Organizational conflict

               Organizational conflict is a discord situation that where people's values, needs, and interests are contradicted. Conflict has many forms which can happen in individuals, between individuals, in groups, and between groups. Conflicts arise in groups because of the competition of freedom, resources, and position.  People who value independence would not like the need for interdependence as a group. Individuals who want power would compete with others with the similar intention. The rewards and recognition are often not perceived properly distributed and employees may compete with each other for prizes. In American culture, winning has a much higher value than losing, and consequently, competition is more prevalent than cooperation, which may lead to conflict. However, “The automatic development of a negative attitude toward conflict is inappropriate” (Richardson, 1991). Conflict could be destructive or constructive. For an organization performing routine production, conflict may be viewed mainly as dysfunctional. However, in research oriented organization, conflict may be considered mainly as functional. Thanks for the introduction, Doc Q…the flow seems “bulleted”…you have too many periods between the sentences…rather, you could have had it flowing into several sentences. Anyway, conflict has also been described as a ‘state of tension’ that arises between two or more individuals or groups because the desired outcomes are ‘mutually incompatible.

Functions and dysfunctions of conflict

Conflict has both positive and negative effects on an organization’s operation. Conflict is negative when it creates resistance to change, creates problems in organization or interpersonal relations, disturbs routine working operation, decreases productivities, delays decision making process, causes distrust and defensiveness, disturbs exploration of more alternatives, diverts resources from the main issues, builds a feeling of defeat, or widens the gap of misunderstanding. The overall result of such negative effects is to reduce employees' commitment to organizational goals and organizational efficiency (Kirchoff and Adams, 1982).

Conflict is positive when it encourages creativity, clarifies issues, and improves the organizational capacity of handling interpersonal differences. Some of the positive effects of conflict situations are summarized as the following (Filley, 1975):

            Diffusion of more serious conflicts.  In organizations where members participate in decision making, disputes are usually minor and not acute as the closeness of members moderates belligerent and assertive behavior into minor disagreements, which minimizes the likelihood of major fights.

            Stimulation of a search for new facts or resolutions. When two parties who respect each other face a conflict situation, the conflict resolution process may help in clarifying the facts and stimulating a search for mutually acceptable solutions.

            Increase in group cohesion and performance. When two or more parties are in conflict, the performance and cohesion of each party is likely to improve. In a conflict situation, an opponent's position is evaluated negatively, and group allegiance is strongly reinforced, leading to increased group effort and cohesion.

            Assessment of power or ability. In a conflict situation, the relative ability or power of the parties involved can be identified and measured.

Personal view of confliction

Understanding the nature of conflict can help organization manage conflict effectively. Depending on the nature of an organization, conflict may affect it in different ways. In production oriented organization, work needs to be done on time and smoothly. For this type of organization, conflict may be viewed mainly as dysfunctional. Since employees may have defensive reactions such as aggression against their supervisors and co-workers. The defensive attitude decreases individuals’ productivity. Conflict may result in inattentiveness, work anxiety, frustration, burnout, and job dissatisfaction, which can impair organization efficiency. Because of the conflict, employees may also organize unions or informal groups with agenda opposed to many of the organization's goals. The main dysfunctional consequences can be summarized as the following: Conflicts affect individual and organizational performance and it takes time and other resources to handle conflicts. Individuals may promote their self-interests instead of the interest of the organization. Long lasting conflict could affect individuals emotionally and physically, which may lead to health related disorders.  Finally, Conflicts may cause employee morale problems which are linked to productivities.

The cause of conflict in a research organization is similar to other organizations and the conflicts may be generated between individuals, intra-group or inter-group. However, conflict in research oriented organization has its own traits. Conflict can occur between research and administrative personnel objectives, issues among individual researchers, scientists and management priorities, and researchers' and client groups' opinions. The complicate administrative procedures and practices some times delay the resources and supplies required for research activities. Such conflicts get worse due to the distribution of authority, contradictory nature of personality, communication deficiency, and different opinions. The allocation of resources and staff could cause conflicts as well. It is common to see the conflict of competition in research organizations between interacting groups over use of limited resources available for scientific work. Allocation of limited resources often generates conflict since one group is likely to feel that it is not receiving a fair share of organizational resources in comparison with other groups. Conflicts also arise over staffing of research teams, especially when personnel from other areas are to be included. Sometimes conflicts can arise over competing for use of spaces and equipment for experiments. Cost estimates and the uncertainty of research regarding work load and the use of structures can also create conflict situations. The parties in conflict can be individuals or entire groups within the organization. Conflict is a basic organizational process that needs managing. Some conflict scholars argue that conflict is essential to continuous improvement in organizations and that conflict management is central to its use. Many managers, however, believe they should eliminate conflict form their organizations. What say you, Doc Q?

However, conflict may be viewed as constructive for innovative activities. “we define functional conflict as a constructive challenging of ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, respect for others’ viewpoints even when parties disagree, and consultative interactions involving useful give and take” (Massey, 2004) The nature of research is innovation, imagination, knowledge, learning, and idea exchange. Conflicts can be more functional for research organization because competition, different departmental objectives, different individual objectives, competition for use of resources, and different viewpoints could be integrated and exploited efficiently to achieve organizational objectives for innovation. In research oriented organization, conflicts may have the potential to motivate employees because conflicts give individuals pressure to tackle issues. In order to resolve issues, individuals may have to find different options, which make people think. Conflicts also provide opportunities for employees to learn. The positive function of conflict is to motivate individuals to work hard and better, force employees to fully utilize talents and knowledge.  “Where functional conflict is present, people feel free to express their opinions and to challenge others’ ideas, beliefs, and assumptions” (Baron, 1991). Conflict can also provide opportunity to stimulate new ideas, facilitate mutual understanding, improve coordination and strengthen relationship. Competition can be created from conflict that can stimulate employees to find new options. Conflict management involves maintaining conflict at a level that is functional for the group. If the conflict level is dysfunctionally high, managers should reduce the conflict. If the conflict is dysfunctionally low, managers should increase the conflict.

In addition, the technical ideas, performance preference and related issues lead to disagreements.  The more the complicity in any project, the greater is the need for more information. If information is controlled by one of the parties in an interacting group, conflict is generated. The party that withholds the information is under pressure to share that information. A research project usually takes long time to finish with uncertainty and the intermediate outputs of the progress are difficult to determine. It is common to have conflicts between the management and research group over anticipations on performance progress. Disagreements over the timing, sequence and scheduling of project-related tasks and overall management of research are common in research organizations. This type of conflict pushes researcher to work harder.  Personality differences among the interaction groups can cause conflict and when one group does not fulfill the expectation of the other group, a conflict situation can be generated; these types of conflicts could stimulate new ideas too.

Conclusion

         Conflict has both positive and negative effects on organization operation. Conflict is negative when it creates resistance to change, creates problems in organization or interpersonal relations, disturbs routine working operation, decreases productivities, delays decision making process, causes distrust and defensiveness, disturbs exploration of more alternatives, diverts resources from the main issues, builds a feeling of defeat, or widens the gap of misunderstanding.  Conflict is positive when it encourages creativity, clarifies issues, and improves the organizational capacity of handling interpersonal differences.

 

      In production oriented organization, work need to be done on time and smoothly. In this type of organization, conflict may be viewed mainly as dysfunctional. Dysfunctional consequences of conflict includes conflicts that affect individual and organizational performance, time and other resources wasted to handle conflicts, and self-interests instead of the interest of the organization is promoted. Long lasting conflict could affect individuals emotionally and physically, which may lead to health related disorders. 

     However, the nature of research needs innovation, imagination, knowledge, learning, and idea exchange. Conflicts can be more functional for research oriented organizations because competition, different departmental objectives, individual objectives, competition for use of resources, and differing viewpoints could be integrated and exploited efficiently to achieve organizational objectives for innovation.