Managing organizational conflicts

            By Lea Ann B. Piano

           Divine Word College of Vigan, 2017

Abstract

This article discusses the conflicts that arise in every organization, its pros and cons, and how to manage them. There are several conditions leading to conflicts in an organization. However, there are also ways on how to deal with conflict situations, response styles and conflict resolution behavior. Managing conflict is a key management competency. All members of the organization especially managers should study and practice effective conflict management skills. This article presents previous discussions taken from various authors which enable us understand the reasons why conflict arise in organizations, and the effects of conflicts and ways of managing organizational conflicts.  

Keywords

Conflict, Conflict Management, Dispute, Complaint

Introduction

Conflict is inevitable in our daily life and may happen at any time for various reasons. Generally, conflict was defined as a competitive or opposing action of incompatibles, antagonistic state or action (as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons). One of the popular definitions of conflict, provided by Coser (1967) is that conflict is a struggle over values and claims to scarce status, power, and resources, in which the aims of the opponents are to neutralize, injure, or eliminate the rivals. In 1973, Deutsch asserts that a conflict exists whenever incompatible activities occur…one party is interfering, disrupting, obstructing, or in some other way making another party’s actions less effective. 

Conflict may occur internally or externally between individuals or groups. It may happen in school, in our own organization, in our society, within families and even in the middle of our most personal relationships. A relationship without conflict is boring, and so with an organization or a group without any conflicting ideas come up with a “not the best” output. Imagine a corporation with too much agreement among top management, wherein they view matters the same way.  They always agree to certain conditions without them wanting to do better.  In a study of business failures done by Argenti (1976), it was observed that absence of disagreement is often viewed by managers as a sign of good leadership, when in reality it is a leading indicator of being out of touch with significant changes in the marketplace.

While conflict may occur in different circumstances, this article focuses only on the conflicts that arise in every organization. It is essential to understand organizational conflicts to help is limit the negative aspects of conflicts while increasing the positive aspects of it. Conflict management skills in organizational setting are important for many reasons. As an employee, you can learn how to get along with fellow employees, your supervisors, and to the public. As supervisor, you can begin to see upcoming conflicts, learn productive responses, get more cooperation from employees, help employees resolve their disputes from one another, and keep interpersonal conflicts from spreading to another parts of the organization.

Why do we need to study conflict? Conflict is unavoidable. If we don’t pay attention to it, we are more likely to repeat the damaging patterns we see in our jobs. Examining the dynamics of conflict will allow us to unpack those dynamics and to be more productive in our job.

  

Conflict in Organizations

In discussing organizational conflicts, it is important to have a consistent definition of the term “organization”. For Katz and Kahn (1976), organization is defined as living system consisting units performing a task in a mutually dependent manner within a structure of scarce resources. Organization may be a company, firm, institution, corporation, agency, association, consortium or group.

Organizational conflict is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values, and interests between people working together. There is inevitable clash between formal authority and power and those individuals and groups affected.  Conflict in the workplace is a clash of interest, values, actions, views or directions. These are disagreements that cause a negative reaction. People disagree because they see things differently, want different things, have thinking styles which encourage them to disagree, or are predisposed to disagree. It is a painful reality that leads to poor productivity and frustration.

Understanding Organizational Conflict

Conflict situations arise because of fear, force, fair or funds. Fear is an imaginary concern for future. Force of any kind initiates and concludes conflict. Fair is the sense of fairness, which determines the moral values of an individual. Tangible as well as intangible costs may provoke conflict, and also help towards its resolution. Interpersonal conflicts arise because of differences in personality, perceptions, status and ideological and philosophical outlooks. Other causes of conflict can be communication gaps; personality differences; substandard performance; disputes over approaches, responsibility and authority; lack of cooperation; or competition for limited sources.

According to Roloff (1987), organizational conflict occurs when members engage in activities that are incompatible with those of colleagues within their network, members of other collectivities, or unaffiliated individuals who utilize the service or products of the organization. To explain further, workplace conflicts happen between employee to employee, employee to supervisor, and customer to employee. Employee to employee conflicts arise when there is difference on perception over a subject matter, personality differences, lack of respect on other’s culture, and rivalry over a certain position or monetary reward. Bullying is also considered as one of the causes of employee conflicts. On the other hand, employees to supervisor conflicts happen when employees feel like they are mistreated. Discrimination, for example, can also be the cause of conflicts, wherein a minority employee in a team setting feels that he is consistently assigned the most menial tasks in the group and not being promoted for a very long time. This employee may begin to harbour resentment against team members and managers, eventually lashing out through decreased productivity or outright verbal conflict. Customer-employee conflicts occur when customers’ expectations are not met. It may be through the service that the employee has given or the product itself that the business is offering to the public. Complaint is an indication poor customer service. A customer may have a genuine cause for complaint, although some complaints may be made as a result of a misunderstanding or an unreasonable expectation of a product or service. How a customer complaint is handled will affect the overall level of customer satisfaction and may affect long-term customer loyalty. It is important to have clear procedures for dealing promptly and effectively with any customer complaints, to come up with a fair conclusion, and explain the reasons for what may be perceived by the customer as a negative response.

Organizational conflict has several causes. Katz (1964) identified three sources of conflict. These are: (1) structural conflict (conflict arising out of the need to manage the interdependence between different organizational sub-units); (2) role conflict  (conflict arising from sets of prescribed behaviour) ; and (3) resource conflict (conflict stemming from interests groups competing for organizational resources). For Robbins (1974), the three main factors which serves as sources of organizational conflict are: (1) communicational (conflicts arising from misunderstanding);  (2) structural (conflicts related to organizational roles; and (3) personal (conflicts stemming from individual differences). In different perspective, Jacob Bercovitch suggested in his citation published in Hong Kong Journal of Public Administration that conflicts may be described as (1) intrapersonal conflict, (2) interpersonal conflict, and (3) interdepartmental conflict.  Intrapersonal conflict is internal to the individual and is perhaps the most difficult form of conflict to analyze and manage. Interpersonal conflict emphasizes the interaction of human factors in an organization. While, interdepartmental conflict arises when two sub-units in an organizational system have differentiated goals and are functionally interdependent, conditions exist for conflict.

Conflict may be constructive or destructive. The view of conflict created by Deutsch (1969) states that negative or positive nature of conflict really is determined by people’s behaviours; it is not an inherent quality of conflict itself. Some behaviors produce dysfunctional, destructive and unproductive responses; other behaviors produce functional, constructive and productive responses.  Conflict can be destructive if parties involved forget the substantive issues and transform their purposes to getting even, retaliating or hurting the other person. On the other hand, conflict can be constructive if parties involved adapt to the situation, person and issues of the moment are functional  and constructive. Constructive conflicts appropriately balance the interests of both parties to maximize the opportunities for mutual gains.

Although managers are required to deal with different conflict situations almost routinely, there is little way of explicit guidelines to help them do their job ethically (Rahim,Garette & Butzman, 1992). In the study of moral development by Rahim (2001) showed that the three stages of moral development are associated with four styles of handling conflict: integrating, dominating, avoiding, and compromising. The highest stage is associated with the use of integrating style, the moderate stage is associated with the compromising style, and the lowest stage is associated with the dominating and avoiding styles.

  

The advantage and disadvantage of organizational conflict

We used to think conflict as a negative factor and mistakenly noted as always a disadvantage in the organization. This is not true in all situations. There are conflicts that can be constructive or advantageous and of course there are those destructive or disadvantageous. On the job, conflict is a stubborn fact of organizational life (Kolb and Putnam, 1992). Rather than seeing conflict as abnormal, Pondy  (1992) suggests we view organizations as arenas for staging conflicts, and managers as both fight promoters who organize bouts and as referees who regulate them.

  

Interpersonal conflict is an essential, ubiquitous part of organizational life. Organizations in which there is a little disagreement regarding important matters tends fail in a competitive environment. This is because without others speaking what they think is right, or by not hearing conflicting sides, people in the organization may not think more carefully about issues and eventually make poor decisions. Likewise, disagreements about a certain procedure on how to achieve organizational goal may come up with new and better procedure.

On the other hand, conflict can have adverse effects in an organization. It may be harmful to individuals, weaken or destroy an organization, increase tension between members of the group, creates climate of distress, disrupt normal channels of cooperation, or worse can lead to violence. Conflict can also lead to poor productivity caused by members of the organization who turned out of focus on their respective tasks or goals. High employee turnover can also be the effect of organizational conflict. When employees always feel dissatisfied and distressed on their job, they let go of their jobs and look for something better. High employee turnover is an indicator business failure especially when the organization is losing their best talent.

How to manage organizational conflict

Conflict management is the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict. Te aim of conflict management is to enhance learning and group outcomes, including effectiveness or performance in organizational setting (Rahim, 2002).

Conflict is common to all organization.  The challenge to managers is how to manage them. When conflicts go unaddressed or poorly managed, they create negative impact on productivity and teamwork. Using conflict resolution strategies in the organization will help maintain a healthy work environment. Conflict resolution requires specific leadership skills, problem solving abilities and decision making skills.

Conflict resolution involves the reduction, elimination, or termination of all forms and types of conflict. Five styles for conflict management are identified by Thomas and Kilmann (2007). These are competing, compromising, collaborating, avoiding, and accommodating.

1. Competing. Competition operates as a zero-sum game, in which one side wins and other loses. Highly assertive personalities often fall back on completion as a conflict management strategy. The competitive strategy works best in a limited number of conflicts, such as emergency situations. In general, business owners benefit from holding the competitive strategy in reserve for crisis situations and decisions that generate ill-will, such as pay cuts or layoffs. In a corporation, for example, it is a struggle for the CEO to decide whether to implement pay cuts or layoff just to survive.
2. Compronising.  The compromising strategy typically calls for both sides of a conflict to give up elements of their position in order to establish an acceptable, if not agreeable solution.  This strategy prevails most often in conflicts where the parties hold approximately equivalent power. Business owners frequently employ compromise during contract negotiations with other businesses when each party stands to lose something valuable, such as a customer or necessary service.
3. Collaborating. Collaboration works by integrating ideas set out by multiple people. The object is to find a creative solution acceptable to everyone. Collaboration, though useful, calls for a significant time commitment not appropriate to all conflicts. For example, a business owner should work collaboratively with the manager to establish policies, but collaborative decision-making regarding office supplies wastes time better spent on other activities.
4. Avoiding. The avoidance strategy seeks to put off conflict indefinitely. By delaying or ignoring the conflict, the avoider hopes the problem resolves itself without confrontation. Those who actively avoid conflict frequently have low esteem or hold a position of low power. In some circumstances, avoiding can serve as a profitable conflict management strategy, such as after the dismissal of a popular but unproductive employee. The hiring of a more productive replacement for the position soothes much of the conflict.
5. Accommodation. The accommodating strategy essentially entails giving the opposing side what it wants. The use of accommodation often occurs when one of the parties wishes to keep peace or perceives the issue as minor. For example, a business that requires formal dress may institute a “casual Friday” policy as a low-stakes means of keeping the peace with the rank and file. Employees who use accommodation as a primary conflict management strategy, however, may keep track and develop resentment.

Conclusion

Conflict is normal and form part of our organizational life. It is just a matter of handling of conflict situations. It can be helpful in making necessary changes within our work or home or even in our society. However, unresolved conflict can result in feelings of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, hopelessness, depression, destruction of interpersonal relationships and creation of problems within organization. Since conflict is inevitable in our daily life, it is very important for us to understand the cause of every conflict we encounter in order to resolve it. Having a positive perspective over situation, proper grievance procedure, getting the cause of conflict, having equal voices in the organization and establishing resolution participation of all parties involved are the things that need to be done in order to resolve conflicts in our organization.

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