Differences and Similarities

A Model of Conflict Management

Initial models of conflict management were developed in 1970s by organizational and social psychologists. Thomas et Kilmann have developed a two dimensional model consists of conflict resolution techniques such as compromising, accommodating, avoiding, collaborating and competing. Robbins has given a conflict-survival model with constructs such as conflict, change, adaptation and survival. Organizational effectiveness is high at optimum level of functional conflicts. 

With respect to communication, there are three types of conflict management models. They are integrative and distributive negotiation models concentrating on labor negotiations, mediation competency model concentrating on third party interventions and dual concern model concentrating on individual and informal conflict management in organizations.

Traditionally conflict management models are of two types. They are structural models and process models. Structural models deal with factors impacting conflicts in projects and conflicting process. whereas process models deal with the sequence of events involved in the conflict. Process models are more of dynamic in nature and structural models are more of static in nature. Darling and Walker have presented a behavioral style model for conflict management comprising behavioral styles such as director, socializer, relater and analyser. 

In this paper, a structural model (Figure 2) comprising a conceptual model of conflict management and a conflict management process (Section 5) are presented. The process model comprising different events inside a conflict are presented in the Section 3- Conflict Life cycle. 

Ochieng et Price have given a framework for managing multi-cultural project teams. They considered 8 dimensions for the model such as cross cultural communication, leadership style, cross-cultural trust, cross-cultural uncertainty, cross-cultural management, cross-cultural management of team development process and team selection, cross-cultural collectivism and composition process. 

Barki et Hartwick have given a framework for interpersonal conflict management in information systems projects. They have considered the individual demographic factors, team characteristics and team processes such as communication, influence and participation; project characteristics, resources and organizational characteristics such as organizational structure, organizational climates antecedents or influencing components interpersonal conflicts which further related to information systems outcomes such as project success, system success, individual performance and organizational performance and efficiency. The proposed model extends Barki et Hartwick model of interpersonal conflict. 

According to Schein, environment factors comprising social, cultural and technological climate are the factors the conflicts between individual, group and organizational goals. 

Team processes in the early stage of the project impacts the overall project performance and project success along the entire project life cycle. Thus there should be balance between task conflicts, relationship conflicts and process conflicts at the early stage of the project. This has to be dealt carefully by the project manager. According to Pierceet al., team communication, decision making and organizational politics are the team processes impacting the team conflicts. According to Stoner et al., the team processes impacting the team conflicts are the communication, power and persuasion. 

Team Conflicts can be categorized as task conflicts, relationship conflicts and process conflicts. According to Leung et al., task conflicts are related to cost, schedules and quality. Task conflicts are the result of differences in opinions and viewpoints over the project tasks. Relationship conflicts are related to client, project manager and team members and other stakeholders. Relationship conflicts are related to interpersonal incompatibility issues. Process conflicts are related to duties and resource delegation highlighting the who will do what and how much each one will do.

Task conflict increases the quality of decisions and performance in projects and process conflict reduces the team productivity, team performance and team morale. The level of relationship conflicts is low in high performance teams. The conflicts and conflict management can have significant impact on project success.