CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Organizations employ people who have to coordinate and work in harmony with each other in order to achieve the desired aims and objectives. Employees seek guidelines from managers as team members to establish good working relations. No doubt these people are also part of the society where conflicts are likely to occur at home as well as at their workplaces. In many cases these conflicts are obvious and unavoidable. So team members, competitors and organizations have to face conflicts while carrying out their daily operations.
Conflict occurs when there is opposition in attitude and behavior which takes place between managers and working people and also among groups. It means that people of different attitudes have to face conflicts in the professional environment. The co nflict is basically a disagreement which may arise due to some factors such as anger, mistrust, personality clashes and biased policies of institutions Cooperation and mutual collaboration are also important aspects required both at work place and in daily life of individuals for accomplishment of their task to carry out their activities in a steady, secure and stable environment. But it does not mean that we consider conflict as bad whereas cooperation as a good component because they both exist together and are part of our daily life.
Conflict is likely to occur at workplace because organization has many goals to achieve through different people and they all do not have similar thoughts and approaches. If conflict does not take place then this means that the organization does not prefer improvement, perfection, innovation and novelty in its operations and favors strict adherence to its system without flexibility and softness resulting in an unfavorable environment created hindrance in the development and sustainability of the firm. For managing conflict in an effective way it is essential that it should be identified first and someone has to get involved to resolve it. Conflicts occurring in an organizational environment cannot be permanently removed, rather they require management to improve the organization’s learning process and its activities.
During the process of conflict management managers have to take decisions mutually beneficial for employees, firm and its stakeholders . Neskertin and Porterfield (2016) are of the view that managing and handling conflict increases support of the team members within the organization. This ultimately affects the performance in a positive way. At workplace it may be difficult to completely avoid conflicts, but what we can do is to manage them effectively by recognizing them and providing timely solution. Conflicts can influence the functioning of the organization so it would be beneficial to manage them as early as possible. So the basic purpose to manage conflict would be to reach the point where organizational performance is maximized.
According to Opute (2014) managers have to be vigilant in the sense that they come up with the best possible solution that satisfies both the conflicting parties. So that organizational performance is not affected and there are no unfavor able outcomes that may hinder the productivity. Chen, Zhao, Liu and Wu (2012) posit that learning to manage conflict is an important job requirement and managers have the responsibility to arrange training sessions so that employees can learn skills to effectively manage conflicts. Employees become satisfied with their jobs and their performance improves with the help of various methods used to manage conflicts. Conflict is considered as social problem and within the organization it may exist in various types. It may have a positive or negative or both type of effect on the performance of the organization. Pawlak (1998) argues that research on conflict, play a significant role in all types of public and private organizations. When conflicts are not managed well within an organization then this may adversely cause tensions, stress, clashes and other forms of unpleasant social strains and disagreements.
The conflict between individuals and groups of people influence the performance of the organization negatively and unconstructively. So, it is important to study the potential causes of disagreement, divergence and collisions at workplace with a perspective to determine their impact on performance and highlight the effective strategies to manage such conflicts. Therefore, aim of this study is to determine the relationship between two important variables known as conflict management strategies and organizational performance
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