Conflict Management Styles Among Eotc Priests The Case Of Priests From Seven Selected Churches In Addis Ababa

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has been engaged in managing many conflicts raised in our country through cultural as well as religious mechanisms. In most of the Church’s cases; the external society, the Church’s community, how to serve the people based on the will of God and conflicts which occurred among the community are given much concern than internal Church’s conflicts. Interpersonal conflicts or the social conflicts are conflicts that manifest between people which are involved in a task (the project) or between different groups of interest. These differences might be in perceived interests, values, and needs which are the most basic elements behind social conflict. The objective of this study was to answer the following research questions; what are the various causes of conflicts among the priests at the selected churches? What conflict management styles are used by the priests at the selected churches? Are there factors or challenges which influence conflict management by the priests at the selected churches? Hence, mixed research design was applied for this study. Four sub-cities of Addis Ababa were randomly selected from the 10 sub-cities and seven Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Churches /Gullele Amba Kidanemeheret, Asko Saint Giorgis, Bole Debre Medhanealem, Saint Trinity Cathedral, Delber Medhanealem, Saint Lideta Mariam, and Mekanisa Saint Michael/ were randomly selected. A total of 142 randomly selected priests responded to the questionnaires. This study used Thomas –Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument called, “A Measure of Styles of Handling Interpersonal Conflict”, an open ended questionnaire, and one focus group discussion. According to the findings of the study, among the priests’ conflict management style collaborating is the most preferred method. Competing, compromising, and accommodating are the second, third and fourth preferred styles by the priests. Avoiding is the least preferred conflict management style of the priests. Collaborating and compromising are the most jointly or mixed conflict management styles preferred by the priests. Furthermore, the major type of conflict is expressed by the priests was interpersonal conflict that arises due to the personal and role differences or variations in ethnicity, knowledge gap, and goal or role incompatibilities. The researcher concluded that there is a high level of conflicts arising from their ethnic and knowledge difference among the priests. Therefore, it is recommended that the church needs to offer different courses and trainings in order to improve the capability of the priests’ in their faith based learning as well as social interaction to create better interpersonal relationship leading to better handling of conflicts in the churches.

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