Nurse Practitioners’ Work Values and Their Conflict Management Approaches in a Stressful Workplace: A Taiwan Study

Globalization has created an urgent need to understand management practices in different cultures. This study examines Confucianism-based work values of nurse practitioners in Taiwan and explores their impact on conflict management approaches in order to help health practitioners maintain sustainable work relationships and improve organizational effectiveness in an increasingly stressful workplace. Based on the data from 259 nurse practitioners in Taiwan, this study shows that nurse practitioners in Taiwan consider holistic rewards, self-fulfillment and personal growth, challenge and responsibility, autonomy, and meaningfulness as important work values. Hierarchical regression results further indicate that nurse practitioners with strong group-centered needs, such as needs for holistic rewards, preferred collaborative methods to manage conflicts in the workplace, and individuals with strong self-centered needs, such as needs for personal growth and self-fulfillment and needs for autonomy, preferred competitive methods to manage conflicts. Interestingly, this study also finds that self-centered needs such as needs for self-fulfillment and personal growth, and needs for challenge and responsibility are also related to collaborative approaches. Managerial implications are then discussed for conflict management training for nurse practitioners under stressful work conditions.