Conflict Management
Introduction
What is a conflict?
Conflict is a dynamic process. Conflict can be considered a negative as well as a positive aspect for an organization. That depends on the situation. The conflict in an organization can increase the overall effectiveness of the task at hand as having multiple perspectives often lead to conflict in an organization. But multiple perspectives give rise to innovative ideas and better solution for the problem at hand. The conflict may be seen as a process consisting of sequential steps that as below:
1. The situation of the conflict
2. Getting aware about the situation
3. Realizing the situation
4. Manifesting the situation of conflict
5. Resolving or suppressing the conflict
6.
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Conflicts in any situation are inevitable and unavoidable, but the consequences or the results of the conflicts cannot be determined. As said earlier, conflict may give rise to highly beneficial results or highly non-beneficial results after resolution. The reason for the conflict is more often than not a miscommunication or misunderstanding among the people related to the situation.
Conflict management is the theory that states that all the conflicts cannot necessarily be resolved, but it’s important to learn how to manage the conflicts arising due to unavoidable situation in order to minimize the effect of non-productive escalation. Conflict management process requires skills that facilitate conflict resolution such as self-awareness about the conflict models, communication skills, along with establishing a structure for management of conflict in the environment of the
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Hence, it is an inevitable part of human life. Aggression, violence, etc. is very natural in the human nature. These form the basis of the conflicts. Conflicts have two coins to their sides. One – the positive side that enhances the social relationships and interactions and innovations among the people. Other is the negative side. That results in the violent acts sometimes leading to the physical as well as mental harm to people. The positive conflicts are similar to the transformational conflicts. They are for the better good of the society and not punishable in the eyes of the law. But sometimes these kinds of conflicts too can get overboard and harm the society. The conflicts leading to the violent acts are punishable by law. Hence for various types of conflicts the laws are different. But any law ensures that the justice prevails and the truth is
In several occasions, conflict occurs in the communication of one or two people. Several people have thought of conflict as cases involving pouring of furious anger in a communication process. Nonetheless, conflict is the misinterpretation of an individual’s words or values (Huan & YAzdanifard, 2012). Conflict can also be due to limited resources in an organization (Riaz & Junaid, 2010). Conflict may as well arise due to poor communication or the use of inappropriate communication channel of transmission of information between the involved parties. Management of conflict has various conflict management styles that include avoidance style, forcing style, passive-aggressive style, accommodating style, collaborating style and compromising style. Workplace conflict comes in two different kinds: task involving conflict, which focuses on the approaches used in resolving the problem and blaming conflict that has the aspects of blame and never brings element of resolving problems between the conflicting parties. In the perception of several individuals, relationship conflict is negative.
Conflict is one of those things that are unavoidable in any life aspects, especially at workplace. I have experienced with several conflicts before, I know that I do not give up easily. After completing the assessment, I am now confident that I have been using the right conflict handling strategies. Compromising and Problem Solving are usually my favorable choices when I am involved in a conflict. My goal of using these two methods is to make sure that neither of the parties will be placed in an unfavorable position in relation to the other one. We either both get a little or be replaced by another solution which is mutually beneficial. By understanding the advantages of the strategies, I will keep using them instead of following Forcing or Yielding dimension. In a conflict, no one wants to fall to the other party’s wishes and to follow the solution without any of his own interests. In other words, no one can force his opponent to commit to all of his ideas and preferences. Moreover, I will never try to avoid any kinds of conflict situations. I need to improve my conflict management skills so that I can confidently confront whatever can happen during a conflict. The key to success in these situations is facing the issue, keeping calm, and coming up with a solution that can bring benefits to both sides. I believe that what I ha...
Before understanding how to deal with conflict, one must understand what conflict is. Conflict can be defined as, “any situation in which incompatible goals, cognitions, or emotions within or between individuals or groups lead to opposition or antagonistic interaction” (Learning Team Toolkit, 2004, pp 242-243). Does the idea of conflict always have to carry a negative connotation? The growth and development of society would be a great deal slower if people never challenged each other’s ideas. The Learning Team Toolkit discusses three different views of conflict: traditiona...
Differences within the team are the major reason for conflict. This stems from differences in opinion, attitude, beliefs, as well as cultural back grounds and social factors. The Conflict can be positive which is functional and supports or benefits the organization or a person’s main objectives (Reaching Out, 1997). Conflict is viewed as positive when the conflict results in increased involvement form the group, increased cohesion, and positive innovation and creativity. Conflict tends to be positive as well when it leads to better decisions, and solutions to long-term problems.
Improving conflict management behaviors may help to efficiently resolve conflicts thereby building stronger relationships. The skills will enable employees to work together in peace since the involved parties know how to handle differences. Instead of fighting, ignoring, or insulting one another, the employees learn how to collaborate, which in turn helps to build better and stronger relationships (Choi, 2013). Conflict management behaviors might lead to an increased understanding among employees. Individuals can move past personal opinions or emotions to make impartial decisions. The skill encourages profound understanding of situations that occur in the
Look up the word conflict in the dictionary and you will see several negative responses. Descriptions such as: to come into collision or disagreement; be at variance or in opposition; clash; to contend; do battle; controversy; quarrel; antagonism or opposition between interests or principles Random House (1975). With the negative reputation associated with this word, no wonder people tend to shy away when they start to enter into the area of conflict. D. Jordan (1996) suggests that there are two types of conflict: good, which is defined as cognitive conflict (C-type conflict) and, detrimental, defined as affective conflict (A-type conflict). The C-type conflict allows for creativity, to pull together a group of people with different opinions or ideas, to combine and brain storm all thoughts to develop the best solution for the problem. The A-type conflict is the negative form when you have animosity, hostility, un-resolveable differences, and egos to deal with. The list citing negative conflicts could go on forever. We will be investigating these types of conflicts, what managers can do to recognize conflict early, and what strategies they can use to resolve conflicts once they have advanced.
Conflict management model is propounded effective when the result of conflict is productive or acceptable for all the parties involved. The main motive of any conflict management model is to reduce the impact of conflict on negative note and guide parties towards agreement and strong relationship. This study is to analyze the effectiveness of Rahim’s Meta or Dual concern model for conflict management.
Conflict is energy, conflict is excitement, conflict is often driven by a passion that is necessary to progression. In other words, we need many of the characteristics that might cause conflict and conflict itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The important thing is learning how to manage
Conflict in the workplace is a fact of life. Creating a work environment that enables people to thrive is important. Because people have different goals and needs, conflict unfortunately is inevitable. Individuals interpret and respond differently to situations. The differences in people is not a bad thing however, it’s the attitudes that arise that may make a situation a negative one.
Conflict is the negative differences in opinion or varied emotion people experience due to a a distupte over a particular subject matter. In suits conflict arises very often for many different reason however it is important that conflict stimulates creativity and innovation rather than a decline in productivity and a climate of mistrust. Functional Conflict is the situation where all parties in the conflict deal with the conflict in a manner which positively impact the business. An example from Suits would be when Louis is in dispute with Harvey over his late arrival to work at time stamp 11 minutes.
Conflict avoidance is a technique used to deal with conflict. Avoiding conflict is mainly used to disregard the direct issue at hand. Avoiding conflict can be used to temporarily get rid of an issue or it can be used to permanently remove the issue. Avoiding conflict within the workplace most often results in relationship division. Workplace conflict is inevitable, meaning wherever and whenever there is a group working to accomplish similar goals as a whole, conflict will be present. Workplace conflict exists due to various factors. (Graham 2014) The most common seen factors influencing workplace conflict include role understanding, meaning who is responsible for what task, how tasks are to be accomplished, personality difference and poor
that may result in a struggle for power or position. Conflict management, therefore, can be
According to McShane and Von Glinow, conflict is “a process in which one party perceives that his or her interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party” (328). The Conflict Process Model begins with the different sources of conflict; these sources lead one or more parties to perceive that a conflict exists. These perceptions interact with emotions and manifest themselves in the behavior towards other parties. The arrows in the figure illustrate the series of conflict episodes that cycle into conflict escalation (McShane and Von Glinow 331-332).
Conflict doesn't always have to be bad. It can allow people to talk more. It can turn out better than you think it will. It can also help people solve problems. An example is when my friend Guadalupe stopped talking to me. I decided to give her a moment alone; eventually she started talking to me again. As you can see, conflict can be very
Borisoff, D., & Victor, D.A. (1998). Conflict Management: A Communication Skills Approach (2nd Ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.