Abstract

In the fast pace of world communication process, role conflict among employees becomes core concern of thehigher officials. Thereby, the present study was an attempt to explore the contribution and relationship ofsupportive and defensive communication climate on role conflict among subordinate staff of Salman binAbdulaziz University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The sample included in the study is 368 subordinate staffworking in various departments of the university. Communication climate inventory developed by Gibb’s (1961)and role conflict scale by Rizzo, et al., (1970) was used to determine the experiences of subordinate staff.Pearson’s product-moment correlation and step wise multiple regression analysis were used. The findings of thepresent investigation revealed that (i) defensive communication climate and their facets were positively relatedwith role conflict, (ii) total defensive communication climate and their two facets (superiority and control) wereemerged most dominant predictors of role conflict, (iii) supportive communication climate and their facets wereshowed positive significant relationship with role conflict, and (iv) empathy emerged as one of the mostimportant predictor of role conflict. The present investigation tempted to provide certain implication andsuggestion to add value in the contemporary areas of knowledge.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.