Workplace Conflict

Managing conflicts at work place.

“Conflict”! What does it mean? Stephen Robbins, author of Organizational Behavior, defines conflict as, "A process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected or is about to negatively affect something the first party cares about." In the workplace it may manifest in a number of ways. Examples can include things that happen; when, your ideas or thoughts are not broadly accepted. Your opinion is opposed or downplayed. When you are due for a promotion and someone else gets it. When someone you have a crush on; is romancing someone else etc. Conflicts need not be always bad. They can also be used as a tool for healthy competition, which can encourage an individual to put his best foot forward and cover the extra ground. It all depends on how the management uses this tool.

Overall we can categorize most of the conflicts that happen at workplace into two types. First would be the interpersonal conflicts, i.e. conflicts that happen between two or people. Second would be the group conflicts, i.e. when conflicts happen between two or more groups of people like say teams or departments. There are many causes for these types of conflicts to arise. Let us see some of the causes of these conflicts in paragraph that follows.

Interpersonal conflict, as stated earlier this type of conflict occurs between individuals. The causes of this type of conflict include but are not limited to,

Difference of opinion: In an organization when many minds work together to achieve the best for the organization it often happens that people do not agree with each other’s viewpoint. Sometimes they may even vehemently oppose the other’s opinion leading to a conflict between the two.

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...licting parties together and tells them in very clear terms that such conflicts are not acceptable and all involved have to resolve the conflicts in order to achieve certain goals and then sets the goals to be achieved.

In the end, I would like to conclude that, conflict is not necessarily always good or bad. It is only the consequences of the conflict that are good or bad. An effective management always identifies the conflicts with the bad consequences and brings them to an end as soon as possible and at the same time encourages healthy conflicts that give rise to good results.

References:

1. Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_conflict

2. Workplace conflict, Better Health Channel.

3. http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/define-conflict-workplace-2042.html

4. Organizational Behavior, Stephen Robbins

5. http://www.mediate.com/articles/belak1.cfm