Sources of conflict
Contents |
Abstract
Conflicts are inevitable in projects. Conflicts can lead to decreasing team performance and have a negative effect on the project's outcome if not managed well.
Therefore, it is interesting to explore the sources of conflicts to understand better how to prevent and/or solve conflicts optimally. There is a lot of literature on conflict management and multiple theories on different reasons for conflicts to occur. This article focuses on three overall sources of conflict: team, task, and organization since these aspects seem to recur throughout the literature.
Team antecedents: size, composition, and diversity Task antecedents: complexity and scope Organizational antecedents: norms and strategies [1]
As there are many different sources of conflicts, there will be various solutions to solve the conflicts. However, conflicts can under some circumstances, be beneficial for a project. Therefore, the project manager must understand how and when conflicts should be encouraged, while others should be resolved as quickly as possible.
Characteristics of conflict
Definition of conflict Are conflicts beneficial or detrimental?
Source of conflicts
Three basic sets of antecedents: team, task and organization
Role conflicts a division of authority the technical complexity of the project internal organizational politics project life cycle [2]
Type of conflicts
Cognitive (task) conflict and affective (emotional) conflict The effects on project management and outcome
Applications
Understand the source of conflict to solve and prevent it from happening (escalating) Utilizing conflict management in practice
Limitations
A lot of theories on reasons for conflicts to occur (only elaborated few aspects) Different kinds of projects (in complexity, etc.) and organizational factors (organizational structure)
Annotated bibliography
Further reading More aspects to explore
References
- ↑ Mooney A.C., Holahan P.J., Amason A.C., Don't take it personally: Exploring cognitive conflict as a mediator of affective conflict., (2017), Journal of Management Studies Volume 44, Issue 5, Pages 733 - 758
- ↑ Robert E. Jones, Richard F. Deckro, The social psychology of project management conflict., ()1993 European Journal of Operational Research, Volume 64, Issue 2, Pages 216-228, ISSN 0377-2217, https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-2217(93)90178-P.
