Introduction

  Conflict is inevitable in a workforce comprising of diverse individuals working with processes and procedures under given timelines to produce collective outputs or to reach common goals. No matter how big or small the issue may be, as a manager, you need to respond to conflict and apply skills to resolve or mitigate them so that business can achieve its objectives and the team can work together in making it happen. Conflict can be defined in a number of ways:

• The opposition of persons or forces that give rise to tension
• Behaviour intended to obstruct the achievement of some other person’s goals
• A competition situation
• “An opposition in the activities of the interdependent parties such that the probability of goal attainment for one decreases as the probability for the other increases.” (Morton Deutsch (1962)
• “Conflict is a process in which an effort is purposely made by A to offset the efforts of B by some form of blocking that will result in frustrating B in attaining his or her goals or furthering his or her interests.” (Robbins (1989)