
Problem-solving approach to conflict management. PS was associated with the dual
concern model for managing conflict (Rahim, 1983, 2011). It was measured with five items
adapted from the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II’s (Rahim (1983) integrating
style subscale of conflict management. Each item was ranked on a five-point scale (strongly
agree = 5 [. . .] strongly disagree = 1). Sample items for the scale are, “I try to investigate an
issue with my DC to find a solution acceptable to us”. The scale was created by averaging
the responses to the items, and a higher score indicated greater use of the problem-solving
approach to conflict management by faculty. In the present study, the Cronbach’s a internal
consistency reliability of this scale was 0.93.

Social
Skills

Figure 1. Situational Problem

Cognitive
A model of intelligent Empathy Response Solving
leadership and
problem-solving style
for conflict Situational
Awareness
management
 Analysis and results Conflict
The first part of the analysis was designed to test the psychometric properties of the management
measures of SI and PS. The second part of the analysis was designed to test the three study
hypotheses. Data analyses were performed with SPSS 24 and LISREL 9.2 (Joöreskog and
Soörbom, 1996a, 1996b) statistical packages. For LISREL analysis, data from 406
respondents were averaged for each department, which resulted in a sample of 43 groups.

Validity assessment
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the SI and PS items were computed. CFA is needed
for testing the construct validity of the measures of SI and PS. The results show acceptable
fit indexes for the two instruments which indicates their construct validity (see Table I).
Common method variance. If the five dimensions of SI and PS were not present in the
two questionnaire measures or if common method variance was present, then all the items
measuring the SI and PS will load on a single factor. If a single-factor solution fits the data
well, one can conclude that common method variance is mainly responsible for explaining
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the relationships among the variables (Mossholder et al., 1998).

The results from the one-factor solution shows that the fit indexes (RMSEA = 0.20,
standardized RMSR = 0.08, NFI = 0.80, CFI = 0.85, IFI = 0.86, RFI = 0.75) were
unsatisfactory. In other words, the single-factor model did not fit the data well, and as a
result, the absence of five dimensions or the presence of common method variance in the
measures should not be assumed. As discussed later, we also performed another stronger
analysis to check the common method variance in the data.
Convergent validity. The average variance extracted by all the items loading on a given
factor measures convergent validity and should exceed 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Carr,
2002). These values were averaged for factors, and all of the average R2 exceeded 0.85, the
threshold for supporting convergent validity.
This validity for the five subscales of the two instruments was also assessed by
examining whether each item had a statistically significant factor loading on its specified
factor (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Netemeyer et al., 1990). Factor loadings were highly
significant, with a minimum z-values of 4.06 (p < 0.001). These results support the
convergent validity of the subscales.
Discriminant validity. In one test for discriminant validity, the squared correlations
between factors should be less than the average variance extracted for each factor (Fornell
and Larcker, 1981; Carr, 2002). The results show that, in each sample, there is strong support
for the discriminant validity between SI and PS.

Measurement model
Statistic One-factor Five-factors Structural equations model
x2
/df 3.15 1.42 1.66
RMSEA 0.22 0.09 0.12
Standardized RMSR 0.08 0.03 0.04
Normed fit index 0.80 0.94 0.91
Comparative fit index 0.85 0.98 0.96
Incremental fit index 0.86 0.98 0.96
Relative fit index 0.75 0.89 0.87 Table I.
LISREL summary
Note: N = 43 departments statistics
 IJCMA A second test for discriminant validity involves pair-wise comparisons of factors using a
chi-square difference test (Anderson and Gerbing, 1988). For each pair of factors, two models
are developed. In one model, the two factors are defined by their respective items. In the
second model, the correlation between the factors is constrained to 1.00. The chi-square
difference test can be applied to test whether the appropriately defined two-factor model
provides statistically better fit than the constrained model. In each pair-wise comparison of
factors, the constrained model resulted in a significantly higher x 2 value supporting
discriminant validity. The threshold value for this chi-square difference test (p < 0.05) is x 2
of 3.84 with 1 df. This test supported factor discrimination for all factors. Overall, there is
adequate support for discriminant validity.
Univariate normality. The samples exhibited a high degree of univariate normality with
skewness and kurtosis statistics well within the acceptable levels of 1 and 7 for all items
(Curran et al., 1996).
Table II shows the means, standard deviations, Cronbach’s alpha. Overall, these
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coefficients are satisfactory (Nunnally, 1978).

Each item has a reported R2 that measures the item’s variance explained by its factor.
This measure of indicator reliability should exceed 0.50 for each of the observed variables
(Fornell and Larcker, 1981). The R2 values for all the items in each country ranged between
0.84 and 0.95. These reliabilities were judged sufficient. The VIFs (ranged between 2.64 and
6.82) were lower than 10.00 which indicate that multicollinearity was not a problem.

Structural equations model

Two LISREL models were computed to test the three hypotheses. The first model tested all
the relationships in Figure 1 represented by the solid and broken lines. As expected, the
links represented by the broken lines were not significant, but the remaining links
represented by the solid lines were all significant. In the second model, only the links
represented by the solid lines were tested, and the results are presented in Table III. The
results provided full support for the three study hypotheses.
H1 was concerned with the mediation effect of social skills on the relationship between
cognitive empathy and situational awareness. As shown in Table III, the two path
coefficients from cognitive empathy to social skills ( b = 0.85) and from social skills to
situational awareness ( b = 0.99) were positive and significant. These path coefficients
provided full support for H1.
H2 was concerned with the mediation effect of situational awareness on the relationship
between social skills and situational response. As shown in Table III, the two path
coefficients from social skills to situational awareness ( b = 0.99) and from situational

Table II. Variable M SD a IR 1 2 3 4 VIF

Means, standard
deviations, 1. Situational awareness 3.66 0.95 0.80 0.89 4.38
Cronbach’s a and 2. Situational response 3.50 1.07 0.91 0.93 0.86 5.98
indicator reliabilities, 3. Cognitive empathy 3.17 0.84 0.54 0.88 0.69 0.74 2.64
4. Social skills 3.49 1.21 0.88 0.62 0.86 0.89 0.78 6.83
Pearson’s
5. Problem solving 4.00 0.82 0.93 0.99 0.41 0.43 0.48 0.45
correlations and
variance inflation Notes: N = 406; IR = Indicator reliability; VIF = Variance inflation factor. All the correlations are
factor significant at p < 0.001 (two-tailed)
 awareness to situational response ( b = 0.99) were positive and significant. These path Conflict
coefficients provided full support for H2. management
H3 was concerned with the mediation effect of situational response on the relationship
between situational awareness and faculty members’ PS. As shown in Table III, the path
coefficient from situational awareness to situational response ( b = 0.99) was positive and
significant and the path coefficient from situational response to PS ( b = 0.63) was positive
and significant. These path coefficients provided full support for H3.
The fit indexes for the full structural equations model (RMSEA = 0.12, RMSR = 0.04, x 2/
df = 1.66, NFI = 0.91, CFI = 0.96, IFI = 0.96) were satisfactory. Overall, these fit indexes
indicate that the model, indicated by the solid lines in Figure 1, fits well with the data. The
RMSEA of 0.12 is greater than 0.07, which was probably caused by the sample size (N = 43)
aggregated at the department level.
As discussed before, we computed the single-factor analysis which did not support the
presence of common method variance. In addition to this, we randomly split the
questionnaire responses to items of each department into two units (Unit 1 and Unit 2).
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We computed two structural equations models. The first model used the independent
variables from Unit 1 and the criterion variable from Unit 2. The second model used the
independent variables from Unit 2 and the criterion variable from Unit 1. The results
portrayed in Table III show that all the links in the split samples were significant. The fit
indexes deteriorated somewhat in the two models. The two additional structural
equations models provide strong support for the model presented in Figure 1.

Discussion
The results provided moderate to full support for the theoretical model presented in
Figure 1. In other words, the model fits the data collected from faculty members. Previous
studies did not test the relationships of faculty perception of the department chair’s SI
components to each other and to PS. The study contributed to our understanding of the
linkage between situational awareness and situational response and between situational
response and PS. It also contributed to our understanding of the relationships of
cognitive empathy to social skills and between social skills to situational awareness.
The study provided acceptable evidence of convergent and discriminant validities and
internal consistency and indicator reliabilities of the measure of SI and PS. Evidence from
the present study and the studies done before (Rahim, 2014; Rahim et al., 2014) provided
support for construct validity of the measure of department chairs’ SI and faculty’s PS
(Bagozzi et al., 1991).

Parameter Statistic Statistic

Path Statistic z-value Unit 1 z-value Unit 2 z-value

CE ! SS 0.85 5.49*** 0.81 4.85*** 0.61 3.26**

SS ! SA 0.99 10.42*** 0.99 7.15*** 0.94 7.47***
SA ! SR 0.99 12.06*** 0.99 7.15*** 0.98 10.10***
SR ! PS 0.63 4.85*** 0.42 2.39* 0.31 2.27*
Table III.
Notes: Aggregated N = 43 departments. Aggregated N = 33 departments for Unit 1 and Unit 2. These
values are based on the causal model run on the covariance matrix. CE = Cognitive empathy, SS = Social Parameter estimates
skills, SA = Situational awareness, SR = Situational response, PS = Problem solving approach to conflict for structural
management *p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001 equations
 IJCMA Implications for management
The findings of the study have significant implications for management and organizations.
The department chairs need to acquire the four components of SI to improve faculty
members’ PS. This will hopefully lead to constructive resolutions of many faculty–
department chair conflicts. Interventions may be needed to enhance department chairs’ SI
competencies that would involve education and specific job-related training (Flowers et al.,
2014; Seo and Barrett, 2007). Department chairs should also be encouraged to enhance their
SI abilities through continuous self-learning. Universities should provide positive
reinforcements for learning and improving department chair’s SI competencies needed for
various academic disciplines.
Training can help improve department chairs’ SI, but this may not be sufficient to fully
enhance the four components of SI, which may have a positive influence on faculty
members’ teaching, teaching and service. Academic institutions may have to adapt the
policy of recruiting department chairs who are likely to possess the four components of SI.
This suggests that academic institutions should reexamine their traditional criteria for
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selecting academic leaders.

Academic institutions offer programs that generally encourage the development of
students’ cognitive intelligence. As discussed before, literature on management and
administration generally acknowledges the inadequacy of cognitive intelligence as a
predictor of one’s success in life or effective leadership. One of the major implications of this
study is that academic institutions should pay adequate attention for enhancing SI of
students. This will involve changes in curriculum and teaching methods. Although this
study took place in an academic setting, its findings are applicable to business and other
organizations.

Strengths and limitations

One of the strengths of this study is that the measures of endogenous and exogenous
variables were analyzed at the department level, not individual level. The single-factor
CFAs of the observed variables found no evidence of common method variance. If common
method variance was present, the items of the independent and criterion measures will not
significantly load of the five a priori factors. Also, the split department tests indicated no
presence of problems of common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Limitations of this
field study should be noted. Data were collected from one public university in the USA
might limit generalizability of the results.

Directions for future research

In academic institutions, further research is needed to enhance our understanding of the
relationships of SI and the effectiveness of department chairs’ leadership behaviors. Other
criterion variables for future research should include some indicators of department chairs’
leadership effectiveness and faculty members’ teaching and research performance,
satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior. An important area of future research
concerns carefully designing and evaluating the effects of SI training in enhancing the
aforementioned criterion variables. Field experiments are particularly useful in evaluating
the effects of SI intervention on individual, group and organizational outcomes. There is also
need for scenario-based and laboratory studies that control some of the extraneous variables
to better understand the effects of department chairs’ SI. Also, it will be useful to investigate
the differences in the perceptions of faculty regarding the performance of various types of
academic leadership with low and high SI.
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Corresponding author
Ismail Civelek can be contacted at: [email protected]

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