When individuals come together in workteams their differences in terms of power, values and attitudes, and socialfactors all contribute to the creation of conflict. It is often difficultto expose the sources of conflict. Conflict can arise from numerous sourceswithin a team setting and generally falls into three categories:communication factors, structural factors and personal factors (Varney,1989). Barriers to communication are among the most important factors andcan be a major source of misunderstanding. Communication barriers includepoor listening skills; insufficient sharing of information; differences ininterpretation and perception; and nonverbal cues being ignored or missed.Structural disagreements include the size of the organization, turnoverrate, levels of participation, reward systems, and levels ofinterdependence among employees. Personal factors include things such as anindividual's self-esteem, their personal goals, values and needs. In orderfor conflict to be dealt with successfully, managers and team members mustunderstand its unpredictability and its impact on individuals and the teamas a whole.
Conflict in work teams is not necessarily destructive, however. Conflictcan lead to new ideas and approaches to organizational processes, andincreased interest in dealing with problems. Conflict, in this sense, canbe considered positive, as it facilitates the surfacing of important issuesand provides opportunities for people to develop their communication andinterpersonal skills. Conflict becomes negative when it is left to escalateto the point where people begin to feel defeated, and a combative climateof distrust and suspicion develops (Bowditch & Buono, 1997). Nelson (1995)cautions that negative conflict can destroy a team quickly, and oftenarises from poor planning. He offers this list of high potential areas fromwhich negative conflict issues commonly arise:
No comments:
Post a Comment