Conflict in The Workplace: A Look at Carolyn and Nick Essay

Conflict is an inevitable and is part of business life, where there are people there will always be conflict, not all conflict is negative. Some workplace conflict s healthy and if viewed positively, however where unhealthy conflict is present it has a potential risk to cause the company serious problems Workplace conflict can be in many forms from serious flare-ups to less obvious, but less destructive forms of negativity. Workplace conflict can be caused by personality clashes or style differences and personal. Workplace factors such as poor leadership, poor management, unfair treatment, poor communication, budgets, discrimination, Unrealistic work expectations

People will have disagreements everyday. Commonly, people cannot find ways to agree because we are all different in many ways. Our family upbringing, religious beliefs, cultural background, traditions, ethnicity, and gender are some of the factors that allow us to form our perceptions about life. These characteristics cause us to have diverse opinions on the way we handle various situations. Whenever a group people try to apply their viewpoints to certain circumstances, the outcome is usually conflict. "Conflict is defined as two or more individuals who fail to agree or have

I aim to analyse key theories which examine the effects of conflict within the workplace. Conflict is a part of everyday life, as long as we have existed conflict has also. Rahim (2010) defines conflict as an interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement or dissonance within or between social entities. However, he expands upon the definition stating debating as to whether the conflict is caused by the situation or the individuals type of behaviour. This contests the issue of whether conflict is caused by a particular situation that the employee has experienced or if whether the behaviourism of the employee is to blame. If organisational conflict is not resolved, several negative consequences can occur including increased stress among employees, reduced creative collaboration and team problem solving, disruption to work flow, decreased customer satisfaction, distrust, split camps, and create gossip amongst the workplace. (Moriarty, 2007).

T he four levels of conflict in the workplace and the explanation of the traditional, behavioural and interactionist views of conflict are identified. C onflicts are classified using two approaches: First, they are grouped into relationship and task conflicts. Second, they are categorised by

While an individual may attempt to avoid conflict in the workplace, there is no way to actually escape it. In the workplace environment, there are a variety of co-worker relationships and challenging work situations that may increase our emotional response. Therefore, it is important for employees to have the skills and abilities to recognize when conflict occurs, identify the type of conflict, and to implement effective strategies that will bring about a rapid resolution to the conflict which satisfies all stakeholders. Many people allow themselves to become emotional which is ineffectual when conflict occurs. Other individuals are fearful of conflict in the workplace and hope that if they bury their heads in the sand the situation may resolve on its own without any interventions. Unfortunately, very seldom does conflict in the workplace resolve on its own accord. In order to prevent conflict from escalating, it is imperative for employees to take a proactive approach and implement strategies which provide a framework for conflict resolution. Methods for conflict resolution are provided with Bernard Mayer’s Wheel of Conflict (Mayer, 2000) and Christopher Moore’s Triangle of Satisfaction (Moore, 2003). This paper will provide an analysis of a workplace conflict and demonstrate conflict resolution utilizing each method.

Although there is a plethora of possible sources of conflict in any workplace, the ones in this case are rather explicit. These include personal differences, Informal deficiencies’, role incompatibility, environment stress, perceptions, and expectations. Personal differences could be related to personal values, physiognomies, family bonds or ties, and material belongings.

In the contention of viewing conflict as whether undesirable phenomenon or not, it has been widely accepted that the presence of conflict in the workplace is inevitable. According to Rahim (2002, p. 207), conflict could be define as “an interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement, or dissonance within or between social entities.” As this conflict occurs in the workplace, the existence of conflict is not only limited between people in an organisation, but it is also occurred between organisations, where it involves employees, employers, managers, units or departments. While several research focused to identify the source and analyse the amount of conflict at interpersonal, intra-group and intra-group levels, the others also examine the various styles of managing conflict in the workplace. However, workplace conflict could be caused by different influencing factors, which have been addressed into several main themes by conflict management scholars. In carrying out the studies, many of them differentiated workplace conflict into two types. First, affective conflict or relationship conflict or emotional conflict which usually engage incompatible feelings and emotions; and second, task conflict or substantive conflict or cognitive conflict which usually emerge disagreements on job content issues (Riaz & Junaid 2011). Examining influencing factors that causes these types of conflict and determining the style to effectively manage the conflict are considerably

A positive conflicts have a positive consequence, it helps in making better decision and to be aware of the external environment. Most of the time, the employees are affected by the magnitude of negative results. Leaders need to recognize the main six conditions that cause conflict in an organization which are interdepent, differentiation, scarce resources, incompatible goals, ambiguous rules and communication problem. Once the cause of the conflict is known leaders or employees could apply the five category model of problem solving, forcing, yielding, avoidance and compromising tactics to resolve conflicts. In some situation, a third party might be involved to resolve a conflict as a mediation, arbitration or inquisition and use the conflict management approaches.

Conflicts between the employees in an organization are an issue that must be overcome immediately as this situation could affect the organization’s performance. Additional support is given by Jalaludin et al (2013, p.39) who points out that

Conflict can arise from any one or more general sources in the workplace (McShane & Von Glinow, 2003). Conflict as it arises should be addressed immediately, as if left unattended can create

The case study has been explained in the light of internationally accepted Conflict Management strategies, concepts, and theories of the present times. These theories and concepts will help in recommending potential solutions to the aforementioned conflict.

Everyone who has ever held a job or professional position has experienced some time of conflict. Whether it was personal or between other co-workers, conflict is unavoidable. The workplace is best described as a professional melting pot. People who come together, from different backgrounds and opinions, to serve a common purpose are bound to have a disagreement (Lytle, 2015). This is something managers should always be prepared for and should even expect to occur. Conflict can be a healthy part of any type of decision making process if it is received by mature and self-confident individuals who can maintain professionalism (Nahavandi, Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2015). For this particular paper, I will describe a personal problem in

Most conflicts that arise among employees in any organization are due to managerial actions. They vary from employing new people to leadership in the organization. This section describes some key issues that cause conflict.

In organization every employee has his own ideas and interests. These separate views can cause conflict and may become a reason to unpleasant environment in the organization. If an employee is in conflict with someone at work, then he can suffer from anger, fear and different psychological problems. Conflict can act as a stressor. According to Landis and Umberson (1988), conflict has strong effect on any individual working in organization.

Present day organizations operate in a chaotic environment where they often look for actions that will enable them to advance their competitiveness and performance. In both our private and professional life, conflict is unavoidable. Though some of us try to evade conflict, it is quiet impossible. It is completely normal to desire to evade conflict. The efficient management of an organization conflict entails an indulgent of the basis and nature of the conflict in the workplace. Conflicts frequently come about because of view of mismatched interests between employees. Prudently, it is worth focusing on interpersonal conflicts, resolutions and the outcomes of such conflicts.