Conflict

Managing conflict is an intellectual challenge to understand and an important practical management issue of which to be aware. Researchers have exposed the traditional idea that conflict is inevitably destructive and demonstrated the value of conflict for solving problems. Indeed, conflict, when well managed, contributes very critically to team and leader effectiveness. Recognizing both the positive and negative consequences of [Page 253]conflicts, researchers have proposed various ways to identify and distinguish the nature of productive conflict. They have identified dynamics and conditions under which conflicts can be constructive for people and their organizations. However, making conflict positive for organizations has proved difficult. This entry first defines conflict and then empirically reviews developed frameworks and comments on their limitations and potential for future development.

Conflict has traditionally been defined as opposing interests involving scarce resources and goal divergence and frustration. Conflict is often thought to occur in mixed-motive relationships where persons have both competitive and cooperative interests. The competitive elements produce the conflict; the cooperative elements create the incentives to bargain to reach an agreement.

However, defining conflict as opposing interests denies the reality that people with cooperative, highly overlapping goals can be and often are in conflict. Project team members committed to the common goal of building a cost-effective information system may well disagree over the most appropriate software system and other means to reach their shared goal. They are also apt to have conflict over the division of labor and the distribution of rewards, despite their common goal.

Defining conflict as opposing interests rather than as incompatible activities confounds conflict with competition, defined as incompatible goals and a win–lose orientation. It is not clear whether the theorized effects of conflict are due to conflict or to competition. The issue of definition is not simply a technical one for researchers. As we will see, the belief that the conflict is competitive in that it involves incompatible interests makes its management difficult. This article uses Deutsch's definition of conflict as incompatible activities: One person's actions interfere, obstruct, or in some way get in the way of another's action.