TEAM DYNAMICS:Conflict Resolution Strategies - Essay Example

Conflicts is behavioral action that occurs whenever disagreement exists in a social situation over issues of substance or whenever emotional antagonisms create friction between individuals or groups (Schermerhorn & Hunt & Osborn, 2003, p.378). There are different types of conflict that can occur. Two types of conflicts are substantive disagreements and emotional conflict. Substantive disagreements involve a discrepancy in opinion over the ends or means that must be utilize to accomplish something (Geocites, 2009).

An emotional conflict is different because it involves friction and problems in interpersonal relationship that arise feelings of anger, mistrust, and fear among other types of emotions. In the business world conflicts have negative consequences such as lower productivity, lack of motivation, higher employee turnover, higher absenteeism, and increased stress in the workforce. Since these variables are detrimental to the success of a company managers must utilize conflict resolution strategies to deal with conflict whenever it arises.

Some conflict resolution strategies that can be utilized to solve conflicts are: Accommodation, avoidance, authoritative command, problem solving and compromise. Collaboration occurs when the parties talk about the problem and find common grounds in which they can agree on. This strategy can be an effective tool to solve issues that do not involve complex issues and that can be solved in short periods of time. If two employees working as team members of the same unit during a brainstorming session get emotional and argue over a topic.

The next discussing the argument to end the conflict would be an application of accommodation. Authoritative command is another conflict resolution strategy. This strategy involves an outside party with power over the people involved in the conflict stepping in and ruling in favor of one of the side. The judicial