Organizational Conflict Literature Review

2.7.1 Modern view of organizational conflict

Robbins (1974) presented three philosophies of organizational conflict:

• The first philosophy of conflict as interpreted in the classification, is based on the assumption that conflict is detrimental to an organization and, as such, must be reduced or eliminated.

• The first classification is followed by the behaviour philosophy, which can interpreted as the recognition that conflict is inevitable in organizations. The behaviour can be a great deal for emergence of conflict and even occasions can intrigue the enhancement of conflict for increasing organizational effectiveness. There has been no conditions created that generate conflict in organizations.

• The last classification of conflict which differs significantly from the previous two as described in the interactions is characterized by the following:

For example, an employee may wrongly attribute to his or her supervisor a cut in the employee’s department budget, which may have been done by higher-level managers over the protest of the supervisor.

Displaced Conflict

This type of conflict occurs when the conflicting parties either direct their frustrations or hostilities to social entities who are not involved in conflict or argue over secondary, not major, issues (Deutsch, 1977).

2.8 Summary of literature review

This chapter reviewed the literature relevant to this research study. The causes of organizational conflict were discussed and possible techniques available in managing organizational conflict. The literature also gave an insight into possible impact organizational conflict has on organizational performance. All the important points from the literature are summarized in different subsections and utilised as inputs into compiling survey questionnaire attached as appendix A in order to reach all objectives of this