Managing Conflict in Organizations

By M. Afzalur Rahim. 2017

811 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This revised and updated edition of Rahim's classic work on managing conflict in organizations presents new evidence that suggests, contrary to generally accepted views, that organizational conflict need not be minimized or avoided in all cases. Some conflicts are functional and others are dysfunctional. Substantive or task-related conflict is functional for nonroutine tasks, but affective conflicts are dysfunctional irrespective of the task conditions. Classifying conflicts as intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, or intergroup, Rahim explains how to diagnose conflict, how to intervene effectively, and how to handle all the different types of conflict that typically arise in organizations. Rahim's systematic approach to conflict management identifies five styles of handling conflict (integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding, and compromising). These styles may be used in the course of an intervention, a technique that enables managers to minimize affective conflict while attaining and maintaining a moderate amount of substantive conflict at the individual, group, and intergroup levels. Rahim's book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in management, organizational psychology, human resources management, and communication.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ea0ca3f79c3106554d0cb785bb177c693ec1605a

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Conflict Between International Graduate Students and Faculty Supervisors: Toward Effective Conflict Prevention and Management Strategies (2007, neutral): “Many scholars argue that conflict itself is not inherently good or bad (Filley, 1975; Rahim, 1992; Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim, 1994).”
Conflict and Performance in Global Virtual Teams (2006, background): “For traditional teams, the integrative approach appears to be most suitable for resolving strategic problems, whereas the distributive approach appears to be least suitable [58].”
Language-Based Communication Zones in International Business Communication (2001, neutral): “…and cultures (e.g., Gannon & Associates, 1994; Hsu, 1981), while conflict resolution and negotiation studies have integrated intercultural considerations into their theories (e.g., Leung, 1988; Rahim, 1983, 1986; Rahim & Bonoma, 1979; Ting-Toomey, 1985, 1988; Trubisky, Ting-Toomey, & Lin, 1991).”
Structural and Individual Determinants of Workplace Victimization: The Effects of Hierarchical Status and Conflict Management Style (2000, background): “…of its construct and predictive validity are provided by the instrument’s ability to discriminate between groups known to differ in their conflict styles, its meaningful relation to other constructs, and its association with measures of organizational effectiveness and climate (Rahim, 1983, 1986).”
A meta-analytical review of the relationship between emotional intelligence and leaders’ constructive conflict management (2013, neutral): “…smoothing, compromising, confrontational, problem-solving oriented, or productive reactions to conflict) (Amason, 1996; Ayoko et al., 2008; Jordan & Troth, 2002a, 2004; Rahim, 1983, 2011; Rahim & Bonoma, 1979; Rahim, Psenicka, Polychroniou, Zhao, & Chan, 2002; Van de Vliert & Kabanoff, 1990).”
Getting It Together: Temporal Coordination and Conflict Management in Global Virtual Teams (2001, background): “intensive effort characterized by complex group dynamics and the potential for conflict (Putnam, 1986; Rahim, 1992; Steiner, 1972).”
Performance measurement systems as generators of cognitive conflict in ambidextrous firms (2019, background): “The literature on organisational conflict recognises that there are different forms of conflict at the TMT level (Amason, 1996; Amason & Schweiger, 1994; De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; Jehn, 1995; Rahim, 2015).”