The conflict process can be divided into five stages such as: opposition or potential incompatibility, cognition and personality, intentions, behavior and results. This report will talk about the last three stages; since the intentions mediate between people's perceptions and emotions and their behavior.
These intentions are decisions to act in a certain way.
When people think of conflict situations, they focus on behavior, because it is where conflicts become visible; This stage includes the declarations, acts and reactions of the parties in conflict.
To obtain a result, the reasoning of action and reaction between the parties in conflict has consequences, these consequences can be functional, if the conflict ends in an improvement in group performance, or dysfunctional, if they hinder it.
Techniques to resolve conflicts such as: problem solving, higher order goals, expansion of resources, evasion, raid, arrangement, mandate, modifying the human variable and modifying the cultural variables will be announced; as well as Conflict Stimulation Techniques, which are influenced by: communication, bringing in people from outside, restructuring the organization and appointing a deliberate critic of the position of the majority of the members.
Whenever a conflict appears in a work team, people tend to avoid it, it is a mistake because precisely what is wrong is not the existence of the conflict but its mismanagement. In general terms, it could be stated that: a team without conflicts is a team that does not exist, moreover, a team without preparation to positively manage their conflicts is a team condemned to die.
Intentions
Intentions mediate between people's perceptions and emotions and their behavior. These intentions are decisions to act in a certain way.
Intentions are handled as a separate stage, because one has to assume the intentions of others to know how to respond to their behavior. Many conflicts escalate simply because one party contributes the wrong intentions to the other. Furthermore, there is usually a noticeable variation between a person's intentions and behavior, so that the person does not always accurately reflect the former.
The scholar K. Thomas identified the main intentions of conflict management
Competition
When a person tries to satisfy his own interests, whatever the effect on the other parties to a conflict, he is said to compete.
For example: when we intend to achieve our goal by sacrificing the other's, trying to convince the other that our conclusion is correct and theirs is wrong and trying to make someone accept the blame for a problem.
Collaboration
When the parties to a conflict have the desire to fully satisfy mutual interests, we have cooperation and the search for a win-win outcome. When collaborating, the intention of the parties is to resolve the problem by clarifying the differences, rather than compromising on various points of view. For example: attempting to find a solution in which the goals of both parties are fully achieved and seeking a solution in which the goals of both parties are fully achieved and seeking a conclusion that incorporates the valid ideas of both.
Evasion
A person can accept that there is a conflict and prefers to withdraw or suppress it. For example: trying to ignore a conflict and avoid people with whom you are not in agreement.
Assignment
When a party tries to calm its opponent, it would be willing to put his interests before its own. Put another way, in order to maintain the relationship, one party is willing to sacrifice. For example: the willingness to sacrifice one's own goal so that the other party can achieve his, to support the opinion of another person despite having reservations and to forgive someone for a fault as well as to tolerate others.
Reach an agreement
When each party to the conflict wants to give something up, it is shared and a result is reached that balances interests. When reaching an agreement, there is neither a declared winner nor a loser, but rather the willingness to reason the cause of the conflict and accept a solution that gives incomplete satisfaction to the interests of both parties. Therefore, the distinguishing characteristic of this intention is that the two parties intend to give something up. For example: the willingness to accept a raise of two dollars an hour instead of three, accept a partial agreement with a certain point of view, and take part of the blame for an offense.
Intentions offer general guidelines for the parties to a conflict, since they define the objective of each one. Now, people's intentions are not fixed. Sometimes they change in the course of a conflict because the concepts are reconsidered or because of an emotional reaction to the behavior of the other party. People have preferences about the five conflict management intentions, they constantly resort to them, and they can be predicted very well from a combination of personality and intellectual characteristics.
Conduct
When people think of conflict situations, they focus on behavior, because that is where conflicts become visible. In the stage of conduct, it encompasses the statements, acts and reactions of the parties in conflict.
These conflicting behaviors are the efforts of each party to implement their intentions. But these behaviors have a stimulus condition independent of intentions. As a result of miscalculations or lack of knowledge, behaviors sometimes deviate from their original intentions.
It helps to think that behavior is a dynamic process of interaction. For example: if you demand something of me. I answer by arguing. If you threaten me. I return the threat, and so on.
In the range of intensity of conflicts, conflictive behaviors can be visualized. All conflicts fall somewhere in this range. At the bottom are conflicts characterized by subtle, indirect, and highly controlled forms of tension. An example would be the student who casts doubt on an argument just defended by the teacher. The intensity of conflict increases as you move up the range until it becomes very destructive. Take for granted that the conflicts at the top are dysfunctional. Functional conflicts are isolated at the bottom of the range.
If a conflict is dysfunctional, what can the parties do to prevent it from escalating? Or also, what options are there if a conflict is too weak and needs to be intensified? This brings us to conflict management techniques.
Below are the main stimulation and resolution techniques that allow administrators to control conflict levels:
Results
The reasoning of the action and reaction between the parties in conflict has consequences, these consequences can be functional, if the conflict ends in an improvement in the performance of the group, or dysfunctional, if they hinder it.
Functional results
A conflict is constructive when it improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity and innovation, encourages interest and curiosity among members, provides a means to air problems and release tension, and fosters an environment of self-evaluation and change. Evidence indicates that conflicts can improve the quality of decision-making by making important decisions weigh all points, especially those that are unusual or that are advocated by the minority. Conflicts are an antidote to groupthink. It does not allow the group to passively process decisions that may be based on weak propositions, inadequate consideration of necessary alternatives, or other failures.
The General Motors company suffered problems due to lack of functional conflicts, the company promoted submissive individuals, loyal to GM to the point of never questioning the actions of the company. For the most part, the administrators were homogeneous: conservative whites raised in the American Midwest and averse to change. In addition, by picking company executives at the Detroit offices and encouraging them to socialize with GM's ranks, the company distanced them from conflicting views.
There is evidence that conflicts are also positively related to productivity. It was shown that among established groups, performance tends to improve more when there are conflicts between their members, than when the agreements are quite general.
Dysfunctional outcomes
Uncontrolled opposition generates discontent that dissolves common ties and ultimately destroys the group. A rich bibliography documents how conflict, in its dysfunctional variety, can reduce the effectiveness of groups. Less desirable consequences include slowing down communication, reducing group cohesion, and subordinating the overall goals of the group to the internal struggles of the members. Conflicts paralyze the functioning of the group and endanger its survival.
How to create functional conflicts
Organizations that encourage and support dissent endanger their survival.
For example, the Walt Disney Company deliberately incites large, rowdy meetings to create friction and stimulate creative ideas. Hewlett-Packard rewards dissenters by recognizing guys who go against the grain or cling to the ideas they believe in, even if the administration has rejected them.
conclusion
As a conclusion of the above, we have that when a group faces a conflict, some want at all costs a situation in which everyone wins, others seek the optimal solution, some more want to escape, some others want to be careful and still others they intend to divide the difference.
Conflicts call into question the state of affairs and thus encourage the creation of new ideas, promote the reassessment of the group's goals and activities, and increase the likelihood that the group will respond to change.
Many people and companies think that facing a conflict is something negative that should not exist but it is completely wrong, since if the conflict is addressed in a positive way, unimaginable results will be obtained. When there is a conflict, it means that individuals are in constant competition and obviously that makes it reflected in the performance of their activities, whether it is contributing new ideas, innovating products, their way of working, etc., they would always be watching the way of competing with each other and that is beneficial for the company.
Bibliography
STEPHEN P. Robbins "Organizational Behavior" Editorial Prentice Hall 1996.
