Relationship among Personality Traits and Conflict Handling Styles of Call Center Representatives and Appraisal of Existing Service Model

In order to identify the relationship between conflict handling styles and personality traits of call centre representatives and to extract and appraise any existing model, i.e., style of public dealing/conflict resolving, we have carried out this research. A total of 128 call centre representatives from a Bank and a Telecommunication Company have participated in the study. We assumed that for Bank and for Telecommunication Company both, the most commonly used conflict handling styles would be integrating and obliging, regardless of the personality traits of the call centre representatives and without having control on gender and age. The participants were asked to complete two scales, the big five inventory and the conflict handling style scale. Results confirm our assumptions through correlations, factor analysis, and SEM. We have found significant relationships among personality traits and conflict handling styles. Three conflict-handling styles were persistent in all statistical analyses and i.e., integrating, obliging, and compromising. However, SEM extracts the same variables in models with low regression weights and high residual variance on Neuroticism that may be indicative of depiction of trait by representatives at certain places in certain situations.