The major causes of the chosen (Organizational) conflict

Introduction:

Conflicts are the inevitable situations in organization, between

nation, community and even personal life. It is a process in which the
idea or interests of one party are being opposed by the another
party1.

For some people conflicts will be a negative situation, which should

be avoided at any cost. For others conflicts are phenomenon, which
necessitates innovation in management. Same time few people
consider conflict as an better opportunity to use it to their best
advantage.

The concept of conflict theory is one of the significant concept to be

understood by the person who is in the role of the administrator. The
conflicts can arise from fields such as business, sociology, psychology,
etc.

According to Coser at all , conflicts are struggle over values and

claims to scarce power, resource and status in which the idea of the
opponents are to injure, neutralize or eliminate2.

There are many issues that arise in community or organization;

hence conflict will be a part of ones life. These Conflicts can occur
between committee members, volunteers, clients, employees,
community or ordinary members.

According to Deetz and Stevenson, there are three assumptions that

will indicate that conflicts can also be positive in nature3.

Their assumptions are as follows:

1. conflicts are natural;
2. conflicts are necessary and good
3. Most of the conflicts are also based on real differences.

The founder of modern conflict theory is C.Wright Mills.

In his view, because of conflict between people with differing
interests and resources have created social structures. The “unequal
distribution of power and resources in the society” has influence on
the individual and organizational structures.
The Forms/Classification Of Conflict4:

A. Relationship Conflict:

These types of conflict happen because of interpersonal

incompatibilities between the group members which also includes
tension annoyance and clashes.

B. Task Conflicts:
These conflicts are due to disagreements about the work goals and
content of a task, such as interpretation of facts, distribution of
resources and procedures. It also include differences in idea, opinion
and view points.

C. Process Conflicts:
These are because of disagreement on delegation, individual
responsibility and how a task should be accomplished. For example
the group employee may disagree about whose responsibility it is to
complete a particular duty.

There are four types of Intra-Organizational Conflict:

A. Vertical
B. Horizontal
C. Line-staff conflict
D. Role conflict.

A. Vertical Conflict:
This refers to conflict between the levels in an organization; For
example : The conflicts between superior authority and subordinate.

B. Horizontal Conflict:
The conflict between the employees of same hierarchical level in an
organization is referred as horizontal conflict.

C. Line-Staff Conflict:
The conflict between the staff who are appointed to assist the line
departments.
 D. Role Conflict
This is one of the most common type of conflict. Where individual
expects other employee to perform the role, which are not assigned
in particular way.

There are two sources of Conflict:

A. Internal Sources:
These are inherent within the structure or framework of an
organization. The major prime factor are opposing interests /
divergent interests, which causes the conflicts between the two
parties in organizations.

B. The External Sources:

This occur when the third party intervene into the industrial dispute
becomes biased or one sided. They occur outside the walls of an
organization.

Structural or personal factors are the major causes of Conflict:

A. Structural Factors
1. Specialization:

When employees are specialists in a particular job but also get a

general knowledge of other many tasks leads to conflicts because
they will also have little knowledge of each other’s job
responsibilities.

For example, a receptionist at a hospital desk can say that a MRI scan
can be completed in an hour, even though some scans take more tha
hour. Since the receptionist does not know much about the
technician’s job she should not give an unrealistic deadline when the
scan will be completed.

2. Common Resources:

In some situations employees may we have to share the limited

resources available in the organization. The limited resources may
include computers, printers, money, supplies, people or information.
The scarcer the resource in any organization, there will be greater
the chance for a conflict situation.
 3. Goal Differences:
When the individual in organization have different goals or
incompatible goals there will be substantially increase in chances of
conflict.

For instance, the goal of a salesperson is to sell many medical

equipment’s as fast as possible. However the manufacturing facility
may or unable to meet the sales person’s promises.

4. Interdependence:
Increase in the level of task interdependence will inturn increase the
possibility of conflict.

For example: When a person is depend on others to complete task,

there will be high chances of blaming a co-worker when something
goes wrong or delayed.

5. Authority Relationships.
As most of the people do not like being told what they have to be
doing so there will be constant underlying tension between the
managers and employees in the organization.

Generally the very strict managers often have conflicts with their
employees. Some people may even try to engage in conflict, so that
they can increase their power or status in an organization.

6. Roles and Expectations:

When the roles of the each subordinates are not clearly determined
or mentioned, there will be frequent misunderstandings and conflicts
between manager and subordinates towards there rules.

7. Jurisdictional Ambiguities:
When there are uncertain lines of responsibility in an organization
jurisdictional ambiguities starts to appear. When responsibilities are
not clearly stated, employees tend to pass on the responsibility to
other person.
 B. Personal factors:

1. Misunderstandings:

Misunderstandings about the aims objectivists and nature of job.

Difference in expectation how work has to be done.
The difference in responsibilities of employees and management
Differences in needs, beliefs values and priorities

2. Poor communication:
The unclear communication between the staff and staff to clients
results in conflict hence clear communication and complete messages
are important.

3. Lack of planning:
The organization with lack of direction and disorganisation can
create a lot of problems and can also be stressful to the employees.

4. Poor staff selection:

When there are poor criteria is in selecting the employees, there will
be ill-feeling in staff that may increasing dismissal of the staff
members ideas.

5. Frustration, stress and burnout

When employees become stress burnout or frustrated the will be

more irritable. It is important walk of administrator to recognise the
signs of stress in employees in order to prevent conflicts.
The effect of organizational conflict on performance of
employees:

The general peoples thought is that conflicts will tend to create

negative consequences for both the organization and individual.

There are three types of negative responses on individual:

1. Psychological Responses
- conflict results in inattentiveness to other important factors.
- Anxiety towards work
- Loss of interest while working.
- Frustrations
- Dissatisfaction of job
- Burn out

2. Behavioural Responses
- Over eating or under eating
- Excessive smoking
- Alcoholism
- Reduced communication
- Aggression towards other workers
- Resisting influence attempts.

3. Physiological Responses:-

Physiological Responses are those, which are often unnoticed or

ignored:
Generally Stress results in increase adrenalin secretions into the
blood which inturn increases the HR and BP while more hydrochloric
acid secretion into the stomach causes gastric problems, leading to:
- Hypertension
- Headaches
- Peptic ulcers
- Respiratory problems, asthma
- Coronary artery problems.

So we have to understand that conflicts not only influence

individual’s performance, but also results in psychosomatic
disturbances.
The negative effect on organization as follows:

Decrease in Productivity:
When the members spend more time on gossiping about conflicts
and focus less on the projects given them, there will be significant
decrease in productivity.
As a result, organizations can lose customers, donors, money, and
reputation.

Employees may stay at home or stop working:

There will be irregularities in working hours and the employees may
take more leave, which affects the organization.

Customers receive a poor quality service:

When employees have conflict between them, they may spend more
time in arguing fighting back gossiping instead of focusing on the
quality work and customer service.

When there is poor quality in service or product offered to customers

they will be high chances of customers going to the competitor.

It will destroy the Company Reputation:

A company with a poor reputation will be unable to recruit motivated
and talented job candidates.

Change:
In small scale businesses there will be frequent change plan due to
conflicts, especially when it is easy to formulate new policies and
implement it.

Waste of resources and time:

Due to conflicts the business may lose precious time and resources.
Employees may waste more time on divisive issues, instead of
concentrating on meeting their objectives. Also misuse of funds and
resources will be quite rampant when employees engage in conflict
warfare. Psychosomatic disturbances in members reduce the
employees interest, productivity, and eventually, the profitability of
the business.
Violence
When organizational conflict escalates to the level of violence
without mediation, it may resulting in physical, mental / legal
problems for members and possibly the organization too.

Its not only that conflicts causes negative impact there are also
benefits of conflict, includes the following:

 It will provide innovative and creative ideas

 Motivates members to do work harder and better. Employees

abilities and talents may come to the forefront in a conflict
situation.

 It can provide an opportunity for constructive use and release

of aggressive urges of members.

 It will also inspire members to brainstorm, while examining

problems from various perspectives.

 The work life would be dull and boring if there is no variety to

one’s organizational life.

 There will be better co-ordination among employees and

departments if there is a better understanding of the problems
by administrator

 Inspire others for creative thinking.

 There will sharing of opinions among members respectfully.

 Conflict can also cause employees to actively listen to each

other as they are going to accomplish the given goals on time.

 It will slowly improve the future communications in

organization.

 Conflict can help members to learn more about each other and
bring group members together.
The conflict management techniques to overcome the
designated conflict in the organization.

As we have understood that conflicts are inevitable in ones life, or

organizations or even between nations. It however does have some
negative impact, if handled correctly, it may be positive impact too.

Administrators need great managerial skills to resolve the conflict

situations. The ones goal during conflict resolution always should be
to seek a resolution based on mutual gain and realistically.

Conflicts can be resolved by using following steps of process:

A. By identifying the source of the conflict:

Conflicts can be easily resolved if we more information on it.
To get the information from employee, we can use series of
questions, like, How, when incident begin?, Why/ when did you
feel upset?,
Its important to Identify the conflict elements like emotions,
actions, behavior and contradictions.

B. As a manager or supervisor, you need to give both parties

the chance to share their side of the story

C. It has to be looked beyond the incident:

Most of the time it is not the situation but the perspective on
the situation that causes disruptive—evidence of a conflict.
The level of stress can go even if the source of conflict is minor.

D. There should be respect for All:

The Diversity in Views and Perspective should be respected:
It is not only by respecting or understanding people that we
agree with, but also by respecting or understanding the people
that we disagree with.

E. By requesting solutions:
The mediator should be active listener, as well as a good reader
of body language.
After getting viewpoint each party’s on the conflict, the next
step should be to identify how the situation could be
stalled/changed. Requesting the members by questioning the
 parties to solicit their ideas: How can we make things better
between you?

F. Ideal way is to identifying the solutions for both disputants

can support.:
The administrator has to point out the merits of various ideas,
not only from each other’s perspective, but also in terms of the
benefits to the organization.

G. Justice: Justice can be of two types: procedural and

substantive.
Procedural: by ensuring that all the parties affected by the
conflict are present.
Substantive : by ensuring that the solutions produced are fair.

H. Transformation of Individuals and their Communities:

For creating community change or providng positive role
models it is essential changing oneself.

I. Agreement:
The mediator should make sure that two parties agree to one
of the alternatives. Sometimes mediators will go as far as to
write up a contract in which actions and time frames are
specified.

According to De Church, et al, the active conflict management will

allow the groups to talk openly about issues and disagreements, and
also allowing them to confront a conflict together and share
information1.

Mistakes To be Avoided during Conflict Resolution

 Trying to avoid conflict altogether.

 Being Defensive on issues will create long-term problems and

unresolved conflicts continue to grow.

 Overly Generalizing conflicts.

 Psycho Analysing: Thinking negative about a partner because

they would given faulty interpretations of their actions.
  Not To Listen. Some administrators are not good / patience
listeners: they interrupt, ignore, roll their eyes and just impose
whatever they are going to say next.

 Some people play The Blame Game in conflict situations, by

always criticize the other person.

 Trying to win the Argument without analyzing it properly.

References:

1. Bernard and Ashimi (Nov 2014). International Journal of

Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences.
Nov 2014, Vol. 3, No. 6 ISSN: 2226-3624

2. Coser, L.A. (1956). The Functions of Conflict. New York:

Routledge and Kogan Paul

3. Deetz, Stanley A. & Sheny & Stevenson (1986). Managing

Interpersonal Communication. New York. Herper.

4. Dirks, K.T. & Parks, J.M. (2003). Conflicting Stories: The State of
the Science of Conflict: In J. Greenberg (Ed.), Organizational
Behaviour: The State of Science. Hillsdate, NJ: Lawrence
Earbanm Associates.