What are the Types of Conflict in Workplace?


What is Conflict Management?

Conflict management is the procedure of being capable to recognize and control conflicts discreetly, impartially, and competently. Since conflicts in an employment are a crude segment of the workplace, it is dominant that there are people who recognize conflict and know how to determine them. This is dominant in today's market with greater reason. Everybody endeavors to show how valuable they are to the company they work for and from time to time, this can guide discourse with other members of the team.

It is the procedure of trading with (perceived) insufficiency or dispute emerging from, for example, separate beliefs, intentions, and needs. Conflict management is the procedure of restricting the defeatist feature of conflict while expanding the productive feature of conflict.

The purpose of conflict management is to magnify learning and group outcomes, which include productiveness or presentation in an organizational position.

Types of Conflict in Workplace

Appropriately managed conflict can enhance group outcomes. Conflicts in workplace can be categorized into four key types, such as −

  • Status conflict
  • Task conflict
  • Process conflict
  • Relationship conflict

Following are the types of conflict in the workplace in detail −

Status Conflict

Status conflict, described as disputes above people’s comparative status positions in their group’s social grading, are an ordinary attribute of groups and organizations. In spite of their generality, there is quite much regarding the procedure of status conflict that is not well appreciated.

A status conflict is when you differ about who is in charge. This can happen because it's uncertain who is literally permitted to make the call based on organizational grading, or it's more of a turf action in which one person feels they should be in charge instead of another person.

Task Conflict

When superiors are having a task conflict, they are disagreeing about what needs to be done, or don't agree on the project's goal. Task conflict frequently involves tactile issues related to employees' work assignments and can include discussion about how to break up resources, differences of opinion on procedures and policies, managing expectations at work, and discernment and exposition of facts. Task conflict may appear to be the simplest to settle.

For example, superiors who are arguing about which one of them should go to a peripheral conference may have a huge conflict based on a sense of opposition.

Process Conflict

A process conflict can be taken as similar to a task conflict, but the process is differing about how the project or task is concluded. In a process conflict, for example, associates might vary about even if a decision will be made by a group consent or play energetic with a client while another supporter of accommodation. Process conflict means how work gets done.

A low level of this conflict is one of the minimalist conflicts that are encouraging and hold up the object of the squad and improve group performance. Process conflict is a conflict concerning the way in which a task should be finished, including the genuine procedure and issuance of resources to the task.

For example, if a manufacturer applies a different procedure to control quality than others, there will be a substantial impact on the total capacity to generate constant quality control within the company. Here, the manager must decide the proper methods and help others to follow these methods by applying the proper power base and leadership style.

Relationship Conflict

A relationship conflict is when individual feelings get involved. This can be separate from your colleagues or raising your voice. It may also feel like you are being offended. Relationship conflict arises from differences in character, technique, matters of flavor, and even conflict styles.

In organizations, people who would not usually meet in real life are often thrown together and must try to get along. It’s no surprise, then, that relationship conflict can be usual in organizations.

Conflict Resolution Techniques

Conflicts can be both fertile and devastating for the organization; productive conflicts can help you by influencing you to work better.

Following are some of the conflict resolution techniques −

  • Solving/Confronting
  • Compromising/Reconciling
  • Withdrawing/Avoiding
  • Forcing/Competing
  • Accommodating/Collaboration

Let us see the above techniques in detail.

Problem Solving/Collaboration

In this method, people involved in the conflict or having a distinction in belief, come forward to talk over the problem at hand with a very open mind. They are distinct on determining the conflict and finding the best substitute for the team. They talk over and over by rebelling over personal emotions with the unique purpose of finding what is best for the team. This guide to a conquer kind of an end result. Here everyone cooperates.

Compromising/Reconciling

Sometimes for precise conflicts, there will be a need for the elaborate parties to think of a middle path hence both parties decide to give up their entity and recognize a resolution. This kind of solution will be short-term for that moment and is not a long-established solution. This leads to a contradiction kind of an end result as both parties may feel they have lost something.

Withdrawing/Avoiding

In some situations, one of the parties in the conflict may decide to disclaim from the argument and authorize going with the other person’s belief. Or in some situations, one of the parties may conclude to totally avoid the conflict by sustaining silence.

This works thoroughly in situations where one of the parties in the conflict is affectionately charged up or is annoyed. Hence avoiding any conflict resolution provides a “chill out” period to the people involved so that they can later come back for meaningful resolution.

Forcing/Competing

In some situations, a person with dominance and capacity can force his/her opinion and resolve the conflict without giving any chance to the other party. This guides to a desperate kind of an outcome. One may end up feeling as a loser while the other person with dominance may feel as a winner. This technique can be used if we see the conflicts are dispensable and mostly devastating for the team.

Conclusion

Conflicts are usual and a sustained process in any organization. Dealing around these conflicts emphatically is important. Therefore, there is a strong need for a program, which is acknowledged by both project partners and employees. There is need for an authorized and mandatory role for the government in this program area.

Updated on: 07-Jul-2022

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