Procedural Justice and Conflict Management at School

Research Reports

Procedural Justice and ConflictManagement at School

Noa Nelson, Dikla Shechter, and Rachel Ben-Ari

In this research, we explored the contributions of perceived proceduraljustice (PPJ) to the conflict management behaviors of adolescents whenthey experience conflict with their teachers.We tested an extensive modelto determine how PPJ contributes to conflict management. We alsoextended research on PPJ to examine its impact on adolescents. Ourresults, acquired from a large and diverse sample of 256 high schoolstudents, indicate that PPJ had an impact on adolescents’ approach tomanaging conflicts with their teachers.Students who perceived that theirteachers’ decision processes were just were less dominating and moreavoiding, obliging, and compromising. In addition, we found thatstudents’ perceptions about the legitimacy of their teachers’ authoritymediated the relationships between PPJ and conflict management style.This study contributes to the rather scarce research on PPJ’s role inconflict management and should be useful for educators searching forconstructive, relationship-based tools for conflict management.

Key words: conflict resolution,perceived procedural justice,con-flict management styles, dual-concern model, teacher legitimacy,student–teacher conflict.

Noa Nelson is a lecturer at the Program for Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-IlanUniversity in Ramat Gan, Israel, and at the department for behavioral sciences at Peres AcademicCenter in Rehovot, Israel. Her e-mail address is [email protected].

Dikla Shechter is a high-tech project manager and a graduate of the doctoral program at theProgram for Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University. Her e-mail address [email protected].

Rachel Ben-Ari is a professor at the psychology department and at the Program for ConflictManagement and Negotiation at Bar-Ilan University. Her e-mail address is [email protected].

10.1111/nejo.12074© 2014 President and Fellows of Harvard College Negotiation Journal October 2014 393

mailto:[email protected]



IntroductionConflict occurs when parties have opposing goals and perceive each otheras obstacles to achieving them (Putnam and Poole 1987). Conflict research-ers often evaluate conflict management responses by employing a dual-concern model (Thomas 1976;Rahim and Bonoma 1979;Pruitt 1981;Rahim1983, 2001) that combines two independent concerns — concern for selfand concern for the other party — to create five distinct conflict manage-ment styles. A person who reports high concern for himself or herself andlow concern for others will fall into the dominating (competitive) cat-egory. At the other end, those who fall into the obliging category reportlow concern for themselves and high concern for others. Having moderateconcern for both oneself and others are characteristics of those in thecompromising category. High concern for both is characteristic of those inthe integrating category. Finally, those who report low concern for boththe interests of themselves and others fall into the avoiding category(Rahim 1983).

Ali Kazemi (2007) characterized three orientations correlated withmoderate to high levels of concern for the other person — compromising,integrating, and obliging — as collaborative, because they indicate a desireto satisfy the other party’s needs. Collaboration can improve parties’ rela-tionship and increase the likelihood that they will cooperate in the future(Schmidt and Kochan 1972; Bush and Folger 1994), so it is important tounderstand how collaboration is enhanced.

In this study, we sought to gain a better understanding about conflictbetween students and their teachers. We developed and tested a mediationmodel in which perceived procedural justice (PPJ) predicts students’ con-flict management styles. We also tested whether this association is mediatedby students’ attitudes toward traits associated with PPJ, specifically teacherlegitimacy and students’ loyalty toward, and commitment and identificationwith, their schools and classes.

Literature Review

Perceived Procedural JusticePerceived justice concerns the ways that individuals perceive decision-making fairness in their groups, institutions, and society (Tyler and Blader2000). Distributive justice refers to the extent that the decided outcomesare perceived to be fair, while procedural justice refers to the fairness ofthe decision-making process through which outcomes are achieved(Thibaut and Walker 1978; Lind and Tyler 1988). When people are askedabout their experiences of injustice they tend to focus on procedural ratherthan distributive aspects and on the communication processes involved inthe decisions (Tyler and Blader 2003). Leaders’ communication of decisionprocesses — and more generally the quality of their communication with

394 Nelson, Shechter, and Ben-Ari PPJ and Conflict Management at School

their subordinates and the history of their former decisions — typicallyaffect subordinates’ perceptions of procedural justice.

Researchers have identified four elements (Thibaut and Walker 1978;Lind and Tyler 1988; Tyler 1989; Tyler and Lind 1992) of PPJ:

• neutrality is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived to beimpartial and objective;

• trust is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived to acknowl-edge and care for the individual’s interests;

• standing is the extent to which the decision maker is perceived torespect the individual and her views and rights; and

• voice is the opportunity that the decision maker provides the individualto communicate his or her views and preferences during decision making.

Perceived procedural justice is related to how individuals determinetheir status within their groups and is often related to their sense ofself-worth. Following social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel and Turner 1979),relational models such as group value model (Lind and Tyler 1988) andrelational model of authority (Tyler and Lind 1992) stress the psychologicalimportance of the individual’s status within the group. Groups can rein-force people’s values and world views and offer emotional support as wellas material benefits (Festinger 1954). Within those groups, people maystrive for a high status because doing so validates their self-worth andself-identity (Turner 1987). Elements of perceived procedural justice — forexample, perceiving that one will be treated fairly, will have processesexplained clearly, and will be listened to by those in power — make peoplefeel that they are being accorded the rights of full membership in the groupand that membership in the group is worthwhile (Tyler and Lind 1992;Tyler 1997; Terwel et al. 2010).

The perception that procedures are just and the feelings that proce-dural justice nurtures enhance the legitimacy of the decision makers:individuals are more inclined to trust them and to accept their judgmentsand rules (Tyler 1997). The feeling that one has personal worth and valuewithin the group in turn enhances the individual’s feelings of loyalty (Tylerand Blader 2000) and commitment toward (Folger and Konovsky 1989;Tyler 1989, 1997), and identification with (Tyler and Blader 2000, 2003),the group. Enhancing the leader’s (e.g., teacher’s) legitimacy in the eyes ofthe group members (e.g., students), as well as the members’ loyalty andcommitment toward and identification with the group, often improvescollaboration between and among the leader and group members (Tylerand Blader 2000, 2003; De Cremer and Tyler 2007).

An abundance of organizational research supports the significanceof PPJ. Studies have reported a positive correlation between favorable

Negotiation Journal October 2014 395

perceptions of procedural justice and employees’ job satisfaction and orga-nizational commitment,helpful organizational citizenship behavior,manage-ment legitimacy, and employees’ trust in employers (e.g., Skarlicki andFolger 1997; Colquitt 2001; Colquitt et al. 2001; Brockner et al. 2007; vanDijke, De Cremer, and Mayer 2010).Perceived procedural justice, combinedwith trust in managers, helped to reduce employee turnover and enhancedmotivation and productivity (Hubbell and Chory-Assad 2005; Bal et al.2011).

Conversely, low levels of PPJ were associated with employee with-drawal (absence and turnover) and misconduct and revenge (Colquitt et al.2001; Jones 2009). In studies of organizational change, positive PPJ is asso-ciated with increasing employee willingness to accept unpopular work-place changes (Konovsky and Cropanzano 1991; Greenberg 1994; Kernanand Hanges 2002;Rubin 2007). Several studies have shown that PPJ helps toalleviate even the objectively negative experience of dismissal (Brockneret al. 1990, 1994; Konovsky and Folger 1991).

Although the literature suggests that PPJ increases the likelihood thatemployees will accept decisions that might otherwise create conflict, therehas been little research directly examining PPJ’s impact on conflict man-agement strategies, and most of it has been conducted in work settings.Perceived procedural justice has been associated with enhancing collabora-tive strategies (problem solving, compromise, and obliging) duringemployee–superior conflict (Rahim, Magner, and Shapiro 2000). Kazemi(2007) found that enhancing employees’ sense that they had a “voice” andwere being listened to made them more likely to oblige their superiorsduring conflict. Research on the responses of employees facing a down-sized organization found that PPJ was positively associated with integratingand obliging behaviors and with a reduction in dominating behaviors(Mishra and Spreitzer 1998; Spreitzer and Mishra 2000).

These findings strongly suggest that PPJ can have an impact on con-flict management. In this study, we sought to more fully test the associa-tions between PPJ and conflict management styles and to examine moreclosely how (e.g., by what mechanisms) PPJ affects conflict managementorientations. We also sought to extend the research on PPJ and conflictmanagement to a new population and a new setting — adolescents inschool.

Perceived Procedural Justice at SchoolBy definition, schools impose rules on their students, which can lead toconflict. We proposed that students’ perceptions of procedural justicewould contribute to their responses to conflict by improving their attitudestoward their teachers and their classes, specifically by enhancing theirteachers’ legitimacy and their own loyalty and commitment to and identi-fication with their classes and schools.


Studies show generally that supportive and collaborative teacherbehavior contributes to students’ commitment to the class and deference torules, while the lack thereof is associated with negative and defensivestudent behaviors (Connell and Wellborn 1991; Ryan, Stiller, and Lynch1994; Wentzel 1998; Freese 1999; Sava 2002). In several studies, PPJ waspositively associated with whether students perceived teachers as legiti-mate and with their degree of respect for school rules (Tyler 1997;Gouveia-Pereira et al. 2003; Paulsel, Chory-Assad, and Dunleavy 2005). Inanother study, greater teacher legitimacy was negatively associated withstudent misconduct (e.g., lateness and rudeness) (Smetana and Bitz 1996).The presence of procedural justice elements was also directly associatedwith students’ behaviors: lower aggression and vindictiveness, and higherfrankness and collaboration (Chory-Assad 2002; Chory-Assad and Paulsel2004; Gregory and Ripski 2008; Gregory and Weinstein 2008; Gregory andThompson 2010).Perceived procedural justice has also been found to affectfamily conflicts: parents’ procedural justice decreased deviant behavior andfamily conflict (Fondacaro and Heller 1990; Fondacaro, Dunkle, and Pathak1998; Stuart et al. 2008).

These studies suggest that PPJ can affect students’ conflict manage-ment orientations and strategies. They also indicate that teacher legiti-macy might have a mediating role on PPJ’s contributions, that is, PPJpromotes teacher legitimacy, which affects students’ conflict manage-ment approaches. Applying relational models (Lind and Tyler 1988;Tyler and Lind 1992), we also suggest that when students experiencethe four elements of procedural justice (neutrality, trust, standing, andvoice), they perceive them as evidence that their status in the classand the school is secure. In previous research (Simons-Morton et al.1999; Osterman 2000), a stronger sense of belonging was positivelycorrelated with having stronger motivation, better academic performance,greater commitment toward one’s school, and more pro-social feel-ings and behaviors toward teachers and peers. Both the perceptionthat the school applies rules fairly (a variable indicative of PPJ) and afeeling of commitment to class and school predicted lower levels ofschool delinquency (e.g., violence, vandalism, and drug abuse)(Cernkovich and Giordano 1992; Jenkins 1997), while a sense of alien-ation and not belonging was associated with aggressiveness, social with-drawal, lower academic performance, and dropping out of school(Osterman 2000).

Various studies support the idea that PPJ matters to adolescents andthat it seems to affect their attitudes toward their teachers and theirschools, as well as their general levels of cooperation. We see a need,however, for a more comprehensive model that accounts for the mecha-nisms through which PPJ contributes to students’ conflict managementapproaches. In this study, we tested such a model.


Rationale and HypothesesThe literature reveals multiple salient relationships:

• the relationship of PPJ, or aspects of it (e.g., a sense of fairness orattentive communication), to subordinates’ (e.g., students’) collabora-tive behavior;

• the relationship of PPJ, or aspects of it, to subordinates’ sense of com-mitment and identification with and loyalty toward their organization/group (school/class) and their perception of their leader’s (e.g.,teacher’s) legitimacy; and

• the relationship of subordinates’ attitudes (commitment, loyalty, etc.) totheir behavior (collaborative versus dominating) and their misconduct.

These three relationships suggest that PPJ’s contributions toconflict management are mediated by subordinates’ attitudes, but thathas not previously been tested. Additionally, many of these variableshave been tested separately, rather than as elements of a comprehensivemodel of PPJ, student attitudes, and conflict management strategies.Finally, some of these associated variables were not tested amongadolescents.

In this study, we tested the impact of teachers’ procedural justicebehaviors and attitudes, as perceived by their students, on students’ atti-tudes and conflict management behaviors. Specifically, we tested a media-tion model (see Figure One) in which perceived procedural justiceelements (neutrality, trust, standing, and voice) predicted conflict manage-ment behaviors (integrating, compromising, obliging, avoiding, and domi-nating), and these predictions are mediated by teacher legitimacy, andstudent’s loyalty, commitment, and identification.

We expected that the perception of procedural justice elementswould positively predict students’ use of collaborative strategies

Figure OneMediation Model of PPJ and Conflict Management

Perceived Procedural

Justice

Neutrality

Trust

Standing

Voice

Student’s Attitudes

Legitimacy

Loyalty

Commitment

Identification

Conflict Management

Strategies

Integrating

Compromising

Obliging

Avoiding

Dominating


(integrating, compromising, and obliging) and negatively predict their useof noncollaborative strategies (dominating and avoiding). We furtherhypothesized that these predictions would be mediated by levels of teacherlegitimacy and student loyalty, commitment, and identification with classand school.

Research HypothesesTo test our proposed mediation model, we conducted a questionnaire-based correlational study of school students. According to the require-ments of mediation testing (see Baron and Kenny 1986), we tested fourhypotheses:

Hypothesis One: PPJ will correlate with the conflict managementbehavior of students involved in conflict with their teachers —specifically it will positively correlate to integrating, compromis-ing, and obliging behaviors and negatively correlate to dominat-ing and avoiding behaviors.

Hypothesis Two: PPJ will positively correlate to students’ sense ofteacher legitimacy and to their own loyalty and commitment toand identification with their schools and classes.

Hypothesis Three: Students’ perceptions of teacher legitimacy aswell as their loyalty and commitment to and identification withtheir schools and classes will correlate to their conflict manage-ment behaviors in cases of student–teacher conflict. Specifically,they will positively correlate to integrating, compromising, andobliging behaviors and negatively correlate to dominating andavoiding behaviors.

Hypothesis Four: Students’ perceptions of teacher legitimacy, aswell as their loyalty and commitment to and identification withtheir schools and classes, will mediate the relationship betweentheir perceptions of procedural justice and their typical behaviorsduring student–teacher conflict.

Method

ParticipantsTwo hundred and fifty-six high school students (92 male and 164 female,comprising four twelfth-grade classes, seven eleventh-grade classes,and two tenth-grade classes) from three Israeli Jewish high schoolsparticipated in the study. At the time of the study, participants had beenattending their high schools for between two and four years. We sampledstudents from college preparatory and vocational programs and from dif-ferent grades and classes (as detailed above) to enhance the generalizabilityof the study.


Procedure and ToolsThe study was conducted by one of the authors, in students’ classrooms,with a teacher present. The researcher told students that their responseswere completely anonymous and that they were free to end their partici-pation in the study at any time. To avoid a lengthy class disruption andminimize students’ loss of attention, participants responded to the studyquestionnaires (see below) over two separate class sessions. First, theycompleted the PPJ questionnaires as well as a demographic questionnaire.Then approximately a week later, they completed questionnaires abouttheir attitudes (legitimacy, loyalty, commitment, and identification) and con-flict management behaviors.

To match each student’s first and second session data, participantswere asked to write a personal identification number (the last four digits oftheir cell or home telephone numbers and the first letter of their lastnames). Initially, 309 students participated, but 53 were dismissed from dataprocessing because they failed to supply matching identifying strings.

PPJ Questionnaires. These questionnaires measured students’ percep-tion of the four elements of PPJ. (We instructed students to consider alltheir teachers when answering the questions, although the questions werephrased in the singular):

• neutrality (ten items), for example, “My teacher treats all studentsequally”;

• trust (nine items), for example,“Students’ personal best interest mattersto my teacher”;

• standing (six items), for example, “Even when he or she is angry, myteacher treats students respectfully”; and

• voice (six items), for example,“Before making a decision, it’s importantto my teacher to hear students’ opinion.”

The statements were based on items from previous studies (Tyler1997; Tyler and Blader 2000) but were rewritten to apply specifically tostudent–teacher relationships; for example, the statement,“The commissionwould try to treat you fairly” (Tyler 1997) became “The teacher would tryto treat you fairly.”

Students were instructed to rate their agreement with each statementon a 6-point Likert scale (1 = “absolutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”).We pretested the reliability of the statements using sixty-three participantswith the following results: neutrality, Cronbach’s alpha (α) = 0.82; trust,α = 0.88; standing, α = 0.78; and voice, α = 0.73. The reliabilities for themain study were neutrality, α = 0.78; trust, α = 0.87; standing, α = 0.73; andvoice, α = 0.77. These reliabilities indicate that respondents’ answers to the


questions in each questionnaire were highly related, suggesting that thequestionnaire’s items measured a unified factor.

For each student, we computed a mean score for responses for each ofthe four elements — the higher the score, the stronger was the student’sperception of neutrality, trust. etc. Because these four scores were fairlyhighly correlated among themselves, indicating a strong associationbetween the questionnaires (Pearson’s correlation [r] = 0.56 to r = 0.71)and because PPJ has been formerly researched as one construct (Tyler,Degoey, and Smith 1996; Tyler 1997), we also computed a general meanscore of PPJ for each student.

Student Attitudes Questionnaires. These questionnaires measured thefollowing attitudes:

• teacher legitimacy (eleven items), for example, “When my teachersmake a decision they know what they are doing”;

• student loyalty to class and school (seven items), for example,“If I couldchoose all over again, I would still choose my school”;

• student commitment to class and school (eight items), for example,“It’simportant to me to participate in school activities”; and

• student identification with class and school (nine items), for example,“When my class does well I feel like it’s also my personal success.”

These questions also were based on statements from Tom Tyler’sstudies (Tyler, Degoey, and Smith 1996; Tyler 1997) but were rewritten toapply specifically to student–teacher or student–school relationships (e.g.,the item“I feel like ‘part of the family’where I work”became“I feel like ‘partof the family’ at school”).

For this questionnaire, students were also asked to rate the statementson a 6-point Likert scale (1 = “absolutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”).Our pretest (sixty-three participants) yielded the following reliabilities:legitimacy, α = 0.72; loyalty, α = 0.91; commitment, α = 0.84; and identifica-tion, α = 0.81. The reliabilities for the present study were legitimacy,α = 0.87; loyalty, α = 0.85; commitment, α = 0.84; and identification,α = 0.84. These reliabilities indicate that respondents’ answers to the ques-tions in each questionnaire were highly related, suggesting that the ques-tionnaire’s items measure a unified factor. For this questionnaire, we alsocomputed a mean score for each student for each of the attitudes.

Conflict Management Questionnaire. We used the Thomas–KilmannConflict Mode Instrument (TKI; Thomas and Kilmann 1974) to measureconflict management behaviors but rewrote some of the items to applyspecifically to student–teacher conflict (e.g.,the words“the other party”werereplaced by “my teacher”). The five behaviors measured were as follows:


• dominating (e.g., “I usually contend with my teacher to pursue mygoal.”);

• avoiding (e.g., “I sometimes avoid taking positions that would createcontroversy with my teacher.”);

• obliging (e.g.,“If it makes my teacher happy I might let her maintain herway.”);

• compromising (e.g.,“I suggest solutions that both I and my teacher canaccept”); and

• integrating (e.g.,“I am nearly always concerned with satisfying both ourwishes.”).

The questionnaire comprised thirty pairs of items. In each pair, two ofthe five strategies are represented, and the respondent must choosebetween them. The total score for each of the five strategies ranges from 0to 12 (a score of 12 means that this strategy was always chosen over theother four). This forced choice, compared to other conflict managementmeasures that allow respondents to independently score the strategies(such as the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II) (Rahim 1983), isdesigned to better capture respondents’ true preferences and reduce socialdesirability effects (Womack 1988).1

Background Questionnaire. Respondents were asked to report theirgenders, grade levels, and how long they had been attending their currentschools. To obtain general impressions of participants’ own perceptions oftheir social involvement, academic performance, and involvement in con-flicts, we added the following 6-point Likert scale statements (1 = “abso-lutely untrue” to 6 = “absolutely true”):“I am socially popular in my class”;“I do well academically”; “In the last year, I was involved in disputes ordisagreements with other students in school”; “In the last year, I wasinvolved in disputes or disagreements with teachers in school.”

ResultsBecause we sampled students from many different classes and three differ-ent schools (as noted above, our purpose was to enhance generalizability),class and school were potential higher level factors in the statistical analy-ses. To test whether they affected conflict management behaviors, wecomputed intraclass correlations (Griffin and Gonzales 1995) for that vari-able.2 Because we found no statistically significant differences between andamong the different schools and different grade levels/classes in conflictbehaviors, we conducted all subsequent statistical analyses for the entiresample, regardless of school or class.


Correlations among the VariablesPerceived Procedural Justice, Conflict Management Behaviors, and

Student Attitudes. To test Hypothesis One, that PPJ would positively cor-relate to integrating, compromising, and obliging behaviors and negativelycorrelate to avoiding and dominating behaviors, we computed Pearsoncorrelations between PPJ elements and conflict management behaviors(see Table One).

To test Hypothesis Two, that PPJ would be positively associated withattitudes of legitimacy, loyalty, commitment, and identification, we com-puted Pearson correlations between PPJ elements and these variables (seeTable One).

As can be seen in Table One, of the collaborative behaviors (integrat-ing, compromising, and obliging), compromising was, as we hypothesized,positively correlated with the general mean variable of PPJ and with threeof its elements (neutrality, trust, and standing), and obliging was positivelycorrelated with trust. Contrary to Hypothesis One, however, integrating wasnot positively correlated to PPJ.

As for noncollaborative behaviors, dominating was negatively corre-lated with PPJ and all its elements, as we had hypothesized, but contrary toour hypothesis, the avoiding behavior was positively correlated with stand-ing and otherwise uncorrelated with PPJ or its elements. Our hypothesiswas based on the fact that both dominating and avoiding behaviors areclassified as noncollaborative (Kazemi 2007), but they clearly correlateddifferently with PPJ elements. We further tested the correlation betweendominating and avoiding, and it was negative and strong (r = 0.62).

Our results fully supported Hypothesis Two. Perceived proceduraljustice and all its elements correlated positively to students’ perceptions ofteacher legitimacy, and to students’ loyalty and commitment to, and identi-fication with, their classes and schools, but the correlation with teacherlegitimacy was particularly strong.3

These correlations indicate that the more likely a student is to per-ceive that his or her teacher engages in procedural justice, the more likelythat student will be to respond to conflict with his or her teacher bycompromising, and — to a lesser extent — by obliging and avoiding;conversely, the less likely the student will be to respond to such situa-tions by dominating. Furthermore, the greater the student’s perception ofprocedural justice, the more likely he or she is to perceive the teacher aslegitimate and, to a lesser extent, the more likely he or she is to feelloyalty and commitment toward and identification with his or her classand school.

Student Attitudes and Conflict Management Behaviors. To testHypothesis Three, that teacher legitimacy and student’s feelings of loyalty,


Tab

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0.04

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0.23

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0.08

0.20

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110.

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0.10

0.11

0.13

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−0.

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0.27

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0.19

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commitment, and identification would positively correlate to collaborativeapproaches to conflict and negatively correlate to avoiding and dominatingapproaches, we computed Pearson correlations between these variables,presented in Table Two (below).

Our hypotheses here were partially supported. As we hypothesized,these attitudes correlated to collaborative behaviors: students’ perceptionsof teacher legitimacy correlated positively with compromising and oblig-ing, and students’ loyalty, commitment, and identification correlated posi-tively with integrating behaviors. Also, as we hypothesized, perceptions ofteacher legitimacy correlated negatively with dominating behaviors. Butcontrary to our hypothesis, avoiding behavior correlated positively withlegitimacy, again suggesting that these two behavioral tendencies —although both are associated with low concern for the other person in theconflict — should not be classed together, at least not among adolescents.Finally, we did find, as we hypothesized, that students’ sense of identifica-tion with their class and school correlated negatively with avoidingbehaviors.

The results indicate that students who feel that their teacher’s author-ity is legitimate are more likely to compromise, oblige, and avoid, and lesslikely to dominate when they experience conflict with him or her. Studentswho feel loyalty and commitment toward, and identification with, theirclass and school are more likely to take a collaborative approach duringconflict with their teachers and less likely to seek to avoid conflict.

Background Variables, PPJ, Student Attitudes, and Conflict Manage-ment Strategies. We measured and controlled for the effects of a fewbackground variables (gender, class, popularity, academic performance, andprevious experience of conflict) that could be expected to have someimpact on our results.

To test for the effects of grade level and gender, we conductedanalyses of variance (one-way multivariate analyses of variance[MANOVAs]). We found no differences according to grade level. We did,however, find gender differences in students’ attitudes.4 Specifically, girlsreported higher levels of commitment to and identification with theirclasses and schools.5

To test for the associations of popularity, academic performance, andprevious involvement in conflict with the research variables we computedPearson correlations, presented in Table Three.

As can be seen in Table Three, PPJ, teacher legitimacy, and studentidentification and commitment are correlated negatively to involvement instudent–teacher conflict. Legitimacy and identification also correlated nega-tively to involvement in student–student conflict. Involvement in conflict, inturn, correlated positively to dominating behaviors and negatively to oblig-ing and avoiding behaviors.


Tab

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Tab

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Academic performance correlated consistently and positively to PPJ,teacher legitimacy, student identification, loyalty and commitment, and inte-grating behaviors; for example, students who reported they performed wellacademically were more likely to perceive teacher legitimacy and feelloyalty toward their classmates and school, etc. Academic performancecorrelated negatively to obliging and avoiding; students who reported theyperformed well academically were less likely to engage in these behaviorswhen in conflict with their teacher.

Popularity correlated positively to identification, loyalty, and commit-ment. It also correlated positively to dominating behaviors and negatively toobliging and avoiding behaviors.

Predictors of Conflict Management Behaviors —Hierarchical RegressionsCorrelations suggest effects that are measured independently although infact they might overlap. Thus, our next step was to conduct regressionanalyses to examine the comparative impacts of different variables onconflict management behaviors. The regressions also indicate mediatingvariables.

Because of the high correlations among the different PPJ elements andamong identification, loyalty, and commitment, we included only the meanscores for PPJ and for what we subsequently called “pro-social attitudes” inthese regression analyses.

In the following regression analyses, the dependent variables were theconflict management behaviors. (We conducted the regressions for eachbehavior separately.) Under the assumption that the students’ demographicand personal characteristics, as well as their perceptions of teachers’ behav-ior, would precede and be determinative of their attitudes, which wouldthen guide their behaviors, we entered the independent variables into theregression steps in the following order: gender, academic performance andpopularity, PPJ, teacher legitimacy and student pro-social attitudes, involve-ment in conflict with teachers (CT) and involvement in conflict withstudents, and last, interactions among the above variables.6

The regressions’ results are presented in Table Four. The beta values inthe table, somewhat like Pearson correlations, show the strength of theindependent variables’ contributions to the dependent variables and indi-cate whether the contribution is positive (e.g., increases the likelihood ofthat particular response) or negative.

As can be seen in Table Four, our regression analysis not only con-firmed our earlier findings,but also added to them.Of particular interest arethe contributions of PPJ and teacher legitimacy. Students who perceivedthat their teachers were procedurally just were less likely to dominate, andmore likely to avoid, compromise, and oblige, but not to integrate. But PPJ’scontributions became insignificant when the contributions of teacher


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legitimacy (always in the same direction as PPJ) were entered, suggestingmediation. Sobel tests confirmed that student’s perceptions of teacherlegitimacy mediated PPJ’s contributions to dominating, avoiding, and oblig-ing (Z = 3.64, p < 0.00).7 Students’ pro-social attitudes (loyalty, commit-ment, etc.) did not mediate PPJ’s effect on their conflict managementbehaviors (note, however, that having pro-social attitudes still correlatednegatively to avoiding behaviors and positively to integrating behaviors).

In addition, previous involvement in CT correlated positively to domi-nating behaviors and negatively to avoiding and obliging behaviors. We alsofound an interaction between how previous CT and teacher legitimacyaffected dominating behavior. To interpret this interaction, we divided thesample of students into a low-conflict and high-conflict group (Aiken andWest 1991) and found that the low-conflict group was less likely to reportengaging in dominating behavior if they perceived teacher legitimacy butstudents in the high conflict group were not. The above results partiallysupported our hypotheses: students who perceived procedural justice wereless likely to report engaging in dominating behaviors and more likely toreport avoiding, obliging, and compromising behaviors, but they were notmore likely to report engaging in integrative behaviors. Furthermore, theimpact of PPJ was mediated by student’s perceptions of teacher legitimacybut not by student’s pro-social attitudes. This suggests that students whoperceived their teachers to be just and attentive in their decision-makingprocesses also perceived the latter’s authority as more legitimate but didnot necessarily feel more committed or loyal toward, or identified morestrongly with, their classes and schools. This perception of teacher legiti-macy, in turn, seems to have affected students’ behavioral responses toconflict.

DiscussionWe begin our discussion by reviewing the study findings regarding thedirect contributions of perceived procedural justice to conflict manage-ment behaviors. Students who perceived that their teachers behaved inprocedurally just ways were more likely to report that they would respondto conflict by compromising, obliging, and avoiding, and would be lesslikely to respond by dominating. In other words, perceiving the teacher tobe fair and attentive seems to reduce high-school students’ inclination tochallenge the teacher when they disagree with his or her decisions (asevidenced by decreased dominating and increased avoiding) and seems toincrease their inclination to collaborate with his or her decisions, eitherfully (obliging) or by reaching a compromise. These results support ourrationale and are similar to results recently reported among young adultstudents (Zigarovich and Myres 2011).

Two of our findings failed to support our hypotheses. First, PPJ did notseem to increase the likelihood that students would choose integrating


responses to conflict. We think that this may be because integratingresponses are more cognitively challenging and require more maturity,compared with compromising. Both strategies are associated with express-ing equal (moderate or high) concern for both oneself and the otherperson, but integrating also calls for open discussion, effort, creativity, andthe ability to engage in perspective taking (Rahim 1983), skills that aremore likely to develop with age (Masten and Wright 2010). The other formsof nondominating responses to conflict (avoiding conflict, obliging, andcompromising) are conceptually easier to enact because they arecognitively one-sided — they don’t require comprehending the otherparty’s viewpoint (van de Vliert and Hordijk 1989).

Furthermore, the asymmetrical power relationships between teachersand students may well discourage students from attempting integrativeresponses (Seidman et al. 1994), which are active by their nature (Nelsonet al., under review). Research shows that low-power players feel less con-fident (Overbeck, Neale, and Govan 2010), are generally more inhibited(Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson 2003), and are less likely to take the leadin interactions,especially ones with competitive potential (Magee, Galinsky,and Gruenfeld 2007). Finally, because integrative solutions may take moretime, the hectic schedules of both teachers and students could discouragetheir practice.

We also did not predict that students who perceived procedural justicewould be more likely to engage in avoiding behaviors. In previous literatureavoiding was classed, together with dominating, as noncollaborative(Kazemi 2007), and some scholars have argued that avoiding behaviorreflects low levels of concern for others (Rahim 1983), but others havechallenged that idea (Oetzel, Garcia, and Ting-Toomey 2008; Bear 2011).Our finding that PPJ correlates to avoiding responses — as well as thestrong negative correlation we found between avoiding and dominating —suggests that the two behaviors arise from different concerns. The decisionto avoid conflict may also reflect the individual’s lack of power — studentsmay perceive that their lack of formal power in the school setting meansthey would be unable to effectively influence decision making (Jamiesonand Thomas 1974).

As we predicted, students who perceived their teachers to be unjustreported that they would be more likely to take an active form of confron-tation and use a dominating style. Previous studies suggest that adolescentsin individualistic cultures — as Israel has become over the past decades —often perceive confrontation as a legitimate conflict strategy and a way ofexpressing their autonomy and unique identity (Rosenhek, Maman, andBen-Ari 2003; Kaushal and Kwantes 2006; Komarraju, Dollinger, and Lovell2008; Ben-Ari and Hirshberg 2009). That PPJ contributed to the decreasedlikelihood that students would engage in dominating behaviors but anincreased likelihood that they would engage in avoiding behaviors suggests


that, among students, avoidance might also be a response to a decision thatmay be unwelcome, but made by a teacher who is perceived as fair andtrustworthy, and therefore the student does not feel compelled to challengeit as he or she might if he or she perceived the process was unjust.

Our results suggest that the perception of procedural justice increasesthe likelihood that students will choose collaborative responses, even whenthey do not welcome the results (Tyler and Blader 2003). Our study alsoexamined the mechanisms through which PPJ seems to encourage collabo-ration during conflict. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized thatPPJ’s impact on conflict management approaches would be mediated bythe perception of the teacher’s authority as legitimate and by students’pro-social attitudes (loyalty, commitment, and identification) toward theclass and the school.

As expected, we found that PPJ positively correlated to both teacherlegitimacy and pro-social attitudes, and that teacher legitimacy, in turn,positively correlated to compromising,obliging, and avoiding behaviors andcorrelated negatively to dominating behavior. Moreover, our regressionanalysis found that teacher legitimacy mediated PPJ’s relationship to con-flict behaviors. Contrary to our hypotheses, our regression analyses indi-cated that pro-social attitudes (loyalty, commitment, and identification) didnot, in fact, contribute to the above strategies and did not mediate PPJ’scontributions. They did, however, stand out as the only variable correlatedto integrating behaviors. As noted above, several factors (emotional andcognitive development,power asymmetry, time pressures) may explain whythis highly collaborative style is less likely to be implemented by studentsand less likely to be affected by their perceptions of their teachers. Thepositive association between pro-social attitudes and integrative behaviorssuggests that students who feel a strong sense of belonging may feel thatthey can resolve differences with their teachers through an open, creativediscussion and may also be more adept at perceiving things from theirteachers’ perspectives.

We would like to also note some impacts of background variables onstudents’ attitudes and conflict management behaviors. We found that stu-dents who reported being popular among their peers also reported feelinghigher commitment and loyalty to and identification with class and school,and were more likely to be dominating and less likely to be avoiding andobliging during conflict with their teachers. This indicates that popularity isemotionally and socially reassuring, but that it also encourages students tostand up to their teachers, maybe because their popularity induces a senseof personal power (Mayeux and Cillessen 2008). This finding is in line withprevious literature suggesting that adolescent popularity also has a “darkside” because it encourages more deviant behavior (e.g., Allen et al. 2005).

We also found that girls were more likely than boys to engage inintegrating behaviors, suggesting that they were more likely to engage in


creative, open discussion with their teachers about their disagreements andalso more likely to take the latter’s point of view. Because these behaviors(as we have elaborated earlier) require cognitive-emotional maturity andcreative, open discussion, the gender difference we found supports previ-ous literature on females’ superior socio-emotional and verbal abilities (seeFisher 1999). Notably, we did not find gender effects on dominating, avoid-ing, obliging, or compromising, which challenges common gender stereo-types and gender-related social expectations (Bem 1974; Eagly 1987;Amanatullah and Morris 2010), as well as past research on gender andnegotiation or conflict management (Holt and DeVore 2005; Thomas,Thomas, and Schaubhut 2008; Nelson et al., under review).

Our study highlights the important role that PPJ can play in student–teacher conflicts and in the ways that adolescents respond to these con-flicts. It also suggests that teacher legitimacy is an important mediatorbetween PPJ and its relationship to conflict behavior. In other words,teachers who create the perception of procedural justice by making deci-sions fairly and communicating them attentively, by listening to students,and by attending to their needs validate their own authority as legitimate,which makes students less likely to engage in dominating conflict behaviorand more likely to accept teachers’ decisions.

Beyond promoting the perception of legitimacy, PPJ may promotecooperative conflict behavior in several other ways. By attending to thestudent respectfully, the teacher may be addressing her or his emotionalneeds, which could diminish the impact of an unwelcome decision. Sociallearning theory (Bandura 1973; Brown et al. 2005) suggests that the stu-dents of a fair and attentive teacher would tend to imitate her or hisbehavior, which could promote more collaborative approaches to conflict.

According to attachment theory (Bowlby 1969, 1973; Bergin andBergin 2009), an attentive caregiver or authority figure helps a childdevelop a sense of security (by becoming a “secure base” for him or her),and a secure individual is better able to resolve problems and differences inrelationships without damaging the relationship or diminishing his or herown sense of autonomy (Allen and Land 1999). For example, a previousstudy showed that secure adolescents tended to be involved in fewerconflicts than their insecure peers (Ben-Ari and Hirshberg 2009), and astudy among adults showed that secure disputants used more constructivelanguage during mediation proceedings than did insecure disputants(Nelson, Albeck-Solomon, and Ben-Ari 2011).

Studies have shown that high school teachers can promote a sense ofsecurity in their students, which can affect students’ academic perfor-mance, emotional states, and tendencies to engage in aggressive and violentbehavior (Howes and Ritchie 1999; Beishuizzen et al. 2001; Hamre andPianta 2001; Sabol and Pianta 2012; Verschueren and Kooman 2012). Thequalities of an authority figure who employs procedural justice are similar


to those of a caretaker who provides a“secure base” (trustworthy, attentive,etc.). Thus, our findings may suggest that teachers who honor the prin-ciples of procedural justice may become trusted caregivers to their stu-dents,who become more securely attached to them, so that even in conflictsituations they may be more inclined to seek collaborative solutions to theconflicts they experience with their teachers.

Research Limitations and Suggestions for Future ResearchThis study has some important limitations. It is correlational and thuscannot firmly establish PPJ’s causal effects on conflict management behav-ior. Another important limitation is that the results are based on self-assessments rather than direct observations of actual conflict behavior(Holland, Verplanken, and Van Knippenberg 2002). Individuals may notbehave as they say they will. They may respond in ways that they perceiveare socially desirable (Spector 1994), and adolescents, in particular, may nothave developed the self-awareness to predict how they might behave inhypothetical situations. Although an individual’s self-perception is a criticalcomponent of many conflict studies, research that looks at real conflictbehavior is often necessary to establish the relationship between what wethink and feel about conflict and what we actually do in conflict.

In addition, other factors that this study did not examine could berelevant to teacher–student conflict behavior. As we have suggested above,attachment and social learning may be relevant.

Other limitations concern the characteristics of our sample. Researchconclusions are typically limited to the culture in which the research wascarried, and the current research is no exception. We note more specificallythe limitations related to age: we included adolescents in the tenth totwelfth grades. As we discussed earlier, emotional and cognitive develop-ment affects conflict management. We found no differences between ouryounger and older participants, but a more diverse range of ages wouldlikely reveal developmental effects.

All the schools in this sample were public schools that adhere togovernmental educational policies, where teachers are required to repre-sent these policies and are constrained by them. Some private schools inIsrael tend to be smaller in size and also foster more democratic environ-ments. These usually create more intimate settings that encourage teachers’personal expression. It would be interesting to study the effects of PPJ insuch environments, specifically, whether procedural justice would enhancecollaboration and cooperation through the mechanism of increasing stu-dents’ loyalty, commitment, and identification, and not only by enhancingteacher legitimacy.

Finally, this study looked at procedural justice and conflict in theclassroom from the perspective of students. Developing a fuller picture ofconflict between teachers and students,and what measures teachers can take


to develop effective conflict management skills in their students,would alsorequire studying the phenomena from the perspective of teachers.

Practice and Teaching ImplicationsOur study has some obvious implications for teaching practice. It stronglysuggests that teacher education programs should include discussion ofperceived procedural justice and its role in reducing conflict. It also sug-gests that schools should further encourage these practices in both theirpolicy making and as part of teachers’ ongoing professional development.Incorporating these principles in their teaching should help teachers bringmore peace to their classrooms. Respect for procedural justice can helpteachers build constructive working relationships with their students andavoid the unnecessary conflict — and successfully resolve the unavoidableconflict — that too often interfere with learning.

NOTES

1. Test–retest reliabilities (four weeks apart) reported by Kilmann and Thomas (1977) weredominating, r = 0.61; avoiding, r = 0.68; obliging, r = 0.62; compromising, r = 0.66; and integrating,r = 0.63. The reliabilities (test–retest two weeks apart) in the present study were dominating,r = 0.81; avoiding, r = 0.78; obliging, r = 0.74; compromising, r = 0.63; and integrating, r = 0.75. Theformat of the questionnaire makes Cronbach’s alpha less applicable.

2. We found intraclass correlations of less than <0.01 at both the school level and class levelfor all five conflict behaviors.

3. We conducted a Fisher’s Z test that yielded a significant difference (p < 0.01) between thecorrelation between PPJ and teacher legitimacy, and between PPJ and the other three studentattitudes: the correlation between PPJ and teacher legitimacy was significantly stronger than thecorrelations between PPJ and the other attitudes.

4. (F(3,252) = 10.40, p < 0.001, Eta2 = 0.14).5. Commitment: (F(1,254) = 25.69, p < 0.001, Eta2 = 0.09); girls (M = 4.32, SD = 0.71) and

boys (M = 3.81, SD = 0.88). Identification: (F(1,254) = 23.14, p < 0.001, Eta2 = 0.08), girls((M = 4.19, SD = 0.79) and boys ((M = 3.66, SD = 0.93).

6. We entered only those interactions that results indicated had significant effects.7. Dominating: Z = 5.06, p < 0.001, avoiding: Z = 2.69, p < 0.05, and obliging: Z = 3.64,

p < 0.00.

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Procedural Justice and Conflict Management at School