Reduction of the Potential for Conflict Between Intra-Organizational Elements Such as Negotiators and Tactical Operators

Conflict is part of our human disposition; consequently, it is customary within organizations. “Left unanalyzed and unchecked, it can be a destructive force that consumes time, money and human resources. Learning the various ways that people resolve conflict and expanding their conflict resolution styles can lead to better results” (Sadri, 2012). Within organizations employees have personal beliefs, styles and attitudes, and backgrounds that at times can cause disagreements, inconsistencies and ultimately, conflict. It is the intent of this paper to examine the archetype of conflict as an

This paper will explain and critique conflict management style. It will describe at least three conflict management styles, which conflict management style do I personally use most frequently and why I do. It will also describe the difficulties I have dealt with others who use different conflict management styles then me. I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each conflict management style. Finally I will describe conflict avoidance and its interrelationship with conflict management.

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).

Our assigned case study states “that dropping its old ways of handling scheduling and logistics created a great deal of conflict at Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, but applying the principles of managing conflict helped the railroad adopt a more sophisticated system and recover its competitive position in the transportation industry (Robbins, pg. 428). Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell Soup, increased functional conflicts in his organization by emphasizing a higher purpose to the organization’s efforts rather than focusing on whose side was winning a conflict (pg. 428). Thus, a dysfunctional conflict environment changed dramatically and the organization was able to move from one of the world’s worst-performing food companies to one that was recognized as a top performer by both the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and Fortune 500 data on employee morale.” (pg. 428).

Conflict or disagreement over the range of issues has become inherent aspect of modern organisational life. People from different cultural and education background work in an organisation. People working in an organisation may possess different goal and interest. People working in organisation may tend to different over a range of issues including organisational politics, organisational procedure, personal preference or political preference. It is also argued that conflict is essential characteristics of organisational life. Role of manager is paramount with regard to negotiating the conflict that arises in organisational life (http://www.sagepub.com/). Often lack of

“The Nature of Conflict: When team members have a common goal and feel accountable to each other, conflict can safely be used to see and understand varying points of view”.

Conflict is natural and unavoidable in human interactions. It may possess both negative and positive characteristics in its ability to hinder task performance by creating hostility, as well as enhancing decision making, creativity, and innovation among team members. Therefore, the ways in which we deal with conflict are

Conflict is not an uncommon issue that happens in various placements, including company, government office, nonprofit organization, or even military. It affects the organization by reducing productivity, decreasing communication, poorer decision-making, decreasing cooperation, and political backstabbing (Runde & Flanagan, 2008). However, if the conflict is addressed effectively, it can stimulate creativity and produce more opportunities for enhance communication, better understanding each other, and ultimately achieve higher working efficiency (Runde & Flanagan, 2008). So, how to deal with the conflict is an opportunity to test a leader about his/her leadership skill in an organization. Naturally, leaders would

One of the major concerns for any organization is the ability of each member to maintain a positive, constructive working relationship with other individuals. Inevitably conflicts between members within the organization will occur leading to the need for applicable and effective conflict resolution policies. During the development of these policies it is imperative that the organizational leadership takes into account how different individuals will approach conflict resolution and how they will respond to conflict within the organization. The purpose of this paper is to provide organizational leadership a basis to understand how an employee’s early experiences, self-image, and personal perceptions of conflict will affect the way they

Conflicts are realities of life and can be defined as a “situation of competition in which the parties involved are quite aware of the incompatibility of future condition whereby each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other” (Olu & Adesubomi, 2013, p. 2). They have no boundaries. They occur whether we like it or not, especially when there is disagreement and misunderstanding which stands as major key characteristics of human relationships. The relationship could be domestic, national, or international (Spiroska, 2014). Furthermore, conflicts happen when people are incompatible. In the organizational setting, conflict could arise due to failure of the employer, not honoring certain agreed bargaining. Henry (2009) indicated that if the workers’ right and prerogative is not appropriated rightly, it could cause conflict; such workers’

Conflict is inevitable, be it in the workplace or outside the work place. The reason is that people are from diverse backgrounds and thus have different ideas and opinions. In the workplace, employees are expected to work together towards achieving the company’s goals. The management needs to find ways to resolve conflicts that may arise so as to ensure that there is increased production. Conflict management is important and it entails being able to identify and handle conflicts in a manner that is sensible, fair and efficient. The five conflict styles according to Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann are accommodation, avoidance, collaboration, competition and compromise, (Schneider & Brown 2013).

Individuals and organizations view conflict as a negative but is a natural result when individuals work together. Constructive conflict can be positive as conflict can inspire change. There will be differences and disagreements as goals or values and even perceptions between individuals differ but without conflict, teams can become complacent and not perform at optimum levels. It is safe to say that the values of team members are a common source of conflict as are the goals and expectations of expected outcomes. Personalities, attitudes, limited resources, and the roles and responsibilities of team members are all common sources of conflict. Destructive conflict destroys the morale of team members and divides them. Managers and team leader’s responsibility is to resolve a conflict by remaining impartial and to facilitate understanding among the group is essential. The biggest challenge for managers and team leaders is to balance the two.

“Antagonistic and non-antagonistic dialectical contradiction in organizational conflict” was authored by Larry Erbert (2014) and published by the Journal of Business Communication. In his work, the author examined the importance of five dialectical contradictions to conflict issues among 40 employees. The aim of this study was to determine if conflicts were actually dialectical (antagonistic and non-antagonistic) or non-dialectical in regards to each of the conflict issues. However, a reverse version of the retrospective interview technique and questionnaire data was used as a means to collect information. The result was positive as all the five dialectical contradictions were rated for a moderate range of their importance to the organization while the ratings in terms of differences among the five issues were significant for 3 out of 12 conflict issues that were identified.

“Conflict is part of the humanity makeup, and so deeply inserted in people’s basic nature that from early childhood out interactions with others are full of disagreements. There is no difference of life at work, and as people use nearly half our waking life at work, it is not surprising that conflict is an ever-present feature in all organizations” (Evans, 1995, 591). That tells us, conflict can not disappear in the normal life, but can be managed using properly ways.

The traditional view of conflict is that conflict is intrinsically negative, produces negative consequences, and has a detrimental effect on organizations. Like the other two viewpoints, the tradition al view realizes that conflict is essentially inevitable. However, this viewpoint strives to minimize if not outright avoid conflict because it deems it to produce noxious consequences. This outright avoidance of conflict is not necessarily adhered to in the human relations view of conflict. This viewpoint posits the notion that conflict is and of itself natural, or organic in nature. Whereas the traditional viewpoint of conflict is that it is always bad, the human relations viewpoint sees conflict as a natural