Conflict within an Organization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Conflict within an Organization - Essay ExampleInside and outside stakeholders, such as employees, management, and shareholders, however, competes over their share of the rewards and resources that the establishment generates. To grow, change, and survive, an organization must manage both cooperation and competition among stakeholders (Gasparino & Raghavan, 2001 March, 1962). Organizational conflict is the clash that occurs when the goal-directed behavior of one group blocks or thwarts the goals of an other(a).Conflict can be beneficial because it can overcome organizational inactivity and lead to organizational learning and change (Coser, 1956 Robbins, 1974). When conflict within an organization or conflict amid an organization and elements in its environment arises, the organization and its managers must reevaluate their view of the world. Conflict surrounded by different managers or between different stakeholder groups can change decision-making and organizational learning by r evealing new ways of looking at a problem or the false or erroneous assumptions that misrepresent decision-making. For example, conflict at AT&T between the board of directors and top managers about the slow pace at which top managers were restructuring the company caused a ascendant change in managerial attitudes (Hymowitz, 2001 Bernstein et al, 2000). A new top-management team was appointed to increase the pace of change and to overcome AT&Ts conservative approach. Similarly, conflict between divisional managers at IBM resulted in a major change in organizational focusing, from a purely mainframe focus to a more consulting-oriented focus (Nugent, 2002). Beyond a certain point, however, conflict stops being a force for good and becomes a cause of organizational decline. Innovation is, of course, more or less impossible in such a setting. An organization in trouble spends a lot of time making decisions-time that it can non afford because it needs to line up quickly to turn itsel f around. Thus, although some conflict can jolt an organization out of inertia, too much conflict can cause organizational inertia As different groups fight for their own positions and interests, they fail to arrive at consensus, and the organization drifts along failure to change makes the organization go from bad to worse (Amason, 1996).At first, many organization theorists regarded conflict as wholly dysfunctional because it was believed to be the antithesis of cooperation. It was generally interpreted as a sign of a wrong or an incomplete social structure. Therefore, early conflict theorists proposed that the appropriate response was the creation of structural mechanisms for dealing with issues that generate conflict. Committees, task forces, liaison roles, and many other forms of coordination were recommended for this purpose (Galbraith, 1977). The second phase of theorizing about organizational conflict developed around American organization theorist Louis Pondys observation that, although conflict may be unpleasant, it is an inevitable part of organizing (1967). In Pondys view conflict may still be regarded as dysfunctional, however, as a natural condition, conflict is unavoidable and should be accepted. This phase of study led to theoretical interest in the sources of conflict, and a search for understanding of its fundamental conditions. The natural view of conflict helped managers confront conflicts they could not alter