Essay: Conflict Management and an Effective Organization

Conflict Management and an Effective Organization
It is impossible to find an organization, large or small, without some form of conflict in the present or past. Where there are at least two people, there are at least two views on policies, functions, and opportunities in the workplace. Conflict management, naturally, is then important to make sure relationships are productive in the workplace, and that conflict does not harm progress and effectiveness of the organization.
Overview
Conflict management is certainly important for each type of organization, largely because conflict can be so detrimental to the daily happenings within the organization. However, conflict can also be used in an incredibly effective way to spur growth and innovation within the organization. The research question taken into consideration was this: “How can conflict be most effectively managed and how can it lead to the greater success of an organization?” The steps taken to answer this question began with a general reading of the literature available on the topic. Many subsets of conflict management have been researched and peer reviewed, and there are many conflict management systems and styles available to help organizations with conflict management. Specific peer-reviewed sources were then chosen, read, and highlights were chosen to then come together in the below research on conflict management.
Key Management Principle
The management principle at the core of the research question is the idea of principle centered leadership. According to Satterlee, principle centered leadership is where the success of a leader or organization is based on trust, character, and employer and employee ability (2013). Essentially, principle centered leadership is not always based on what training the leader goes through, how they reward or discipline, or how they define processes. Principle centered leadership is based around how the leader relates to their employees. According to Xu et al. (2015), principle centered leadership is based off of values and universal principles. These employers also work towards creating not only a present impact and present revenues, but a future impact and future revenues as well. This principle relates well to conflict management because if conflict management was based only on outcomes and letting employees know when they did a good job or not, it would not always align with universal values and truth. In fact, feedback from an employer, if focused only on reports and work on the past, can most definitely violate the trust, character building practices, and even the ability of the employee to perform. Employers who focus on building trust and character within their employees through the use of universal values and truths can then spur on their employees to perform better.
Research Findings
Research on Conflict Management is extensive and with a wide berth, focusing on family practices, the health care field, and other countries. Before looking into how conflict management can change an organization, conflict in the terms of business must first be defined. Then, literature about businesses with and without conflict management systems can be discussed, recommendations can be made, and conclusions can be drawn.
What is Conflict?
Research papers often begin with a definition of the topic at hand, but it is more important to not just define, but also to look at the breadth of the topic at hand. Only when the importance of the topic is understood can an issue be discussed and a solution be proposed. According to De Graaf & Rousseau (2015), most people, including clients of organizations, think of the word conflict as a negative thing, with almost a universally negative connotation. In fact, the term conflict management may seem like an unimportant topic or even like a topic that a manager may not want to deal with. It is important to view conflict not as negative, but a necessary bump on the road to understanding employees and ideas better. Conflicts are an unavoidable part within an organization, as the goals of the shareholders, managers, and other staff members are different from each other (Khan, Hussainy, & Iqbal, 2016). These are the main components of the conflict, which include the disagreement itself, the parties involved, and even the beliefs, needs, and cares of the party (Prause & Mujtaba, 2015). Often, managers only consider the parties and the issue at hand, but it is also important to not just look at the conflict, but also why the conflict is occurring and why each party believes their idea is superior. Because conflict is so unavoidable, managers must take heed to put practices in place that can help manage conflict and move it along to make it more productive.
Because communication is present between nearly every department in an organization, managers also need to consider how communication strategies can affect conflict management, According to Khan, Hussainy, & Iqbal (2016), communication breakdown is an important effect of conflict because when conflicts occur between employees working in groups and teams or conflicts occur between management and employees, it affects their level of communication. These groups of people can even start to avoid communicating with the other parties in conflict which creates a bottle neck of communication in between them. When these departments stop communicating with each other, tension grows as well as the issue itself, and it becomes harder to initiate a productive conversation. Often, people manage conflict in five ways that Prause & Mujtaba (2015) cite: competing, accommodating, avoiding, collaborating, and compromising. Only two of these options are better than the other, and even then, only the option of collaboration offers a truly discussion-based way to deal with the problem at hand. With countless managers and teams focusing on solving problems through competing and just creating accommodations, and even some who avoid the entire conflict itself, organizations need to work to develop better conflict management practices.