Conflict styles are typically seen as a response to particular situations. By contrast, we argue that individual conflict styles may shape an employee's social environment , affecting the level of ongoing conflict and thus his or her experience of stress. Using data from a hospital-affiliated clinical department, we find that those who use a more integrative style experience lower levels of task conflict, reducing relationship conflict, which reduces stress. Those who use a more dominating or

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... oiding style experience higher levels of task conflict, increasing relationship conflict and stress. We conclude that an employee's work environment is) in part, of his or her own making. Conflict management styles have been related to the quality of agreement reached during negotiations (Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993) and other conflict management episodes (Van de Vuert, Euwema, & Huismans, 1995), but the impact of conflict styles may be much broader than that. We argue that conflict management styles can have a pervasive effect on work life in organizations, by impacting the degree to which an employee experiences ongoing conflict. Conflict levels, in turn, affect the amount of stress felt by individual employees. Previous research has shown that people with different dispositions tend to create different social environments for themselves. Thus, a person's "situation" depends not only on external conditions, but also on his or her own approach to people and problems. Similarly, experience of conflict is not just a function of external conditions, but also of the conflict management styles that people bring to bear on problems at work.