Types of Conflict in Work Groups Essay Example

Conflict is a inevitable common occurrence that happens within many organizations today. Conflict can be negative and detrimental towards work groups within organizations, however it can also be positive and beneficial. Two types of conflict that occurs within work groups are functional and dysfunctional. One functional conflict is task conflict, which results from disagreements about achieving a goal or how a task should be performed. One dysfunctional conflict is relationship conflict, results from interpersonal conflicts that produce personal disputes and animosity among the work groups.

Functional conflict is healthy, constructive and positive disagreements which overall increases the groups performance. Task conflict is beneficial to workgroups since it leads to healthier decision making and problem solving. For instance a work group may constructively disagree over how to distribute work amongst each other, rather than bicker the group may creatively find a new more efficient way to allocate work. Since the work group constructively disagreed their able to use the positive disagreement to find a better way to complete their task. 

Dysfunctional conflict is the opposite of functional conflict. Dysfunctional conflict is the unhealthy and negative disagreements that lead to inefficient group performance. Relationship conflict reduces work groups efficiency to produce better decision making and problem solving. For example, when a work group throws a party and individuals within the group have animosity towards other members in the group. The work group will not be able to successfully throw their party due to individuals focusing on personal relations instead of focusing on the task at hand. 

Conflict can be increase and decreased within work groups by a variety of styles. There are five styles to managing conflict, dominating, compromising, accommodating, collaborating and avoiding. Functional conflict can be increased by compromising and collaborating. Compromising allows work groups to meet halfway on completing a goal, for example two project managers may disagree on a creative vision and have to adapt their vision to meet a similar one. Collaborating lets work group come together and combine idea to me a greater goal. To decrease dysfunctional conflict, groups may choose a dominating style which only allows a certain way they task should be complete limiting the animosty within a group. Another way to decrease dysfunctional conflict is by accommodating, it maintains harmony and display a high degree of cooperativeness. Lastly dysfunctional conflict can be lowered with the uses of avoiding style, avoiding style separates work groups members who are interpersonal incompatible.