UNIT 5: Organizational Conflict
The conflict process consists of five stages (Robbins and Judge, n.d) :
Figure 1: Conflict process description (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Stage 1 Incompatibility or Potential Opposition
The first conflict stage is the conditional appearance. The conditions can be sources or causes creating chances for arising conflict. One of the conditions is required if the conflict is to surface even the conditions don’t need to directly lead to the conflict. In general, the conditions can be grouped into three categories: structure, personal variables, and communication. (Robbins and Judge, n.d).
The structural variables are group/community size, clarity of jurisdiction, level of expertise in the assigned tasks to group members, compatibility of member-goal, award system, dependence level between communities and leadership style. The larger the group and the more specialized activities become, the greater the possibility of conflict will be. Conflict and ownership are inversely related. This means that the longer a person stays with an organization, the less likely it is to have conflict. Therefore, when there is high turnover and for newer group members in the organization. The potential for conflict is the greatest (Robbins and Judge, n.d).
Communication is one of conflict sources. In the channel of communication, opposing forces arise from semantic difficulties, misinterpretation, and "noise". These three factors, together with lack of information and jargon, can be obstacles of doing conversation and antecedent conditions for a conflict. The conflict potential tend to be inversely proportional with communication quantity. Over or less communication increases the potential for conflict. (Robbins and Judge, n.d).
Personal variables include values, personality and emotions. Values and preferential differences can induce increased conflict level. In some cases, more conflict of tasks exist when the levels of desired achievements were not well agreed by group members, more conflict of relationships exist when the level of interpersonal closeness were not well agreed by group members, etc. People who have personality traits of high disapproval, neuroticism, or self-monitoring tend to clash with others more frequently and react badly when conflicts occur. Emotions can cause conflict even when they are not directed at other people. For example, an angry employee who shows up for work because of a busy morning might bring that anger into the workday, which can result in a tense meeting. (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Stage 2 Personalization and cognition
That a perceived conflict is a disagreement does not mean personalization. Perceived conflict is awareness of one or more parties of the conditional existence creating opportunities for arising conflict. When individuals become emotionally involved, it’s at the level of the felt conflict experiencing tension, anxiety, hostility, and frustration. (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Stage 3 Intension
Intentions are given ways of actions based on decisions. Existing dimensions are cooperativeness (satisfying each other) and assertiveness (satisfying one party’s concern only). (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Stage 4 Behavior
Figure 2 : Conflict escalation diagram
Behavioral conflict foundation at the lowest points are differing perception, opinion and misunderstanding. These three factors may induce bad moods, bickering, and strong possession. The overt attack of one’s party of the conflicting parties can say the worst breakup sentence in a relationship conflict. (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Stage 5 Outcomes
Consequences are created from action and reaction of conflicting people. If the conflict boosts the organizational productivity, the outcomes are said to be functional. Otherwise, the conflict outcomes are dysfunctional. (Robbins and Judge, n.d)
Two of the most common handling styles are compromising and collaboration. Compromising is making shared solution or middle agreement. In this style, to agree on a larger issue, the conflicting people need to give up on certain things to get a solution even it is not perfect. Collaboration means working together to produce or create something. The wants and needs of each party are taken into account in such a way that everyone satisfies with a win- win solution. This style is used when preserving relationship between the conflicting people are vital and the solution induce significant impact. (Anonimous, 2020)
Recently conflicting situation in my current small voting organization of my village leader election is mostly related to interdependence or task based conflicts (Staffing, 2020). The conflicts originally coming from disagreement arises as a result of interdependency of sending voter invitations. In my small group, we have 7 official members including me as a leader and two securities. Currently we are trying to distribute the voter invitations by assigning two persons each for three regions. The deadlines is after two days from now and a person can only distribute the letters after the other one finishes writing the voter names in every letter. In addition, everyone has own busy activities. Those two factors can hamper meeting the deadlines. My reaction to this conflict is that I have tried to show high degree of cooperativeness and solve the conflict by becoming a mediator for compromising the two conflicting persons on offering who is the writer and who is the sender. Finally this conflict is lovely solved with love and brotherhood.
References
Robbins, S., & Judge, T. (n.d.). Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 14/e. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/essentials-of organizational/9780134523859/xhtml/fileP70010122300000000000000000023EB.xhtml
A. (2020). 5 Conflict Management Styles every Manager Must Know [2020]. Retrieved December 16, 2020, from https://www.valamis.com/hub/conflict-management-styles
Staffing, A. (2019, August 05). 6 Workplace Conflicts and How to Deal with Them. Retrieved December 16, 2020, from https://www.atlasstaffing.net/blog/6-common-workplace-conflicts-and-how-to-deal-with-them
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