Conflict - Causes and Management

Conflict - Causes and Management

Conflict management plays a key role in any organization. Conflict management helps to identify and resolve the issues even before it happens. As defined in the dictionary, the following bear closer resemblance with what some organizations define as conflict. Conflict is defined as 'the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction; and incompatibility' or 'interference, as of one idea, desire, event, or activity with another'. In modern day management conflict has a broader meaning and plays a vital role in the success of any organization. Organizational conflict involves interpersonal conflicts with colleagues or supervisors, or inter group conflicts within different sections of an organization. This paper presents the causes, types and management techniques of conflicts that arise in daily management.

Cause of Conflict

The cause of conflict can be either a disagreement or fear. Conflict can arise within employees when they feel that they are not working up to their values; or there is a discomfort from the fear of lack of fulfillment by the organization. Most successful organizations have good conflict management systems. Getting most productivity from diversity (ideas and people) keeps the organization on top of the line in employee satisfaction. The conflict is not at all a problem in many organizations. Many employees feel that the problem is poor conflict management. This results in serious organizational issues like increased conflicts, poor productivity and very low level of employee satisfaction.

Need for Conflict

Research shows that conflict is often needed in an organization. Conflict often addresses the following:

1. Conflict helps to raise and address the problems that are faced in daily work environment and thus helps in building a better work environment.

2. Conflict motivates them to participate more actively in their work because it gives them a sense of equal importance to everyone present in the organization.

3. It also helps employees learn how to recognize and benefit from their differences.

Evolution of Conflicts due to Management Actions

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.

* Management Communications - No proper communication channel between the employees and management cause rumors in the organization. Employees get sense of 'unimportance' as they are left out while decision making. Future plans and development are made by the management itself even without consulting the employees.

* Allocation of Resources - The conflict due to this type of decision by the management is mainly caused due to the inability of the human resources department of the organization. Other conflicts due to resources may be from proper equipment, training and skill. There will be a lot of disagreement between the employees on their roles of what exactly are they assigned to do and employees also face stress from working with inadequate resources.

* Vertical conflict occurs in groups of different hierarchical levels, such as supervisors and salesmen, whereas horizontal conflict occurs between individuals of the same level, such as managers in the same organization. When employees realize that there was fairness in the conflict resolution, the bonds between the groups strengthen. Perceived and distributive fairness significantly enhances