Disputes among colleagues occur in organizations every day. Who can employees turn to for help in resolving these conflicts? Some organizations offer formal alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes, including access to professional mediators. At least as often, however, individual managers who are not formal mediators are called upon to assist their subordinates in resolving disputes. As Mintzberg (1973) has shown, managers spend a lot of their work time resolving disputes for their subordinates. For this type of informal mediation
to work well, managers who are called upon to mediate must be deemed acceptable to all the parties involved; a mediator’s expected fairness is often a key determinant of disputant satisfaction (Thibaut & Walker, 1975; Tyler, 1986). We define mediation fairness as the quality of the treatment that subordinates expect to receive from mediators, such as respect or sensitivity, during the mediation process (cf. DeCremer & Tyler, 2007; Smith, Tyler, Huo, Ortiz, & Lind, 1998; Tyler & Lind, 1992).

What qualities must a supervisor possess to be perceived by subordinates as someone who will be a fair mediator? In this study we explored this question, focusing in particular on two characteristics of potential mediators that might affect perceived fairness: supervisors’ self-efficacy in mediation (Bandura, 1986, 1991; Wood & Bandura, 1989) and their personality traits. We also examined whether or not age difference between a supervisor and a subordinate influences the effects of supervisor personality traits.

Supervisors as Potential Mediators

A common way for people to resolve conflicts within organizations (Karambayya & Brett, 1989) is mediation, a process in which a third party facilitates interactions between or among disputants with the goal of helping them reach a resolution. From a procedural justice framework, mediation offers a high degree of process control for the two parties to the dispute, as they may be able to influence the views of the mediators (Thibaut & Walker, 1975).

While the very process of mediation can enhance disputants’ sense of fairness of the situation, it also matters to them that mediators behave in a manner deemed to be fair. The Lind and Tyler group-value model (Tyler, 1986; Tyler & Lind, 1992) suggests that an individual’s feelings of self-worth are closely linked to his/her perceptions that the group s/he belongs to values him/her. Fair treatment, especially by those in positions of authority, is viewed as one indicator of being valued. Moreover, feeling fairly treated carries important benefits for organizations; when subordinates expect their supervisors to resolve a conflict fairly, they are also likely to expect the supervisor to be receptive to their decisions. As a result, the employee is likely to display more positive behaviors within the organization (Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Supervisory actions that support such perceptions of fairness include treating subordinates with respect, dignity, politeness, and consideration.

In the following sections, we examine how two sets of variables might affect perceived mediation fairness: supervisors’ self-efficacy in mediation and their personality traits.

Supervisors’ Self-Efficacy

Mediator competence has been proposed as a significant factor in the successful mediation of disputes (e.g., Landsberger, 1960). Mediator competence may include the following qualities: intellectual capability, the ability to come up with solutions, having knowledge in relevant domains such as law and labor relations, and so on. Managers may gain subordinates’ confidence by showing that they can resolve differences successfully and come up with win-win solutions.

According to Bandura’s social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, 1991; Wood & Bandura, 1989), we all hold beliefs about our individual ability to mobilize people and take action to meet situational demands. Bandura used the term self-efficacy to denote a person’s overall judgment of his or her own capacity for performing a given task. Based upon Bandura’s theory, we use the term mediation self-efficacy to refer to a person’s beliefs about his or her capacity to resolve disputants’ conflict successfully. In this light, managers’ mediation self-efficacy primarily describes their confidence in the degree to which they could make skillful use of available resources when trying to resolve a conflict.

Notably, our self-efficacy is a prominent predictor of our behavior and attitudes. For example, in a meta-analysis, Multon, Brown, and Lent (1991) found relationships between efficacy beliefs, academic performance, and outcomes in a wide variety of study subjects. Paglis and Green (2002) found that managers’ leadership self-efficacy correlated with their motivation for leading change. Tierney and Farmer (2002) found support for the notion that creative self-efficacy, or employees’ beliefs about their ability to be creative at work, predicted creative performance. Furthermore, in a recent study of 265 MBA students (Zhao, Seibert, & Hills, 2005) showed that a sense of self-efficacy about entrepreneurship correlated with the students’ intentions to become entrepreneurs.

While the relationship between individual self-efficacy and behavior has been established, it is less clear whether these behaviors and attitudes are noticed by the people who surround the individual. In a longitudinal study, Moynihan, Roehling, LePine, and Boswell (2003) found that applicants’ job search self-efficacy moderated the relationship between the number of interviews they engaged in and the number of job offers they received. The researchers concluded that highly confident job seekers were more efficient in converting interviews into job offers. Clearly, self-efficacy is not only felt by the focal individual, but is
also noticed by those whom they meet. Similarly, we propose that managers’ self-efficacy in their ability to resolve disputes is likely to be noticed by subordinates, who thus will become more comfortable with their managers as potential mediators of disputes. Thus, we proposed:
Hypothesis 1 Supervisors’ mediation self-efficacy is positively associated with subordinates’ expected mediation fairness of the supervisors.

Supervisors’ Personality Traits

The personality traits of supervisors may also affect perceived mediator fairness. As suggested by Lansberger (1960), a number of personality traits are essential to the successful performance of a mediator’s role, including an energetic demeanor, persuasiveness, and a sense of humor. Kolb (1985) argued that mediators who create an impression of intimacy and friendship with disputants are in a better position to establish their expert credentials.

As we think about which personality traits may be desirable in mediators, we turn to the Big Five personality model (Goldberg, 1993; McCrae & Costa, 1997). The model suggests five basic dimensions of individual traits: extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. In this study, we examined two of the five traits - extraversion and agreeableness - because they are much more associated with relationship building than are the other three personality traits. As Goldberg (1993) explained, extraversion is the degree to which a person is talkative, sociable, and enjoys social gatherings; agreeableness describes an individual’s tendency to be interpersonally altruistic and cooperative. For a mediator to create a strong relationship with disputants, he or she must reach out to them in an open and friendly manner (extraversion) and must be supportive of their efforts (agreeableness).

In previous research it has been shown that these two traits are particularly relevant to interpersonal interactions in workplace contexts. Barry and Friedman (1998) found that negotiators with high levels of extraversion and agreeableness become socially engaged with − and concerned about − the other party, and therefore are more easily influenced by the other party’s opening offer. Judge and his associates (e.g., Judge & Bono, 2000; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002) have found positive relationships between supervisors’ extraversion, agreeableness, and transformational leadership.

How do these relational aspects of supervisors affect subordinates’ perceptions of mediator fairness? We provide two possible mechanisms: communication quality and emotional contagion. First, extraverted supervisors are likely to feel comfortable and competent in social interactions, attributes that should enhance the quality of their interpersonal communications. Communication competency, in turn, should enhance subordinates’ perceptions of fairness. As Kernan and Hanges (2002) found, communication quality is an effective predictor of perceived fairness during times of organizational change. High-quality interpersonal communication involves listening carefully and showing respect and sensitivity. Similarly, supervisors high in agreeableness are likely to be cooperative and to empathize with their subordinates, leading the subordinates to perceive these supervisors as highly sensitive to their needs.

Second, the pleasant personality traits of supervisors may arouse subordinates’ positive emotions through “emotional contagion” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994), or “the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally” (Hatfield et al., p. 5). If supervisor-subordinate interactions occur in the context of positive emotions because of the supervisor’s agreeableness, the two of them may increasingly engage in interactions that allow the supervisor to communicate useful information and the subordinate to express ideas and feelings about the work. This type of full and truthful communication should lead subordinates to perceive their supervisors as fair mediators. Recent studies provide evidence for the effects of emotions on fairness perceptions. Van den Bos, Maas, Waldring, and Semin (2003) manipulated affect in their experiment and found that subjects consistently rated procedures as fairer when a positive rather than a negative mood was established.

Thus, supervisor extraversion and agreeableness should enhance perceptions of supervisor mediation fairness through communication quality and emotional contagion. We proposed the following two hypotheses.
Hypothesis 2 Supervisors’ extraversion is positively associated with subordinates’ expected mediation fairness of supervisors.
Hypothesis 3 Supervisors’ agreeableness is positively associated with subordinates’ expected mediation fairness of supervisors.

The Effects of Age Difference on Personality Traits

We conducted our study in Taiwan, where most citizens are Chinese descendants. In a Chinese cultural context, personality traits may be especially relevant when the age difference between superiors and subordinates is very large. The importance of age difference is embodied in Confucianism (Hwang, 2000), which teaches the young to defer to their elders. If one’s superior is much older than oneself, the subordinate will be expected to defer to that supervisor. If a mediator is of such high status, the personality traits of that individual will
be crucial to the disputing parties. Conversely, younger mediators will not gain their legitimacy and support from the parties. As a result, the effects from their favorable personality traits will disappear. We predict that personality factors may help supervisors and subordinates leverage the social distance inherent in age discrepancies. As discussed above, people are often drawn to those who are older and extraverted (or agreeable). An older supervisor’s extraversion and agreeableness may strengthen disputants’ assurance that the supervisor will act as a fair mediator, while a younger supervisor’s similar traits may not. As a result, we propose:
Hypothesis 4 The positive effect of extraversion on the expected mediation fairness of a supervisor will be stronger the older the supervisor is compared to the subordinate.
Hypothesis 5 The positive effect of agreeableness on the expected mediation fairness of a supervisor will be stronger the older the supervisor is compared to the subordinate.

Method

Scenario

To test our hypotheses, we designed a scenario for our study based on one  commonly used in justice research (see Friedman, Chi, & Liu, 2006) concerning  a colleague stealing an idea from the focal person. Participants were asked to put themselves in the role of the person whose idea was stolen and who was looking for someone to mediate the dispute. Participants were then asked to judge how fair their actual supervisors would be as mediators of this dispute.

Participants and Procedure

We distributed our survey questionnaires in eight classes of a professional institute of business administration in northern Taiwan. The sampled students (who were asked to fill out subordinate versions of the questionnaires) were all college-level students with full-time jobs. They answered the questionnaires after class and returned them to the teacher in sealed envelopes. Each student took a version of the questionnaire designed for supervisors to his or her boss to fill out. Supervisors were asked to fill out the questionnaire and mail it back to the
researcher in a sealed envelope. All respondents were told that the researchers had put identifying marks on the questionnaire to match each superior-subordinate dyad. They were also informed that the information collected would be used only for research purposes and that confidentiality of the data would be assured. We received 122 completed superior-subordinate dyads with a 62.2% return rate. Among the 244 respondents, 79 were male, and 164 were female (one person did not answer the gender question); there were 58 male superiors and 64 female superiors. The average age of supervisors was 37.86 and that of
subordinates was 24.88.

Measures

Mediation self-efficacy Based on Shapiro and Rosen’s (1994) dimensions of mediation self-efficacy, we designed a 12-item scale to assess supervisors’ self-efficacy in mediation. We asked the supervisors to provide responses on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from never (1) to always (7). The Cronbach’s alpha of the mediation efficacy scale was .94.

Personality traits We used the 10 items for extraversion and agreeableness from Goldberg’s (1998, 1999) Big Five personality scale to assess supervisors’ personality traits. For each item, respondents were asked to rate themselves on a 9-point semantic differential scale. Goldberg’s scales are well established and have been studied and validated extensively. The Cronbach’s alphas in our study were .86 for extraversion and .84 for agreeableness.

Expected mediation fairness To assess the mediation fairness that subordinates expected of their supervisors as third-party mediators of the dispute in the scenario we adopted the Treatment Quality Scale from Smith, Tyler, Huo, Ortiz, and Lind (1998). We modified the scale to match the mediation context and we dropped one item (“How hard did this individual try to do the right thing to you?”) because it does not fit with our design. An exploratory factor analysis showed that the five items that were left belonged to one factor (see Appendix for items and factor loadings). The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .89.

Age difference Age difference refers to the number of years by which the superior is older than the subordinate; our age difference indices were calculated by subtracting a subordinate’s age from that of his or her superior. (It should be noted that the three dyads in which subordinates were older than their supervisors had negative scores for their age difference indices.)

Lastly, we asked supervisors to report their education level and asked subordinates whether their supervisors actually had mediated disputes for them. These two variables were used as control variables.

Results

Table 1 reports the means and standard deviations of the measures and zero-order correlation coefficients between the measures.

To test Hypothesis 1, we conducted a regression analysis with mediation self-efficacy as an independent variable and with mediation experience and supervisors’ education as control variables (see Model 1 in Table 2). The resultant beta coefficient was not significant (p > .05); supervisors’ self-efficacy in mediation was not a predictor of subordinates’ expected fairness of them as mediators. Hence, Hypothesis 1 was not supported.

To test the main effects of supervisors’ personality traits (Hypotheses 2 and 3), we conducted a regression analysis with personality traits as the independent variables (see Table 2). In Model 2 of the analysis, we entered the control variables and mediation self-efficacy into the equation and then entered the personality traits. There was a significant beta coefficient of extraversion as a predictor of mediation efficacy (β = .26, p < .05), but a nonsignificant beta coefficient of agreeableness (p > .05). That is to say, the greater the extraversion of a supervisor, the greater his/her subordinate’s positive perception of him/her as a fair mediator. Hence, Hypothesis 2 was supported, but Hypothesis 3 was not.

To minimize collinearity effects that might occur when testing H4 and H5 (which included an interaction term), we mean-centered the related variables (Aiken & West, 1991). In Model 3 of the regression, we entered the moderator and the two interaction terms. We found one significant effect on expected mediation fairness: age difference × supervisor agreeableness (r = .29, p < .01). Hence, Hypothesis 5 was supported, but Hypothesis 4 was not.

In sum, our data showed that the extraversion of a supervisor had a positive effect on that supervisor’s expected mediation fairness. Our data also showed that the interaction of age difference with the supervisor’s agreeableness had a positive effect on expected mediation fairness. As shown in Figure 1, the slope of the agreeableness of supervisors is more positive when age difference is high than when it is low.

Conclusions

In this study we explored the factors that lead subordinates to expect more or less of a particular supervisor as a fair mediator of disputes with colleagues. To our surprise, supervisors’ mediation self-efficacy did not predict subordinates’ expectations of supervisors as mediators. It could be that supervisors’ efficacy beliefs do not translate into successful behavior, or that subordinates overlook their superiors’ confidence and capabilities. Or it could be simply that expertise in mediation does not seem particularly relevant to subordinates as compared to supervisor personality.

Our other predictions, which focused on personality, did receive empirical support. Subordinates expected extraverted supervisors to be fairer mediators than introverted mediators. This finding parallels suggestions from earlier scholars that successful mediators should possess the quality of expressiveness (e.g., Kolb, 1985; Landsberger, 1960). The level of supervisor agreeableness, on the other hand, in itself did not impact on subordinates’ expected mediation fairness. Rather, our data indicated that the effect of agreeableness appeared only when the supervisor was much older than the subordinate. We argue that this finding results from Chinese culture’s emphasis on honoring seniority. For a much older manager to be welcomed as a mediator, he or she must be equipped with certain personality traits. Supervisor agreeableness appears to achieve that goal. Nevertheless, in our results, we discovered that our interaction hypotheses held only in the case of agreeableness, not in the case of extraversion. We speculate that contextual variables could explain these nonsignificant findings, and we hope that, in future, researchers will explore these factors in more detail.

Study Limitations

This study has two clear limitations. First, we used a scenario research method that provided an example of one particular conflict. It may be that other types of conflict would elicit different types of responses. Also, the stakes of workplace disputes are likely to be much higher in real-world situations, thereby enhancing emotions and anxieties and adding other dynamics. Second, we collected our sample in a Chinese cultural setting, which is likely to have been a driving factor in our results about age difference. We cannot be sure, however, until we collect similar data in a Western cultural context.

Contributions and Implications

We have made two contributions in this study. First, we have extended earlier research in which limited evidence was provided of the effects of individual differences on mediator preferences (cf. Lewicki, Weiss, & Lewin, 1992; Wall & Lynn, 1993). Based on the distinctions of Lewicki and colleagues, many scholars of mediation (e.g., Elangovan, 1995) have focused on providing normative models, or general, procedural, or strategic prescriptions for mediators, while others have offered descriptive models that examine the roles taken by actual mediators (e.g., Karambayya & Brett, 1989; Karambayya, Brett, & Lytle, 1992). Neither of these bodies of literature has addressed the impact of a crucial contextual variable of mediation: the characteristics of third-party mediators and demographic differences between mediators and disputants. We have filled this gap in this study by investigating the individual differences that lead to subordinates’ expectations of their supervisors as fair mediators of their disputes with colleagues.

For practitioners, in this study we have provided data that will help managers to understand the reasons behind their subordinates’ mediator preferences. Our findings can also help organizations better select managers as suitable mediators of internal disputes. According to our findings, supervisor personality impacts on subordinates’ comfort with supervisors as mediators. Thus, organizations seeking to invest in mediator training might wish to hire more extraverted supervisors, who are more likely to be viewed as fair and thus are more likely than introverted managers to be drawn into conflicts as mediators. Additionally, the broad idea that psychological comfort matters in mediation suggests that any aspect of mediation that makes parties more comfortable with each other will also enhance expected mediation fairness. Lastly, companies operating in a Chinese context may note that older managers with a high level of agreeableness will create open communication with subordinates who need mediation.

APPENDIX

Items		Factor loadings
1.	My supervisor will treat me with dignity.	.87
2.	My supervisor will show concern for my rights.	.87
3.	My supervisor will get all the information needed to make good decisions about the issues involved.	.81
4.	My supervisor will treat me politely.	.80
5.	My supervisor will treat me fairly.	.79
6.	Everything my supervisor says will be honest.	.69
7.	My supervisor will take account of my needs in this situation.	.61

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The first author would like to thank the National Science Council of Taiwan

ROC

for supporting him as a visiting scholar at London Business School from January 2003 to January 2004. The design and data collection for this study were completed during that period.

Shu-Cheng Steve Chi, Department of Business Administration, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. Phone: (886) 2-33661049; Fax: (886) 2-23625379; Email: [email protected]