Why and How to Use Conflict Management in Organisations

The American William Ellery Channing once said that “difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”

Life is full of conflicts. Wherever choices exist there is potential for disagreement. Such differences, when handled properly, can result in richer, more effective, creative solutions and interaction. But it is difficult to consistently turn differences into opportunities. Poorly managed disagreements could lead to a psychological distance between people based on negative feelings like competition and disregard.

Conflict is inevitable in business relationships, as it is in social relationships. Without conflict, growth is limited. Unresolved conflict can be poisonous to the productivity of a company. Conflicts that are not handled or that are handled
in an inappropriate way could become expensive for a company. Thus, managers spend a lot of time dealing with conflicts or its aftermath. This indicates how much resources are wasted by wrong conflict management; a huge amount of a company’s workforce is kept away from daily business and productive work. The challenge is to identify conflict situations in their beginning stage and to manage them constructively to discover new opportunities and to transform conflict into a productive learning experience.

Whereas chapter 1.2 describes some important conflict types and the reasons for their arising, chapter 2.1 describes the first signs of conflict arising to sensitise to the roots of conflicts. By focussing on the business environment, chapter 2.2 and 2.3 show ways to minimise unnecessary conflicts and to manage unavoidable conflicts. Chapter 2.4 states important soft skills managers must develop to resolve conflicts successfully. This paper ends with interesting facts and figures about the importance of conflict management in organisations to underline the topicality of this issue.