Interpersonal conflict

Management

Interpersonal conflict:

Interpersonal conflict is the conflict that results due to difference in choices and ideas of two different persons. Each individual has its own choice of action and acceptance of alternatives for a given situation and event. It is very common to see interpersonal conflict in an organisation. Sometimes it is obvious to face interpersonal conflict like conflict between people involved in quality and production. Both have to do their work, its duty of quality controller to find fault in work of production.

Reasons of interpersonal conflict:

The important factors that can contribute in arising conflict between two or more people are as following.

Information: Conflict occurs in two person can be due to the different set of information they have about the same thing. People disagree with each other as they have limited knowledge and have different sources of the information. It can create disharmony in their relationship.

Different perception: People can have different opinion or image about the same object stimulus. People will handle a common situation with their own set of perception and what they think is right or wrong.  Same information can create different pictures or thinking about the stimulus to the different individuals. Due to different experience with the stimulus they can have different understanding about it and conflict can be caused.

Value system: Difference in value system of two individual can cause conflict between them. It can create misunderstanding between them if they belong to different social system and having different values. For example, for a manager it can be acceptable to use low grade raw material to lower the cost of product but for production people it may be not ethical.

Scarcity of resources: Sometime insufficiency can cause conflict between the people in an organisation. For example a single printer available for three or more people in an office can create problem between them.

Difference in status: Every person in an organisation has a unique status or occupies a different position. This can result into differences between them related to their roles and responsibilities. It can also break communication between them. For example supervisor may not listen to the opinions of subordinate about some improvement in process due to his lower position.

Multiple roles:  Sometimes people may have multiple roles to fulfill in an organisation. So when the expectations from them are not met it can result into the conflict. Sometimes activities itself may have conflicting.