Organization and Conflict Management

HRM 604
Lecture 4

Conflict management design:

Conflict management: meaning, design, strategy, and criteria
Conflict management styles
Process of conflict management

Conflict management: It is the process of minimizing the dysfunctions of conflict and

enhancing the constructive functions of conflict in order to improve learning and effectiveness of
an organization.
Conflict management differs from conflict resolution, which implies reduction, elimination or
termination of conflict. Negotiation, bargaining, mediation and arbitration fall into the conflict
resolution category.

Conflict management design: It includes strategies, criteria, styles, and process of conflict.

Strategy: Existing conflict management does not contain all the criteria needed to manage
conflict at the macro level. New strategies are to be formulated. These are to
1. Attain and maintain a moderate amount of substantive conflict;
2. Minimize affective conflict: and
3. Enable the organizational members to select and use the styles of handling interpersonal
conflict appropriately.

Criteria for conflict management: /

To make the conflict management strategies effective, the following criteria need to be satisfied:
1. Organizational learning and effectiveness: Conflict management strategies should be
designed to enhance organizational learning and long-term effectiveness. To attain this
objective, critical and innovative thinking to learn the art of solving the right problem
should be cultivated.

2. Needs of stakeholders: Conflict management strategies should be designed to satisfy the

needs and expectations of the strategic constituencies and to pick right stakeholders to
solve the right problems.

3. Ethics: The leaders must behave ethically and should be open to information and
changes. The subordinates and other stakeholders should have the right to speak against
their decisions when the consequences may turn serious. Organizations should
institutionalize the positions of advocates for employees, customers, suppliers, and
stockholders. Organizations will run ethically when the decision makers hear these
advocates for making their decisions.

Conflict management styles:

There are five styles of conflict management: integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and
compromising. They are explained below:
Integrating: This style focuses on high concern for ones own outcome as well as that of the
other party. It is appropriate where:
Issues are complex.
One party cannot solve the problem.
Time is available.
Other parties are concerned about the problem and they have their commitment to it.
Other parties have skills and information and these are needed to solve the common
problem.

This style is inappropriate where:

Issues are simple.
Immediate decision is required.
Other parties are unconcerned about the problem.
Other parties do not have skills for problem-solving.

Obliging: Accommodating the other partys interest. It is appropriate where:

One party believes that other party is right.
Issue is more important to the other party.
One party is willing to give up something in the
The other party when needed.
One party is dealing from a weak position relationship is important.

This style is not appropriate where:

The issue is important to one party.
One party believes that it is right.
Other party is wrong or unethical.

Dominating: Using power tactics to achieve a win. It is appropriate where:

The issue is trivial.
The issue is important to one party.
The issue involves routine matter and a speedy decision is required by the supervisor.
The subordinates do not have expertise to make technical decision.
Unfavorable decision by the other party may be too costly.
Unpopular course of action is implemented.

This style is not appropriate where:

The issue is complex.
The issue is not important to one party.
Both parties are equally powerful.
Decision does not have to be made quickly.
Subordinates possess high degree of competence and do not like the supervisors to take
authoritarian decisions.

Avoiding: Means physical or mental withdrawal from the conflict. This style is appropriate
where:
The issue is trivial.
Potential dysfunctional effects outweigh the benefits of resolution.
 Cooling-off period is needed.

This style is inappropriate where:

The issue is important to one party.
Parties are unwilling to defer: issue must be resolved.
Prompt attention is needed.

Compromising: Searching for middle ground or being willing to give up something exchange
for gaining something else. This style is appropriate where:
Goals of parties are mutually exclusive.
Parties are equally powerful.
Consensus cannot be reached.
Integrating or dominating style is not successful
Temporary solution to a complex problem is needed.

This style is inappropriate where:

One party is more powerful.
Problem is complex enough, needing problem-solving approach.
The issue involves question of values.

Conclusion: There is no one best approach to make decisions. The simplistic one best approach
has been replaced by contingency approach, or situational approach which means decision-
making depends on situation.

Process of conflict management:

The management of organizational conflict involves:

1. Diagnosis of conflict.

2. Intervention in conflict.

1. Diagnosis: A comprehensive diagnosis involves the following measurements:

a. The amount of conflict at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and
intergroup levels;
b. The styles of handling interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup conflicts
of the organizational members;
c. The sources of (a) and (b)
d. Individual, group, and organizational learning and effectiveness.
Measurement should be made by collecting data through questionnaires and in-depth interviews
with the conflicting parties.

Intervention: A proper diagnosis indicates whether there is any need for intervention, and if any,
what type of intervention is required. An intervention is needed if
1) There is too much affective conflict;
2) There is too little or too much substantive conflict;
3)The organizational members do not handle their conflict effectively.
There are two basic approaches to intervention in conflict: process and structural. Process refers
to human processes such as communication, decision-making, leadership, culture and the like.
Structure refers to task arrangement, technology, procedure etc.

Process: This intervention enables the organizational members to make effective use of the five
styles, depending on the nature of the situation. This improves organizational effectiveness by
bringing changes in organizational processes such as culture and leadership through education
and learning.
This approach encourages double-loop learning. The media of double-loop learning are:
Lectures, videos, case studies, and exercises; Cultural training;
Role playing, generative metaphors, story-telling, and enquiry skills training;
Dialectic: a process of change through the conflict of opposite forces.
The preconditions of learning new behavior are transformational leadership and collaborative
organizational structure.

Transformational leadership: Transformational leaders encourage their subordinates to engage

in critical and innovative approach. Such approach challenges the old way of thinking and doing
things. As a result, right problems are surfaced and formulated, recommendations are made, and
implementations follow. It needs the support from the top management.

Organizational culture: To support organizational learning and long-term effectiveness,

organizational cultures that risk-taking experimentation, openness, diverse view-points,
continuous questioning, sharing of information and knowledge, and taking responsibility by the
incumbents for their errors and not blaming other for their mistakes are required. Such a culture
would encourage task-related or substantive conflict and discourage affective or emotional
conflict.

Structural intervention: This intervention attempts to improve the organizational effectiveness

by changing the structural design characteristics, which include differentiation and integration
mechanism, hierarchy, procedures, reward system and so on: