engleski

Conflict resolution styles, moral reasoning, and belief in a just world among legal professionals

Purpose According to the assumed importance of conflict resolution, moral reasoning, and beliefs in a just world for the jobs performed by legal professionals, the aim of this research was to examine the relationship of these variables on such professionals in Croatia. Design/Methodology A cross-sectional survey study was conducted on different types of legal professionals (notaries, lawyers, and judges) in Croatia. Participants (n = 185) filled in a questionnaire designed to measure conflict resolution styles, moral reasoning (indexes of moral reasoning and attitude dominance, humanistic and conservative orientations) and belief in a just world (BJW) (general-G and personal-P). Results One-way ANOVA revealed that judges preferred the withdrawing style in comparison to notaries, but no differences were found in other conflict resolution styles (forcing and joint problem solving), moral reasoning nor in the belief in just world. Backward regression analyses on different conflict resolution styles showed that female gender, higher index of attitude dominance and higher BJW-G were predictors of higher joint problem solving (18% of variance) and withdrawing (13%). Furthermore, higher BJW-P also predicted joint problem solving, while forcing (3%) was only predicted by a higher humanistic orientation. Limitations Enlarging the sample size would be desirable, as well as including some other possible predictors. Research/Practical Implications These results implicate that changes of some aspects of personal attitudes could modulate the type of conflict resolution individuals of different gender and professional role use. Originality/Value There is limited research in this area, especially when examining the relations of conflict resolution styles with moral reasoning on legal professionals.

Conflict resolution styles ; Moral reasoning ; Belief in a just world ; Legal professionals

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