Organizational Conflict Styles & Resolution Strategies

Conflict Resolution

Mary Corn

Amberton University

Spring_2016 HBD6776.E1 Leadership Theories/Practice

Dr. Kimanya Ards

April 15, 2016

Organizational Conflict Styles & Resolution Strategies

As we all know, there will always be conflict as long as everyone has a different opinion.  Conflict in the workplace is alive and well.  Between 30% and 42% of managers’ time is spent dealing with conflict (Murtha, R., 2005).   Leaders must have a way of dealing with conflict to ensure the business as usual continues.  A good leader must be able to handle conflicts in a way that is fair, efficient and makes sense to the parties involved.  Iin the 1970s, Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann recognized that when management understands the reasons behind a conflict and how serious the conflict is, a more positive outcome results (Valencia, 2015).

The various styles of conflict resolution styles help us to understand our behavior when we deal with conflict.  Do you handle conflict with assertiveness and cooperativeness or unassertively and uncooperatively?  As much as I would like to believe that I handle conflict assertively, it is not always the case.  I have to pick my battles at work as well as at home.  For me it depends on the situation and how much authority I feel that I have.  I have recently experienced a conflict with my manager’s boss where he requested that I handle project administration issue one way and finance dictated another way.  I was thought to be argumentative when attempting to explain my view and what I felt was the best action to be taken.  Perhaps a quick course in conflict resolution is needed.

The various styles of addressing conflict within the Thomas/Kilmann conflict mode instrument are avoiding, accommodating, collaborating, competing and compromising.  There are some things that you can do to help your organization deal with conflict:  provide basic training for leaders, set an example from the top, provide individual coaching for leaders, develop a formal dispute resolution and recognize when the conflict is too large (Smith, S. 2002).  

Avoiding Conflict- unassertive and uncooperative. is just what it says.  Ignoring the conflict requires little or no effort and you just withdraw from the conflict. This style does not help anyone because one person allows the other person to assert their solution and ignore their own.  What if your solution or idea is really the best and you avoid conflict and just allow the individual to put their solution in place.  In the business world this could be detrimental and cause.  This is when you simply avoid the issue.  There are some situations where avoiding conflict is the correct path to take, for instance, if the conflict is ignored because one person has less authority or knowledge than the other.  Other reasons could be that it’s not important enough or could end up being cost effective to avoid the conflict.  For the most part, avoiding conflict does not solve anything long term.  When I have a conflict with an individual in management, I attempt to compromise first before giving in or avoiding.  There are times where I feel slightly resentful, but the overall thought is to briefly make my point and let it go.  When working with customers I tend to give a little so that we can continue to get new business.