Chapter 10 Flashcards
What is conflict? What are the broad types of conflict?
Conflict: Conflict occurs whenever disagreements exist in a social setting or when emotional antagonisms create friction between entities.
- Substantive Conflict: A fundamental disagreement over ends or goals to be pursued and the means for their accomplishment.
- Emotional Conflict: Interpersonal difficulties that arise over feelings of anger, dislike, fear, resentment, etc.
What is the difference between functional dysfunctional conflict? When is conflict dysfunctional?
Functional versus Dysfunctional Conflict:
- Functional Conflict: Results in constructive outcomes for the parties involved.
- Dysfunction Conflict: Results in destructive outcomes for the parties involved.
- Too much and too little conflict is considered dysfunctional.
What are some benefits of functional conflict?
Benefits of Functional Conflict:
- Brings important problems to the surface so that they can be addressed.
- Causes decisions to be carefully considered.
- Increases amount of information used for decision making.
- Provides opportunity for creativity.
What are some disadvantages of dysfunctional conflict?
Disadvantages of Dysfunctional Conflict:
- Diverts energy away from performing the team’s task.
- Hurts group cohesion.
- Promotes interpersonal hostilities.
- Creates hostile/negative work environments.
- Can decrease job performance and job satisfaction.
- Can contribute to absenteeism and job turnover.
What are the levels of conflict in organizations? What are their causes?
Levels of Conflict in Organizations:
- Interpersonal: Conflict between people. Caused by rivalries or personality differences.
- Intrapersonal: Conflict within a person. Caused by conflicting goals and expectations.
- Intergroup: Conflict between groups within an organization. Can be caused by substantive or emotional factors.
- Inter-organizational: Conflict between organizations. Caused by market share competition.
How does culture relate to conflict?
Culture and Conflict: Sensitivity and respect is required when working across cultures – as cultural differences must be considered for their conflict potential – to tap into the performance advantages provided by diversity and constructive conflict.
How is conflict resolution different from conflict suppression?
Conflict Resolution: When the underlying reason for a destructive conflict is eliminated.
Conflict Suppression: Controlling and mitigating the behaviours of manifested conflict while leaving the antecedent conditions – the root causes – untouched.
What are the stages of conflict?
Stages of Conflict:
- Antecedent Conditions: Establish the conditions from which conflict is likely to arise from.
- Perceived Conflict: When the antecedent conditions become the basis for substantive or emotional differences between entities.
- Felt Conflict: Conflict expressed as tension that motivates people to take action to reduce it.
- Manifest Conflict: Conflict is expressed openly in behaviour.
- Conflict Aftermath: Removing or correcting the antecedent conditions. Conflict suppression may also be used, though it is superficial.
What are some structural differences between functional teams which give rise to line-staff conflict?
R&D: Emphasizes product quality and is long-term oriented.
Manufacturing: Emphasizes cost efficiency and is short-term oriented.
Marketing: Emphasizes customer needs and is short-term oriented.
What are contextual causes of conflict? Provide some examples.
Contextual Causes of Conflict: The environmental context of the organization can cause conflict.
- Role Ambiguity: Occur when the communication of task expectations is unclear or upsetting in some way.
- Task and Workflow Interdependence: Occur when people or work units are required to cooperate in the pursuit of some goal.
- Domain Ambiguity: Occur when people or teams lack adequate task direction or goal and misunderstand such things as customer jurisdiction or scope authority.
- Resource Scarcity: Occur when resources are scarce.
- Power or Value Asymmetries: Occur when interdependent teams differ substantially in terms of status or values.
What are hierarchical causes of conflict ? What are its levels within an organization?
Hierarchical Causes of Conflict: The hierarchical nature of organizations provides a basis for conflict.
- Vertical Conflict: Conflict occurring between those in a supervisor-subordinate relationship. The subject is often resources, goals, deadlines, or performance results.
- Horizontal Conflict: Conflict occurring between those of equal or near-equal working status.
- Line-Staff Conflict: Involves disagreements between line and staff personnel over who has authority over decisions concerning matters such as budgets, technology, and human resources practices. Line refers to those who directly advance an organizations core operations while staff refers to those who provide ancillary support.
What are some indirect strategies to manage conflict?
Indirect Strategies to Manage Conflict: Not face-to-face ways of managing conflict.
- Managed Interdependence: Decoupling or reducing contact between interdependent teams which are engaging in conflict. Adding buffers is one way to do this.
- Appeal to Common Goals: Focusing the attention of conflicting teams on a mutually desirable conclusion.
- Upward Referral: Problems are moved up from the level of conflicting teams for those more senior in the organization to address.
- Altering Scripts and Myths: Superficial management through the use of behavioural routines and the organization`s culture to limit conflict.
What are some direct strategies to manage conflict?
Direct Strategies to Manage Conflict: Face-to-face ways of managing conflict.
- Accommodating or Smoothing: Letting the other’s wish rule by smoothing out differences. A lose-lose strategy.
- Avoidance: Downplaying disagreement are refusing to address the conflict at hand. Maintaining neutrality at all costs. A lose-lose strategy.
- Compromise: Partially satisfying the wishes of all parties involved. A lose-lose strategy.
- Competition and Authoritative Command: Working against the wishes of the other party to achieve your wishes at any cost. May involve the use of authority by one party to end conflict. A win-lose strategy.
- Collaboration and Problem Solving: Seeking true satisfaction for all parties involved by problem solving to find a solution which satisfies everyone. A win-win strategy.
What are the potential outcomes of conflict in terms of winners and losers? Which direct conflict management strategies promote each one?
Outcomes of Conflict:
• Lose-Lose Conflict: Nobody’s wishes are completely satisfied. The root problems of the conflict remain intact. Accommodating, avoidance, compromise.
• Win-Lose Conflict: One party’s wishes are completely satisfied at the cost of the others’. Competing.
• Win-Win Conflict: All parties’ wishes are satisfied through collaboration. Collaboration.
What is negotiation?
Negotiation: The process of making joint decisions when the parties involved have different preferred outcomes.
