Sources of Conflict: Guidelines for a Healthy Organizational Environment

Abstract

"An interactive process manifested in incompatibility, disagreement or dissonance within or between social entities."

With this bold statement, (Rahim, 2002) provides a broad definition of conflict between humans. Conflicts and controversies are part of our daily life. It might happen that we end up being passive actors in a discussion, or we might be the active root cause of someone's bad day. They are per definition social interactions so this makes them unavoidable as a person crosses someone else's life, or has to deal with his/her own values and believes, in extreme cases. Conflicts occur in every possible scenario; on organizational level, for example, one of the many different roles of Project Managers is to mediate conflicts that occur in teams and try to extract the best possible outcome out of them. Conflict Management is a key aspect in ensuring a healthy environment for company members and its stakeholders.

Intro

Definitions

• Definitions

Dimensions

• Dimensions

Annotated bibliography

Rahim, M.A. (2002), Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict, International Journal of Conflict Management, 13(3): 206-235.