WELCOME TO THIS

SESSION
CONFLICT

BY-K.HORIGOPAL
LECTURE-03

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Q. Likely behaviors at Different levels of
conflict intensity.
LOW INTENSITY OPTIMAL HIGH INTENSITY( EXTREMELY
INTENSITY BEYOND THE HIGH
OPTIMAL LIMITS) INTENSITY

 Passivity  Explore the  Defensive  Disoriented

 Lack of environment behavior  Disorganized
interest  Meet the  Withdrawal behavior
 Apathy challenge  Replacement  Extreme
 Indifference  Goal  Submission  Aggression
 Carelessness oriented  Suppression or freezing
 Neglect activities  Projection over
 Non committal  Overcoming  Denali  Paranoiac
behavior barriers  Rationalization behavior
 Procrastination  Search for  Depersonalization 
 Withdrawals alternatives  Wishful thinking
 Interaction  Day dreaming
with others  Aggression
 Seek  Stereotyping and
solutions labeling
 Make  Rigidity or
decisions
 Inflexibility
 Perseverance
 Selective
 Creativity inattention
 Zeal or  Contaminating
enthusiasm issue
 Controlled
aggression

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Q. what are the practical implications
of the Graphical Representation?
• If one were to continuously remain in the non
motivational zone, life would become dull and
monotonous.
• On the other hand if one were to be always at the
high conflict zone and be unable to deal with
conflicts effectively one tends to suffer from
severe tension, anxiety and nervousness.
• The likely consequences in the latter case are:
psychosomatic disorders, distorted perception of
reality and irrational behaviors.
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• Managing conflicts, hence, would mean
containing conflicts within the effective
zone. In other words, the purpose of
conflict management is to balance and
maintain conflicts to optimize individual
and organizational performance. This
may be done in three
ways……………………….

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• Stimulating conflicts in work situations,
i.e the individual is moved towards the
effective zone from the non
motivational zone.
• Controlling conflicts so that they do not
aggravate to levels of intensity beyond
the upper limit of the effective zone.
This would mean dealing with various
forces operating in a conflict situation
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• Never allow any conflict to
lapse into the extremely high
intensity zone.
• It would be very difficult to
retrieve it into the effective
zone.
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 Q. How to stimulate conflict?
• To what extent constructive conflicts can
be stimulated depends upon the analysis
and understanding of the work situation
and the ingenuity of the superior.
• If conflicts are to be functional and
constructive, the following aspects have
to be borne in the mind by the superior in
stimulating conflicts in his subordinates:

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CONTINUING
 – The conflict generated should be felt
as a challenge by the employee to
bring out his best.
– It should not be highly incongruent
with the employee’s existing
perceptions, attitudes or values.
– It should be within the limits of ones
tolerance for conflict or ambiguity.
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 – It should generate in the
subordinate the need to know and
to expand his knowledge, and the
need to interact positively with
the other role set members.
– Conflict should be depersonalized

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• Constructive conflicts may be
fostered by dealing with any or
all of these variables. In
addition to this there are so
many stimuli which are given
below---------------------------
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• TASK
• WORK ENVIRONMENT
• INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS
• CHANGES IN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
AND DESIGN
• FORMAL OR INFORMAL COMMUNICATION
• SUPER ORDINATE GOALS
• ATTITUDES AND NEEDS OF THE
EMPLOYEES.

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• TASK: - Redesigning a task to make it
challenging and difficult but within the
limits of one’s potentiality, is one of the
ways of development constructive
conflicts.
• The modified task, though apparently
conflicting, must be seen as contributing
to one’s job knowledge, skills and
professional or personal growth in the
organization.
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• WORK ENVIRONMENT: - Necessity is
often said to be the mother of invention.
• Scarcity of resources/ materials or felt
need for a new product has often
motivated researchers to come out with
brilliant inventions which would not have
happened otherwise.
• The physical and medical sciences are
full up with instances that represent this.
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• INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS: - A
critical remark or disagreement may generate
better ideas or solutions than complete
agreement qualifying smooth interpersonal
relationships.
• Alternating the formal relationships of
individuals and departments, transferring and
exchanging members among similar work
groups and creating coordinating positions can
also lead to constructive conflicts.

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• ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
AND DESIGN: - Changes in
organizational design parameters can
introduce innovation and challenge in
the work situation, though such
changes are departures from the
existing framework and can be
conflicting at the initial instance.
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• COMMUNICATION: - Management can
stimulate conflicts by deviating from
traditional channels of communication. Such
deviations also result in the redistribution of
power within a department or an organization.
• In a particular the general manager started
sharing information with some of the bright
middle management executives (young MBA
graduated) rather than with his immediate
subordinates.

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• These young executives discussed the
problems referred to them and the general
manager acted upon their advice on certain
issues.
• The new power group was soon noticed by
the other managers. Conflict intensities
increased between the two managerial
groups, each vying with the other to improve
their performance and thereby enhance their
influence on the general manager.
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• SUPERORDINATE GOAL: - Goals that
relate to organizational survival,
competitiveness and growth also make to the
employees’ needs for security, growth and
achievement in the organization.
• Super ordinate goal have a high valance and
end to generate a common will among the
employees to work and cooperate, because of
higher personal stakes involved in the non
attainment of these goals.

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• ATTITUDES AND NEEDS OF THE
EMPLOYEES: -Needs are basic to human
behavior. It is conflicting for an individual
when his predominant needs is are not
satisfied. Self needs like status and esteem are
important to all of us.
• In organization context these are satisfied in
terms of promotion and recognition of n one’s
efforts. Imagine that in spite of your
consistently good performance you are not
promoted and your efforts are not recognized.
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• This state of affairs could be very
frustrating and conflicting to you.
The same conflict can be productive
if there are certain clearly identifiable
relationships between the degree of
one’s performance and the
opportunities for career growth or
compensation.
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Q. How to contain conflicts
within the effective Zone?
• The optimal level beyond which an individual
is unable to handle a conflict, and perhaps
likely to break differs from one individual to
another.
• A number of factors influence the optimum
level of conflict tolerance in an individual: his
upbringing, personality make up, the extent of
right fit between him and his job, his past
experience and his attitudes.
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LOW TOLERANCE LEVEL HIGH TOLERANCE LEVEL
CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE:
Over protective parents afraid of Sufficient amount of independence,
giving independence to the child and allowed making decisions by oneself.
made decisions for him. Sufficient opportunities to evaluate
one’s own self and develop a realistic
self concept.

JOB INCOMPATIBILITY: Right match between the job and the

Mismatch between the job and the individual
individual
JOB EXPERIENCE: Long years of job experience.
Fewer years of experience on the job.
ATTITUDINAL FRAMEWORK:
Negative attitude towards work, people Positive attitude to work, people and
and problems. problems.
PERSONALITY MAKE UP
CHARACTERIZED BY:
High emotionality, guilt complex, Being calm and well composed, less
Submissiveness, timidity, low risk guilt prone, adventurous, and
taking ability, conservatism and dominant, risk taking, radical and
dogmatism, external locus of control, experimenting, and internal locus of
pessimism and suspicious nature. control, optimistic, able to establish
trustworthy relationships.

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Q. Essentially two approaches may be
suggested to contain conflicts within the
effective zone

1. Training the role incumbent to

inculcate the necessary skills,
strategies and confidence for
managing conflicts.
2. Bringing changes in organizational
structure design and function.

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1. TRAINING THE ROLE INCUMBENT TO INCULCATE
THE NECESSARY SKILLS, STRATEGIES AND
CONFIDENCE FOR MANAGING CONFLICTS.

• The training programme can develop the

necessary skills to analyze conflicts objectively,
select appropriate resolution strategies and
develop positive attitudes towards conflicts.
• Such a training programme could also influence
(bolster) one’s self confidence in handling
conflicts. The advantage to training is that one
need not wait to learn from one’s own
experience, which evidently takes a longer time.

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• The training programme may be designed
to have the following objectives:
– Objective analysis of a conflict situation
in terms of identifying various forces
operating in it.
– Examining the sources of conflict and
the extent of the locus of conflict in
individual, interpersonal and
organizational arenas.
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 – Delineating the positive supportive forces and the
negative non supportive forces and assessing their
respective valences.
– Developing positive attitudes towards conflict
work and organization. Individuals having such
positive attitudes tend to deal with organizational
conflict situation more effectively than those with
negative attitudes.
– Strategies of reducing resistance to decisions
among those who are involved or are party/parties
to the conflict.

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2. Bringing changes in
organizational structure, Design
and Function:

• Bringing changes in an
organization to contain
conflicts within the effective
zone can be at the task level,
the interpersonal level and
the structural level.
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• Task Level:
– Role clarification to the extent possible
whereby the role incumbent is sufficiently
clear of what is expected of him.
– Identifying the extent or role overlap and
role reciprocation within the role set
members.
– clarifying the goals or targets to be
achieved, both at the individual task an
team /group level
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• Interpersonal Level:
• Why do role incumbents not relate to
each other effectively? the likely reasons
are:
– Personal differences, individuals do not
perceive events and things in a similar way
because of differences in their perceptions,
attitudes and values.
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• The individual’s effective zone is possible
by improving interpersonal relations and
cohesiveness and instilling positive
attitudes towards work and the role set.
Attempts should be made to enhance
cooperation and team work in the pursuit
of departmental / organizational goals,
thereby enhancing synergy in team work.

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• Structural Level: The changes
envisaged to lessen conflict must be
contingent to the situation and may
include
– Vertical and or horizontal
decentralization.
– Clarifying organizational norms, rules
and regulation.
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 – Reorganization or relationships
among departments.
– Regulating communication flow.
– Minimizing disputes arising from
semantic difficulties,
misunderstanding and noise in
communication channels.
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