Sources of conflict

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 including 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 several works of literature.

Team antecedents: size, composition, and diversity

Task antecedents: complexity and scope

Organizational antecedents: norms and strategies

The intensity of conflicts for a project varies with the phases of the project's life cycle, which means various sources will vary along this life cycle. As there are many different sources of conflicts, there will be multiple solutions to solve the conflicts. However, under some circumstances, conflicts can 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

It is essential to understand the origins of conflict to better avoid and handle conflict. There is a lot of literature on conflict and it is perceived differently by scholars in philosophy, sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and psychology. Hence, there is no universally accepted definition. Although Rahim (2001) conclude that the various definitions overlap with the following elements;

"Opposing interests between individuals and/or groups

For the conflict to exist, the opposed interests must be recognized

Beliefs by each side that the other will obstruct (or has already obstructed) its interests.

Conflict is a process; it arises from existing relationships between individuals or groups and reflects their past interactions and the contexts in which these took places

Actions by one or both sides do, in fact, produce obstructing of others’ goals." - Rahim (2001), page 18.

This is article will focus on conflict in an organizational context. According to Roloff (1987) “organizational conflicts occurs when members engage in activities that are incompatible with those of colleagues within their network, members of other collectivises, or unaffiliated individuals who utilize the services or products of the organization”.

Furthermore, the literature disagrees about whether a conflict is detrimental or beneficial for the organizational process. The predominant view is that conflict is a negative process in organizations [intragroup]. However, the more modern perspective on conflict is not necessarily dysfunctional for organizations. The impact of conflict on a team's performance and project outcome depends on the specific type of conflict experienced within the team [intragroup]. The different types of conflicts are examined further in the next section.

Some major cons of conflicts: Detriment the group effectiveness

Decrease shared understanding

Deteriorate the project’s outcome

Some major pros of conflicts: - Enhance the team performance - Increasing creativity - Improve decision making

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

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