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Understanding Organizational Conflict

By: Saed Kakei, Ph.D. Student NSUs DCAR PhD Program

September 25, 2011

When people hear the word conflict 1 , they generally express a negative meaning for it.This is because conflict is unavoidable part of human life. Conflict occurs between two or moreinteracting yet incompatible parties while trying to achieve their intended goals. Such

phenomenon requires various styles of handling dependent on the nature of conflict and itsoccurring place or location. For instance; in a productive organization, conflict requires conflictmanagement and not conflict resolution (Rahim; 2002, p. 207). Indeed, the competitivedimension of any business requires a dual model of conflict invention: intraorganizational andinterorganizational. The former is required to create internal competition for innovative

productivity. As for the latter, it is needed for enduring market. It should be noted, however, thatthis statement does not exclude reaching out for broader understanding of other conflict styles. Infact, to understand organizational conflict, one needs to grasp Roloffs (1987) definition whichstates that organizational conflict occurs when members engage in activities that areincompatible with those of colleagues within their network, members of other collectivities, or unaffiliated individuals who utilize the services or products of the organization" (In Rahim,2001, p. 19). These incompatible activities inspired Rahim to classify organizational conflict intotwo: Intraorganizational (i.e., conflict within an organization) or interorganizational (i.e.,conflict between two or more organizations); and, that intraorganizational conflict may beclassified as intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup (Rahim, p. 23). Each of these classifications has its own description. The most widely explored classification is that of interpersonal conflict.

Weider-Hatfield and Hatfield (1995) had jointly highlighted the importance of intrapersonal conflict as an inclusive mean for understanding of organizational conflictmanagement styles (p. 687). Yet, because these two scholars had relied on outdated citationsfrom Rahim 2, they have missed the opportunity to expound on the significance of understanding

1 Pruitt and Kim (2004) define conflict as a perceived divergence of interest , a belief that parties currentaspirations are incompatible. In other words, conflict is a belief that if one party gets what it wants, the other (or

others) will not be able to do so (in Rahim, 2004, p.1). Rahim broadens this description by theorizing conflict asan interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement, or dissonance within or between social entities (2002, p.207). These social entities, according to Rahim, include but not limited to individual, group, andorganization.2 Instead of citing from the 2 nd edition of Rahims book (1992) entitled Managing conflicts in organizations,Weider-Hatfield and Hatfield had resorted to the 1 st edition of the said published work in 1986 by Praeger. On page688 of their paper, cited in this work, Weider-Hatfield and Hatfield state that Rahim had proposed six categories for sources of conflict. Then, they further that Rahim provides three levels of organizational conflict. However, if welook at the updated 2 nd edition of Rahims book, we will find there are ten prescriptive categories with each

pertaining to a given particular type of conflict. In addition, we will see that Rahim emphasizes the importance of

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interpersonal conflict as a crucial concept with underlying significance to the various styles of handling interpersonal conflict.

According to Rahim (2002), Rahim and Bonoma had distinguished the styles of handlinginterpersonal conflict on two simple dimensions: intrapersonal concern (for self) and

interpersonal concern (for others). The degree to which an individual tries to satisfy his/her owntangible and/or psychological concern is measured between the values of low and high. Thisgradation represents the dimension. The second dimension, however, uses the same measurement

but this time to gage an individuals attempts to meet the tangible and/or psychological concernof others. Rahim (2002) asserts that [c]ombination of the two dimensions results in five specificstyles of handling interpersonal conflict (p. 217). These styles include: Integrationhighconcern for self and others, obliginglow concern for self and high concern for others,dominatinghigh concern for self and low concern for others, avoidinglow concern for self and others, and compromisingmidlevel concern for self and others (Rahim, 2002, pp. 218-220;Rahim, 2001, pp. 28-30).

The author of this short paper recalls experiencing all of these styles throughout his lifeexperience. Of the most favourable styles, integration has been his behavioural strategy to whichresulted in satisfying both his interests and that of others. For example, in January 2007, the

National Training Center (NTC) for the U.S. Army in Fort Irwin, California, has contracted thisauthor to revise its positional-based negotiation training to accommodate understanding for Iraqicultural dimensions. In concurrence with David M. Tresslers research findings 3, the author wasable to convince the NTC Commander and his senior staff that in order to understand Iraqicultural dimensions NTCs needs to integrate interest-based or collaborative negotiationtechniques into its training sessions. After overcoming NTCs legitimate concerns with Power Moves; and, after conducting a few collaborative negotiation workshops, the NTC not onlyembraced this authors interest-based negotiation techniques relative to Iraqi cultural dimensions,

but also sent him to Iraq to conduct the same training techniques until January 2010.

To this end, it is worth mentioning that the compromising dealas an intermediateconcern for the United States President Barak Obama, a Democrat, and his Republican led U.SCongresswas the style of choice by which lifted the ceiling on U.S. borrowing before theAugust 2 nd, 2011 deadline.

interpersonal conflict as a reference to a conflict between two or more organizational members of the same or different hierarchical levels or units (2001, p. 23).3 The Author has met with David M. Tressler at the NTC in May 2007. At that time, this Author learned thatTressler has written a monograph and obtained a copy of it which is titled: Negotiation in the new strategicenvironment: Lessons from Iraq. This said monograph was funded by the Harvard Negotiation Research Projectthrough a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett. Later, the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published Tresslersmonograph as a report in August 2007 with an ISBN 1-58487-301-9. The reader is invited to retrieve a digital copyfrom http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/

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In summary, one has to recognize that organizational conflict falls under conflictmanagement and not conflict resolution. Occasionally, organizations require conflict invention asa mean for manage competition both internally and externally. There are four levels of organizational conflict with each having at least two basic dimensions: concern for self andconcern for others. Finally, there are five specific styles of handling interpersonal conflict. Thesestyles are: integration, obliging, dominating, avoiding, and compromising. Depending of anyindividuals worldview, each one of these styles is appropriate for a particular givencircumstance.

References:

Rahim, M. A. (2011). Managing conflict in organizations (4 th Ed.). New Brunswick: TransactionPublishers.

Rahim, M. A. (2002). Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 206-235.

Rahim, M. A. (2001). Managing conflict in organizations (3 rd Ed.). Westport, CT: QuorumBooks.

Roloff, M. E. (1987). Communication and conflict. In C. R. Berger & S. H. Chaffee (Eds.),Handbook of communication science (pp. 484534). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Weider-Hatfield, D., & Hatfield, J. D. (1995). Relationships among conflict management styles,levels of conflict, and reactions to work. Journal of Social Psychology , 135 (6), pp. 687698.