CONFLICT AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Conflict and Conflict Resolution



Abstract

Organizational Development Interventions plays a significant role in bringing positive changes within the organization. In today's global competitive environment, organizations continuously strive to achieve effectiveness and efficiency to the fullest possible and this cannot be made possible when conflicts exists within the organization. Thus, conflict resolution is very important for organizations if they want to remain competitive in the global market. In this regard, conflict resolution strategies provide a helping hand to the organizations in resolving the conflicts in a manner that the solution benefits both; the management and the employees.

Conflict and Conflict Resolution

Introduction

Since we all know that the only thing constant in the world is change and change brings many conflicts along with it, especially, in organizational settings. While organizations strive to bring positive changes in order to develop themselves, conflicts sometime create hindrances in the organization's path of achieving success. Intervention Strategies used for conflict resolution are believed to be beneficial for the organization. However, interventions should not be linked to fixation of any problem arising within the organization; instead, organizations must try to implement different intervention strategies even when there is no problem. This will ensure continuous improvement of the firm, in response to the anticipated future changes.

According to Cummings and Worely, an intervention can be defined as:

“A set of sequenced planned actions or events intended to help an organization increase its effectiveness” (Cummings, and Worely, 2001).

The statement that interventions disrupts organizational status quo, holds true, since, they are intentional efforts meant for bringing change in an organization or its sub-unit, leading it towards a more coherent and different state.

Types of Interventions

Interventions are divided into a groups of 6, each of these interventions are further divided according to the need of an organization. The 6 groups of interventions include:

Large Scale

Strategic

Techno-structural

Management and Leadership Developmental

Team Development and Group Processes

Individual and Interpersonal Processes

In this paper, we would be focusing on Team Development and Group Processes interventions because, in today's global competitive environment, every firm seeks to have coherence amongst its employees, especially in situations of conflict.

Discussion

Team Development and Group Processes

These interventions are responsible for bringing improvements in different aspects of a group's performance development of interpersonal relations, conflict resolution, goal setting and so forth. They help in clarifying an individual's role and providing him/her an overall view about the decision making process and problem solving. One of the most significant factor upon which team building interventions heavily relies is an improvement of the interdependency which team members have. A prime reason for this reliance is that a team's value is much greater than the value of an individual. The underlying objective of team building interventions is to improve co-ordination among team members by reducing the conflicts among each other and on the whole the conflict of a team with organizational change processes (Bridges, 2003).

Interest-Based Relational Approach as a Conflict Resolution Strategy

In today's global competitive environment, it is very difficult to bypass the need of ongoing development. Especially, in situations where organizations have to work ...