Assignment name

1.

Assignment
Name
University name
Subject
Professor name
Dec xx, 2023

2.

Agenda
Introduction
Definition
Different types of conflicts
Different dimensions of conflict
Conflict management styles
Conflict in virtual teams
Innovation in conflict resolution
Relationship between relationship conflict, leadership behavior and organization learning
Learnings from presentation
Manager using this information
Conclusion

3.

Introduction
Conflict is one of the elements that occur in team work, and it can be either stimulate group
efficiency or reduce productivity.
The disagreement occurs among the team members concerning goals, values, resources, roles
and responsibilities for the effective completion of the project.
Different types of conflicts can also crop up in teams e.g. interpersonal conflicts, process
disputes resulting from dissent over adopted methods for identifying problems and making
decisions.
Emotional, behavioral and attitudinal expressions resulting from personal values systems or
cultural backgrounds comprise conflicts.
This presentation explores the various definitions of the team conflict from different
perspectives, analyzing at least five management styles for active conflict resolution, taking
into consideration virtual organizational development, including particulars of timeframes
and virtual space facilitation logistics.

4.

Definition
Conflict within teams refers to difference or quarrels between teams’ members for
goals, values, resources, roles, responsibilities or other things that are important for the
common task.
Conflicts occur as a result of varying views, prejudices or misperception among the
parties involved.
Team conflicts are part and parcel of group works and they cannot be avoided at all cost
as it may damage the whole team’s productivity.
Conflicts have both positive and negative effects depending on the approach adopted.
Therefore, team leaders should beware that conflicts may be either constructive or
destructive.

5.

Different types of conflicts
Conflict is manifest in various forms within a team setting.
Conflict may be for instance the interpersonal conflict of task-related type.
This happens where there is lack of agreement on some particular aspect of a given project or work.
In such case, one can propose for instance of any method while another suggests other approach.
Relationship-based conflict is also another common conflict in team management.
They occur as a result of personal clashes among members and are more emotional than task-conflicts.
A third type of team management conflicts involves process disputes that result from disagreement over
rules and procedure of problem solving and decisions making in teams.
Conflicts may arise between departments at an organizational level where they compete for resources
(budgets) within each department creating inter-departmental rivalry issues among different work teams.
Value-based conflicts arise due to members holding divergent sets of values and beliefs, which result into
vigorous discussion, thus creating further controversies and tensions in teamwork processes.

6.

Different dimensions of conflict
Many perspectives can be used to explore the nature of conflicts.
While the mental dimension entails thoughts, objectives and tasks, the part emotional is
excluded from the process. Interpersonal conflicts occur in a team.
Emotional dimension of conflict is characterized by personal values, emotions arising
from earlier experiences, or negative perceptions.
The third important component involved in team conflicts is the behavioral dimension.
Inefficient communication styles like aggression, defensiveness, or avoidance could
make any event go astray.
The structural dimensions of conflict refer to team members’ disagreements about their
assigned roles within teams, commonly called role ambiguity.
It would also help in understanding such structural dimensions if one were to consider how
each member defines his role or participation in a project or group.

7.

Conflict management styles
There are five main conflict management styles:
Fighting,
Agreeing,
Sacrificing,
Ignoring, And
Giving in.

8.

Cont..
Competing implies taking care of yourself without regard of someone else’s needs or opinions.
This is a suitable style to be used in cases that involve making quick decisions and in emergency situations.
In collaborating, all parties discuss and actively listen to each other so that they can all get acceptable
solutions for their issues.
This method relies on trust and teamwork of the members.
Compromise means partially giving way on some of your goals in order to arrive at an agreeable decision
with all parties. However, it is efficient when both partners are equal in making decisions and cannot
entirely agree on their favored results.
Avoidance implies just leaving the problem unattended or postponing it to a time in future when you no
longer need have passionate arguments about it. Such an approach suits trivial cases and, probably, will
have no negative consequences in the future.
Accommodating means to sacrifice own interests for somebody else without destroying relation ship but
overuse of this strategy might make people angry with those who do it too often.

9.

Conflict in virtual teams
Studies have shown that even though conflict may develop in virtual team settings, it is not
necessarily similar to real-time interactions.
Among many reasons why most organizations face issues of communication is that team
members are separated by miles in addition to cultural divide.
For example there can be situations when misinterpretations would happen on the text based
systems like the emails and the other messaging platforms, where a misunderstanding will
result in conflicts if not managed well in time.
In addition, lack of non-verbal cues like tones or body language make disagreements even
worse as parties might not recognize emotions in one another.
While there is an ongoing debate on the importance of conflict management when it comes
to virtual team management, the virtual team management experts opine that regardless of
the type of project or group remote or otherwise conflict still needs to be well-managed in
order to ensure the success of the teamwork.

10.

Innovation in conflict resolution
Innovative conflict resolution requires effective team management. This makes a diverse-perspective team which
comprises of people from different background with different thinking styles.
It promotes a diversity of perspectives that would be looking at problems from several angles.
Mostly, it is important to note that innovation design can be relevant in both the commercial and social arenas as
well, because the fundamental reason behind most projects is the impact measures which serve necessary
supports towards making any socially minded project sustainable even at its inception stage.
Notwithstanding, some restrictions may arise due to varying views of different conflict parties, but institutional
arrangements like using Innovations Design thinking system are still intact.
Although bronze starts go forward with careful long-range defaults executed meticulously over the period of
time, the outcomes are permanent and proportional in their relation to the ongoing efforts undertaken particularly
while trying to avoid violent clashes.
Using innovative strategies opens up some opportunities, as the fighting parties have something in common
under their feet and nobody should be put more at risk than the other party.
Many times the typical results of a feeling of being pushed bottled up until the point they explode offer much
more insightful information than conventional ways that should be investigated because it changes the way we
think about team management.

11.

Relationship between relationship conflict,
leadership behavior and organization learning
Team task or relationship conflict, leadership behavior, and organizational learning are not only interrelated but also, they have major effects on the efficiency and the success of a company as a whole.
Team Task Conflict
Conflict in team task refers to a situation where different individuals in the team dispute the content and objectives of the work.
To some extent, modest amounts of task conflict may support organizational learning. Positive task conflict fosters thinking out-of-the-box, developing new concepts and better-informed decision making.
Relationship Conflict
This type of conflict is associated with interpersonal problems, tension and personal disagreements between team members.
Organizational learnings may be obstructed by high levels of relationship conflict. Communication may also reduce, trust may also be lost while they fight with one another over problems pertaining to them personally.
Leadership Behavior
Leadership behavior includes actions or interactions on part of a leader who guides and influences his or her work group.
It is vital to ensure that leadership participates actively in conflict management and creates a conducive environment for learning. In turn, effective leaders may foster open communication between parties while facilitating joint cooperation efforts that
tackle task-based and relational issues in a conducive manner.
Organization Learning
Learning in organizations refers to the steps that an organization goes through to acquire new knowledge and use it to enhance its performance or alter itself in response to a changing environment.
Leadership-induced resolved conflicts can be a learning process for the organization with a good result at last.
Conflicts may reveal what needs improving, where new ideas can be derived and a way for team building.
The key to successful conflict transformation into learning opportunities lies in leadership’s favoring of a learning culture and associated behavior.

12.

Learnings from presentation
Through our thorough research concerning conflicts in teams, we came to recognize that conflicts cannot be
avoided as they are normal.
These conflicts can either be positive or negative depending on their way of handling.
Team conflict may range from conflict over tasks, personal relationships, to processes and values. Also, there
exist many dimensions of conflict like mental, emotional, behavioral, as well as, structural dimensions.
Team identified a variety of conflict management techniques such as
Competing style with decisions made in a hurry;
Compromising where compromise offers some compromises and part of some goals;
Avoidance style where the team overlooks minor issues and compromises are not practiced too often, the team sacrifice
Moreover, we found out that despite the fact that virtual teams undergo similar conflicts as those between real time
interaction because of the absence of non verbal cues.
Besides this, by employing the innovative design thinking system could also solve organization learning
problems in spite of any institutional arrangements restriction.
Resolution strategies must involve management engaging in a supportive environment whereby the parties can
discuss each other’s points of view and cooperate on problem solving involving both the task and the
relationships involved.

13.

Manager using this information
Knowing the kinds of conflicts and its effect on the productivity of a team can help me
in preventing some conflicts or using it constructively.
This will enable me learn the different approaches of conflict management and apply
them in relevant circumstances.
Having knowledge on ways in which virtual teams differ in communication and conflict
management will equip me with better strategies to resolve such uniqueness.
Additionally, I will use revolutionary methods of conflict management such as
Innovation, Design thinking system that provides ways of considering conflicting
viewpoints in order to reach creative solutions.
My firm would grow fast, even at such times when there would be misunderstandings
among members, if effectively dealing with task-related or relationship matters and yet
developing a learning culture.

14.

Conclusion
In summary, there are unavoidable conflicts within team and their types differ.
Recognize that they exist.
Explore dimensions of conflict and how best to manage it, adopt different management
styles in light of virtual teamwork and innovativeness as ways towards resolving them.
Organizational learning about leadership behaviour is impacted by conflict within
teams, while interpersonal and task related conflicts highlight ways in which
organizations can evolve toward growth.
The information that was garnered via researching can be used as we prepare to become
the future managers.
In this regard, we note that as the future managers, we can help address some issues that
naturally come up in any working group relationships such as those related to
improving production rates through increased employees.

15.

References
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Pai, J., & Bendersky, C. (2020). Team status conflict. Current Opinion in
Psychology, 33, 38-41.
Rahim, M. A. (2023). Managing conflict in organizations. Taylor & Francis.
van Eldik, W. M., de Haan, A. D., Parry, L. Q., Davies, P. T., Luijk, M. P., Arends,
L. R., & Prinzie, P. (2020). The interparental relationship: Meta-analytic
associations with children’s maladjustment and responses to interparental
conflict. Psychological Bulletin, 146(7), 553.
Zimmermann, A., McQuinn, B., & Macdonald, D. W. (2020). Levels of conflict
over wildlife: Understanding and addressing the right problem. Conservation
Science and Practice, 2(10), e259.