Effective ways to manage organizational conflict

Effective ways to manage organizational conflict

Sonny J. Soeharso, Psychologist, Jakarta

Have you ever experienced a conflict in your past or present
organization? The answer to that is probably yes, because there
are precious few companies that are free from conflict.

No employee can escape conflict, whether it is little or big,
direct or indirect. We can face any conflict because it can
increase organizational performance, or on the other hand we
avoid conflict because of personality type or the scope and
impact of the conflict.

One of the problems is sometime we cannot define clearly what
is the conflict itself, and many people often take it personally
and emotionally.

Stephen Robbins (1990) said: "Conflict is a process in which
an effort is purposely made by 'A' to offset the efforts of 'B'
by some form of blocking that will result in frustrating 'B' in
attaining his or her goals or furthering his or her interests."

There are two views of conflict: Traditional and
interactionist. The traditional view of conflict assumes all
conflicts are bad. Any conflict, therefore, has a negative impact
on an organization's effectiveness. The traditional approach
treats conflicts synonymously with such things as violence,
destruction and irrationality.

Consistent with this perspective, one of management's major
responsibilities is to try to ensure that conflicts do not arise
and, if they do, act quickly to resolve them, like a fire
extinguisher.

A different view is held by the interactionist, who believe
that an organization totally devoid of conflict is probably also
static, apathetic and nonresponsive to the need for change.
Conflict is functional when it initiates the search for new and
better ways of doing things and undermines complacency within the
organization.

As we known, in the global competition, change doesn't just
pop out of thin air. It needs stimuli. That stimuli is conflict.
There must be some dissatisfaction with the status quo before
conditions are right to initiate change. So an organization that
is completely content with itself -- that is, one that is
conflict free -- has no internal force to initiate change.

Organizational conflicts are generally caused by two factors
-- incompatible personalities and organizational structure. The
first factor is more psychological and personal and about
"chemistry" problems, while the second is more organizational,
such as mutual task dependence, dependence on scarce resources,
different evaluation criteria and reward systems (commonly for
sales and marketing people versus back office staff) and
communication distortion.

From my experience conducting training sessions and consulting
in HR management, the biggest source of conflict is communication
distortion.

The following tips may be useful if you find yourself in a
conflict with colleagues or family members:
* Control your self and keep cool even if the situation is
getting worse. If you can control your mind, emotions and energy
you can also control your breathing and blood pressure, and you
can think how to handle the situation. If you succeed in doing
this, you are very lucky because God will give you a "bonus" of a
longer life.
* Try to find out the source of conflict and focus your energy on
solving it by facing the conflict. Don't escape or hide from the
conflict. Build a good rapport and try to build communications.
* Build good interpersonal relationships with everybody in your
organization, from the bottom to the top. This is very important,
and I think its a universal approach. Sometime a serious conflict
can be solved by personal visits. And I think if you have a good
interpersonal relationship, and you can also control your self,
you have already solved more than 75 percent of the conflict.

(The writer is managing partner of SJS & Associates)