Managing Conflict in Organizations

Conflict is inevitable among humans. It is a natural outcome of human interaction that begins when two or more social entities engage one another while striving to attain their objectives. Relationships among people or organizations become incompatible or inconsistent when two or more of them desire a similar resource that is in short supply; when they do not share behavioral preferences regarding their joint action; or when they have different attitudes, values, beliefs, and skills. The theme of conflict has been with us and has influenced our thinking from ancient time. It has received different degrees of emphasis from social and biological scientists during various periods of history. Over the years phenomena relating to conflict have been investigated by economists, historians, novelists, philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and theologians. Scholars in organization theory became interested in scientific investigation of conflict during the later part of the last century. There has been renewed interest and significant changes in the study of conflict in social and organizational contexts since then. After much debate, organizational conflict is now considered legitimate and inevitable; it may even be a positive indicator of effective organizational management. It is now recognized that within certain limits, conflict is essential to productivity. Conflict may result in creative solutions to problems or lead to achievement of subsystem or larger organizational objectives that otherwise would not have been possible. Little or no conflict in organizations may lead to stagnation, poor decisions, and ineffectiveness. This is a vigorous analysis of the rational application of conflict theory in organizational life. M. Afzalur Rahim is the founder of the International Journal of Organizational Analysis and International Journal of Confl ict Management and editor of the annual series Current Topics in Management, and author of twenty books and numerous journal articles, and he is a University Distinguished Professor of Management at Western Kentucky University.