Managing Conflict: The Key to Making Your Organization Work

by Dean Tjosvold

Since Frederick Taylor, managers have worked to make their organizations efficient by removing conflict. Yet we have good reasons to challenge the wisdom of avoiding conflict.
Conflict reaches into every part of work and management. Employees can avoid and hide from conflict, but they cannot escape it.
People in the workplace even experience conflict over how to manage conflict. Most believe that they must maintain harmony; others, that they should yell and shout. People are often confused about whether they can deal directly with frustrations and problems. They are unsure whether another’s silence means support for their position or a clandestine attempt to sabotage them.
The good news is that many studies show that conflict, when well-handled, is a powerful, constructive force that breathes life and energy into the workplace. A shared vision and strong culture, participation, labor-management cooperation, synergy and integrations, project teams, task forces, and other management innovations all become empty slogans without positive conflict.
Conflict can be managed for productive ends. Research strongly supports this conclusion. (See the Reference Note at the end of the book for reviews of the literature.) Yet, perhaps understandably, for some long-held beliefs die slowly, managers resist taking a more favorable, opportunistic view toward conflict.
People often find the idea of managing conflict abstract and elusive. But conflict is a very earthy issue. For this reason, I have chosen to write this book in a narrative, more realistic fashion. The story in Managing Conflict allows the reader to see conflict at work. Concise explanations use the story to explore major ideas about conflict in organizations.
Reading this book can put you and your colleagues on the same wavelength. You can have a shared understanding that conflict revitalizes teamwork and friendship. You can begin to develop a shared confidence that by dealing with conflict openly and skillfully you can make it work for you and your company. I expect you to find something useful in this book; I hope you pass it around.

Paperback

First published August 1, 1989