Understanding Conflict And Conflict Management In The Workplace Is Essential For Effective Essay.

The Definition and Nature of Conflict

Conflict is referred to the certain formation of discord, friction and disagreement within a particular group when actions or believes of one group member are either unacceptable or resisted by other members of the group. It occurs whenever any form of disagreement is present on issues which generates a friction among the members. Conflict can also be generated from various sources such as goals, personality conflicts, scarce resources, styles, values. Conflict management, on the other hand, is referred to the theory where all the conflicts cannot be resolved, however, they can be managed and can be prevented to further escalate and turn into a problem. It is essential to consider factors such as self-awareness, conflict styles, and communication skills and to implement a structure or environment for conflict resolution (Young et al. 2016).

Further, conflict management is also referred to the process of minimising conflict’s negative aspect along with increasing conflict’s positive aspect, alongside aiming towards enhancing the learning and total group outcomes which are inclusive of performance and effectiveness within an organisational setting. There are several stages within conflict namely, intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup and in order to mitigate with these conflict skills such as reflection, critical analysis and thinking, decision making, imagination and communication, conflict negotiation along with group building are necessary. Conflict generally operates through five general phases namely, possibilities or causes, detection or recognition, coping, manifestation and results. Similarly, there are several factors which can affect certain conflict styles such as gender, self-conception, expectations, situation, practice, communication skills, and life experiences (Wang, Zhang and Deng 2019).

There are five common methods through which conflicts can be resolved namely accommodating, compromising, collaboration, and competing. It is often visible in the workplace that minor conflicts are present between the employees, which later can turn into arguments and a lack of cooperation that will impact the overall efficiency and productivity of the organisation.  In the workplace, there are two kinds of workplace conflicts that occur when an individual’s ideas, actions, and decision are directly the opposite or the individuals do not get along, which is often known as a personality clash. Conflicts of ideas can often be considered productive in the business sense, where the individuals agree to brainstorm the solution in a collective manner. However, personality clashes, on the other hand, are not considered to be productive and may cause disputes within the business practices as well as escalate them to a mutual hatred among two employees (Husemann, Ladstaetter and Luedicke 2015).

In such a scenario of workplace dispute, the mediator, the manager, or the team leader can adopt the accommodating strategy which is a method of conflict resolution and is also known as smoothing where a single individual acquiesces and the other individual possess the need to resolve the conflict which has occurred between them. It is an appropriate form of conflict resolution, where an individual with a weak opinion often complies with the individual with a strong opinion. It also provides with a chance to resolve any challenges on a short term basis while finding solutions for the long run. The second conflict resolution method is avoiding which is referred to as ignoring the conflict which people usually tend to do as an appropriate response when there is no clear solution for the issue or parties do not conduct calm confrontation (Carton and Tewfik 2016).

Conflict Management

Avoidance will further require higher efforts than generally facing the issue require and can result in friction between the disagreeing individuals. The third method of conflict resolution is compromising which is also known as reconciling and required higher level of mutual agreement in order to settle any form of dispute. Here, both the individuals need to willingly forfeit a few of their conditions and demand for the best interest in reaching a certain agreement. This method is one of the quickest methods when it comes to resolving any conflict before the conflict turns into a challenge for the organisation. This method of conflict resolution is mostly used as a temporary method in order to avoid conflicts until the individuals are further involved in the implementation of a permanent solution (Rahim and Katz 2019).

However, compromise is an effective method because it enables both the individuals to be satisfied with the solution provided. The fourth conflict resolution method is collaboration, which is mostly similar to the compromising method and involves working with different individuals in order to look for a mutually agreed solution for the issue. Lastly, the fifth conflict resolution method is competing which is an uncooperative way, and an overly assertive method which is utilised by individuals who try to win during any kind of dispute and at any cost. It is also identified as a method which brings satisfactory resolutions and results, however, it does not enable any form of collaborative problem solving initiatives (Lipsky 2015).

Accommodating: In this conflict style, the individuals and parties are required to put the preferences and demands of the other individual before their own and allow the other individual to win. Here, usually, the individuals involved have either a weak opinion or a strong opinion. This style is suitable for other situations, where the clear difference of opinion is visible relating to a certain issue and there is less time to prolong the conflict. This method is for maintaining the peace and providing similar efforts in resolving as the issue is worth it. It is a useful style to address small scale conflicts and later address the crucial issues because the smaller disagreements can be addressed quickly and within minimum efforts required. Here, managers or team leaders can build their own reputation as a mediator, for the employees to speak and interact freely with them without any type of reprisal. However, this conflict resolution style will seem like the manager or the other individual is weak, as they have been accommodating easily. By using this technique the important challenges and issues cannot be resolved in a meaningful manner and need to be avoided during the crucial situation (Forbat and Barclay 2019).

Avoidance: This particular conflict resolution technique is through ignoring the conflict and removing the conflicted individuals. By removing conflicted members from the team or project along with pushing the deadlines and reassigning them to the other departments. It can be an effective style because it provides time to cool down the period and helps the conflicted parties to reconsider their stances. The advantage of this style is that it provides ample time for the individuals to calm and resolve their own conflicts and issues (Caputo et al. 2018). Space and time can help with the highly required perspectives on the conflicts and several issues can be resolved on their own. Here, managers have the chance to provide space to their employees and time to resolve their own conflicts. However, if this style is not implemented during the appropriate situation, it can worsen the conflict and if the managers are incompetent at this style, then employees have this impression that they are not capable of handling any form of disagreement (Csilla 2019).

Factors That Affect Conflict Styles

Compromising: Through this style, managers and mediators look for a middle ground by asking the individuals involved to concede in a few aspects of their demands and desires in order for the mutual solution to be agreed upon. This conflict resolution style is also known as lose-lose where both the individual are required to leave some of their demands in order to have a mutual agreement on the large scale issues and challenges. It is utilised when there is less time or a there is a need for solution (Soliku and Schraml 2018). It is seen that compromise ofte1n results in resentments, especially when they are over used as a resolution tactic. The advantage of this style is that solution is derived quickly and leaves an understanding quality within the individuals as they understand others’ perspectives. It is also a building block for future collaborations and enables the individuals to understand others’ opinions. However, in this style, none of the individuals are fully satisfied with the solution as they have to sacrifice their demands and most of the time, the individuals are unwilling to compromise. It often becomes a mean to eliminate employee goodwill and is unable for executive collaborations (Kharadze 2021).  

Competing: This conflict resolution style is highly assertive as it refers to not agreeing to the other individual’s viewpoints or demands. Here, individuals’ stands firm as they believe their point of view is correct. Here, morale dictates the specific action course which is to be taken. It is beneficial because it portrays the true nature of the individuals and their stand, which can often make the disputes resolve quickly with no area of discussion and disagreement. However, this style is often considered as authoritarian and unreasonable because handling the conflict does not result in satisfaction among the other party and there is no initiative to look for the best solution (Beitler et al. 2016).

Collaboration: This style is necessary for long term results as it is one of the difficult and time consuming method of conflict resolution. Here each needs of the individuals are considered which results in satisfaction among both the individuals and the solution resolves the actual problem or conflict, however, for the same to occur the managers’ needs to be skilled. Although, on the other hand, this style is time consuming, which may impact the deadlines and production of the company, for which the solution often gets delayed and it is also highly dependent on the types of individuals involved within the conflict (Elgoibar, Munduate and Euwema 2016).

References

Beitler, L.A., Machowski, S., Johnson, S. and Zapf, D., 2016. Conflict management and age in service professions. International Journal of Conflict Management.

Caputo, A., Marzi, G., Pellegrini, M.M. and Rialti, R., 2018. Conflict management in family businesses: A bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review. International Journal of Conflict Management.

Carton, A.M. and Tewfik, B.A., 2016. Perspective—A new look at conflict management in work groups. Organization Science, 27(5), pp.1125-1141.

Csilla, K.M., 2019. Conflict management-resolution based on trust?. Ekonomicko-manazerske spektrum, 13(1), pp.72-82.

Elgoibar, P., Munduate, L. and Euwema, M., 2016. Building trust and constructive conflict management in organizations. In Building trust and constructive conflict management in organizations (pp. 1-13). Springer, Cham.

Forbat, L. and Barclay, S., 2019. Reducing healthcare conflict: outcomes from using the conflict management framework. Archives of disease in childhood, 104(4), pp.328-332.

Husemann, K.C., Ladstaetter, F. and Luedicke, M.K., 2015. Conflict culture and conflict management in consumption communities. Psychology & Marketing, 32(3), pp.265-284.

Kharadze, N., 2021. Organizational conflict management challenges.

Lipsky, D.B., 2015. The future of conflict management systems. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 33(S1), pp.S27-S34.

Rahim, M.A. and Katz, J.P., 2019. Forty years of conflict: the effects of gender and generation on conflict-management strategies. International Journal of Conflict Management.

Soliku, O. and Schraml, U., 2018. Making sense of protected area conflicts and management approaches: A review of causes, contexts and conflict management strategies. Biological Conservation, 222, pp.136-145.

Wang, Y., Zhang, K. and Deng, Y., 2019. Base belief function: an efficient method of conflict management. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 10(9), pp.3427-3437.

Young, J.C., Thompson, D.B., Moore, P., MacGugan, A., Watt, A. and Redpath, S.M., 2016. A conflict management tool for conservation agencies. Journal of Applied Ecology, 53(3), pp.705-711.