Causes Of Conflict In Project Management

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Introduction
Project management planning, scheduling, controlling and implementation can be a difficult and challenging task. This is because a project involves many organizations and stakeholders whose interests and needs should be adequately addressed. Failure to address such issues among various stakeholders and interested parties can create conflicts. However, the method and strategy of resolving such conflicts will determine the sub sequent success of the project. Therefore, project managers need to learn appropriate and effective conflict resolution methods and techniques to employ during planning and implementation of a project (Borisoff & Victor, 1989).
The purpose of this paper is to identify a particular problem causing conflicts
This has been further facilitated by lack of trust, respect, effective listening skill which has contributed to serious communication problems. These communication problems eventually result in failure to perform as instructed, misinterpretation of designs or drawings, or clearly misunderstood change orders delays in delivery of critical components (Vilchis, Tovar & Flores, 2012).
According to Thamhain &Wilemon(1975),conflicts arise from many sources as shown in the table below
SOURCES OF CONFLICT AND THEIR RANKING BY CONFLICT INTENSITY.
Sources of conflicts Conflict intensity rankings
Conflict over project priorities 2
Conflict over administration procedures 5
Conflict over technical opinions and performance trade-offs 4
Conflict over human resources 3
Conflict over schedules 1
Personality conflict 6
Conflict over cost and budget
The court has ordered the environment impact assessment to be redone. However, the lobby group claims the state environmental agency has lost credibility and requests an independent report from the Federal Environmental Management Agency. This has created a conflict between the project management and various stakeholders
Impact of the problem on the project
The above problem has significant impacts on the project. The project could get cancelled or fail completely; this very bad since all financial and human resources have already been allocated to the project. If the project gets cancelled, the financial losses arising from it will impact negatively on the company
Conflict mitigations
Since sources of conflicts have been identified, appropriate resolution mechanisms should be applied. The table below shows the various sources of conflicts and their suggested

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