Conflict Management

Conflict is a process, that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. In an organization Conflicts can be ‘avoided’ or ‘selectively allowed as a positive force’ and as per the recent research it is important to ‘resolve the naturally occurring conflicts productively’.

Conflict is often functional but one of its dangers is that it can escalate and become a battle that leads to losses. Then what are those conflict resolution techniques (1)?

 Problem solving: face-to-face meeting and resolution through open discussion

 Super ordinate goals: creating a shared goal that can’t be attained without the other

 Expansion of resources: if scarcity of resource is the issue, then expansion creates a win-win

 Avoidance: withdrawal from or suppression of the conflict

 Smoothing: playing down differences and emphasizing common interests

 Compromise: each party to the conflict gives up something of value

 Authoritative command: management uses its authority to resolve conflict and communicate

 Altering the human variable: using human relations training to alter attitudes and behaviors

 Altering the structural variables: changing the organization structure and interacting patterns

Conflict is constructive when it improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity and innovation encourages interest and fosters and environment of self-evaluation and change. Then what are the conflict-stimulation techniques (1)?

 Communication: using ambiguous or threatening messages to increase conflict levels

 Bringing in outsiders: adding employees to a group whose backgrounds, values, attitudes differ

 Restructuring the organization: realigning work groups, altering rules, regulations, disrupt status

 Appointing a devil’s advocate: designating critic to purposely argue against the majority position

Management teams whose members challenge one another’s thinking develop a more complete understanding of the choices, create a richer range of options, and ultimately make thekinds of effective decisions necessary in today’s competitive environments. If conflict management is ensures the desired level of conflict within the organization then lets delve deeper “how management teams can have good fights?(2)”

Here are some of the key points