COMMERCE 3S03 Chapter 9: 3S03-CH.9.docx
11 Apr 2012
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Document Summary
Good conflict mediators are born, not made. Two kinds of conflict occur in organizations. Task conflict: conflict over ideas, tasks, and issues and is divorced from evaluation of people"s character. It can be beneficial to more effective decision-making and problem solving and can lead to greater accuracy, insight, and innovation. Relationship conflict: personalized and therefore highly threatening and damaging for personal relationships, team functioning, and problem solving. Stimulating this type of conflict is a recipe for disaster. The first diagnosis is whether they are focused on relationships or on tasks. Relationship-center disputes can be nasty- they stem from what has transpired between 2 or more people and often become worse. Relationship conflict is usually outside the scope of the manager and the best option is to separate the conflicting parties if no reasonable working solution can be found. Task-centered disputes are debates over competing ideas, proposals, interests, or resources.
