How managemnet team cam have agood fight - Essay Example

From this perspective it was argued that from these disagreements comes a better range of opinions which as necessary to effectively operate in todays business environment. However, this conflict often becomes unproductive and it is the task of managers to keep the healthy disagreements from evolving into dysfunctional conflict. The paper highlighted that in the past, a case study was conducted on top management teams in technology based companies. Conflict was not really observed in four of the twelve companies and of the remaining companies four had effectively managed to avoid interpersonal conflict and the other four had been unsuccessful in this endeavour.

The authors of the study had identified that the successful companies (That we able to separate substantive issues from interpersonal issues) had exemplified six tactics which were that they worked with more information and debated on the basis of facts, they developed multiple alternatives, they shared commonly agreed upon goals, they maintained a balanced power structure, and they were able to resolve issues without having to force consensus. As such the focus of the paper was based on delineating the strengths of these aforementioned characteristics.

In regards to basing discussion on current, factual information, it is a common belief that generating more information and working with too much data is likely to increase the likelihood of conflict by providing more issues for debate. However the opposite generally held true insofar as having good data encourages people to focus on issues and not personalities. Several examples were given to highlight how this tactic held true but for a contrary argument it was postulated by the authors that in scenarios where there is a absence of quality information people tend to argue over issues of opinion (Which is a foundation to interpersonal conflict).

By avoiding scenarios where management is forced