JRE420 — People Management and Organizational Behaviour

  • causes of organisational conflict
    • power: control, influence
  • types of conflict
    • relationship conflict — not necessarily about tasks or activities or actions. more focused on individual self and interactions with the other person. this is less common in organisational settings compared to task/process
      • harder to resolve bc it’s rooted in our personality
    • task conflict — focused on goals you have together. what we have to do
    • process conflict — i.e., should one person do this, should we do it as a group. how we should do something
  • consequences
    • not all conflict is detrimental — can motivate change
  • modes of managing conflict
    • assertive: advocating for yourself or your group
    • cooperation: how much you’re willing to satisfy others
    • graph
      • accommodation — when we think the others are right, if issue affects them more than it affects us. when we want to win favour
      • avoidance
      • competition
      • compromise — can lead to lose-lose situations, no one’s wants are met. so no one is happy. not necessarily the middle of the road solution
      • collaboration — not always purely win-win, but pretty close!
  • is all conflict bad?
    • trying to figure out how to solve things. maybe finding a solution that isn’t immediately obvious to us
    • more likely to think about other people’s ideas or alternative possibilities
  • conflict debt
    • it’s easy to walk away from unresolved problems, especially small ones
    • sometimes we don’t know how to solve, sometimes we don’t think it’s our position to solve
    • build-up of minor issues/problems
    • can happen professionally or personally