Background. Professional activity of managers, entrepreneurs and other persons who often enter into negotiations implies high density of difficult and problem situations. All of them are forced to manage stress instantaneously and immediately make adequate decisions. Within the framework of resourcebased view it seems important to identify determinants of effective coping behavior as a resources for managing socially significant situations during negotiations. Objective. This study explored whether social and psychological peculiarities of personality, preferred negotiating styles and response to ambiguity may determinants of productive coping behavior. Design. We made a survey among 105 managers of medium- and large-sized business aged from 23 to 59. Average age of the respondents is 35.37 years. In the course of our study we measured an adaptive level of coping strategies by E. Heim’s Coping Questionnaire, peculiarities of personality by 5PFQ P. Costa & R. McCrae, preferred negotiating styles and response to ambiguity.
Results. Results suggested that adaptive coping strategies more frequently used by less anxious, emotionally healthy managers who in dealing with colleagues and subordinates show respect, willingness to understand and accept the others point of view, comparative to non-adaptive or relatively adaptive coping strategies using managers with high anxiety, emotional instability and less developed communication skills. The correlation between degree of adaptability of coping styles and age, work experience and attitude to uncertainty was not statistically significant. It was found the correlation between preferences of the negotiation styles and personality characteristics of respondents. Conclusion. It was obtained by coping the profile of managers using adaptive ways of coping during negotiations. These social and psychological characteristics may be considered as the determinants of a person’s use of adaptive coping ways in difficult situations and more or less serve as a guarantee for their successful overcoming.