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