What Is Workplace Conflict?

In any business where the owner hires employees, there will always likely to be potential conflict of opinion and interests with staff.

What is conflict?

Conflict is a consequence of the serious argument, disagreement, opposition, struggle or contest. It happens because people think that there is a real threat to their interests, concerns, desires, values, beliefs, needs or wants.

Conflict can happen between individuals, groups or even within oneself. It can be expressed through a clash of viewpoints, competition, passive-aggression or open aggression.

Conflict is often a key element of real-life situations as it can drive people to action and create suspense. The ability to accomplish objectives often depends on the cooperation with others, hence increases the opportunity for potential conflict.

Workplace conflict, or organizational conflict, refers to conflict within a workplace or a business organization, such as disagreements between workers, teams or managers.

It refers to a situation of friction because of mutually exclusive goals or incompatibilities between two or more parties, mainly employees and employers. This creates disagreements between these groups and results in a lack of future cooperation.

Conflicts happen very often in the workplace because of the dynamics and the breadth of business relationships that exist between various stakeholders.

Causes of workplace conflict

Workplace conflict is usually because the owner aims to achieve satisfactory level of profit or maximize profit by keeping costs as low as possible. And, this means lowering labor costs which are often a major part of total business costs. While workers aim to receive high payment for working as short working hours as possible. There is a clear scope for workplace conflict. It is always difficult to achieve balance between lowering costs and maintaining a stable, motivated and productive workforce offered adequate remuneration package and working conditions.

To a certain extent, conflict resulting from different objectives is inevitable between labor and management within business. However, the fight between profit and wages is not the only source of possible clash of interests in a business organization.

How can positive cooperation be achieved between these two groups for the benefit of the entire firm?

Workplace conflicts can also arise at different levels in the organizational hierarchy, ranging from interpersonal conflict between workers (subordinates) and managers (supervisors). As well as, between the company headquarters and regional offices of a company in different locations.

How can these be resolved to completely prevent all forms of coordination and working together?

Other causes of conflict in a business may be come from misunderstands, different priorities or office politics.

Types of workplace conflict

There are two main types of workplace conflict:

Substantive conflict. Substantive conflict can be dealt with by addressing the specific problem that is the subject of the conflict. Causes include: needs and wants, objectives, power and control, redundancy, change, etc.
Personality conflict. Personality-based conflict can be more difficult to settle, unless the individuals can be separated and/or a mediator appointed. Causes include: perception, values, opinions, beliefs and attitudes, emotional differences, power abuse, etc.

Consequences of conflict in the workplace

Workplace conflict can become a problem, if not managed properly because it will:

Hinder productivity as there is less focus on completing the task at hand on time and to the highest quality.
Lower motivation as the level of staff morale is reduced due to added stress and anxieties.
Cause inappropriate conduct among employees such as unethical behaviors or illegal actions.
Cause problems with human resource management such as hindering opportunities for working in collaborative teams.
Fuel the internal politics which are incompatible differences within a business organization.

Is conflict always a bad thing?

Some business managers and business consultants because that conflict is not only not a negative thing, but it is often necessary because it can help to:

Raise, analyze and address the real problems that are bothering people.
Make people recognize, understand and benefit from their personal differences.
Have a better appreciation for needs and wants of others to actually foster better working relationships in the future.
Help in making necessary changes within the work environment to avoid any similar conflicts in the future.

In short, conflict itself is not a problem, though. It is the reason why workplace conflict arises and how it is mismanaged that it become a serious problem. Any conflict that is unresolved quickly may escalate and slow down an organization’s progress with people wasting time on worrying more about conflict than their tasks.