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Conflict

Conflict is actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests. A conflict can be internal (within oneself) to individuals. Conflict as a concept can help explain many aspects of social life such as social disagreement, conflicts of interests, and fights between individuals, groups, or organizations. In political terms, "conflict" can refer to wars, revolutions or other struggles, which may involve the use of force as in the term armed conflict. Without proper social arrangement or resolution, conflicts in social settings can result in stress or tensions among stakeholders. When an interpersonal conflict does occur, its effect is often broader than two individuals involved, and can affect many associate individuals and relationships, in more or less adverse, and sometimes even way.

Conflict as taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution (which can be win-win, where both parties get what they want, win-lose where one party gets what they want, or lose-lose where both parties don't get what they want) commonly has the definition: "when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other's goal-seeking capability".

A clash of interests, values, actions or directions often sparks a conflict. Conflicts refer to the existence of that clash. Psychologically, a conflict exists when the reduction of one motivating stimulus involves an increase in another, so that a new adjustment is demanded. The word is applicable from the instant that the clash occurs. Even when we say that there is a potential conflict we are implying that there is already a conflict of direction even though a clash may not yet have occurred.

Contents

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Phases of conflict

Prelude to Conflict: Variables that make conflict possible between those involved
Triggering Event: A particular event, such as criticism which creates the conflict
Initiation Phase: Occurs when at least one person makes it known to the other that a conflict exists
Differentiation Phase: Parties raise the conflict issues and pursue reasons for the varying positions
Integration stage / Resolution: Parties acknowledge common grounds and explore possibilities to move towards a solution

Types of conflict

The lists in this article may contain items that are not notable, encyclopedic, or helpful. Please help out by removing such elements and incorporating appropriate items into the main body of the article. (October 2009)

A conceptual conflict can escalate into a verbal exchange and/or result in fighting. Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:

community conflict
diplomatic conflict
economic conflict
emotional conflict
environmental resources conflict
external conflict
group conflict
ideological conflict
international conflict
interpersonal conflict
intersocietal conflict
intellectual conflict
intrastate conflict (for example: civil wars, election campaigns)
intrapersonal conflict (though this usually just gets delegated out to psychology)
organizational conflict
intra-societal conflict
military conflict
religious-based conflict (for example: Center For Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict).
workplace conflict
data conflict
relationship conflict
racial conflict

Conflicts in these levels may appear "nested" in conflicts residing at larger levels of analysis. For example, conflict within a work team may play out the dynamics of a broader conflict in the organization as a whole. (See Marie Dugan's article on Nested Conflict. John Paul Lederach has also written on this.) Theorists have claimed that parties can conceptualize responses to conflict according to a two-dimensional scheme; concern for one's own outcomes and concern for the outcomes of the other party. This scheme leads to the following hypotheses:

High concern for both one's own and the other party's outcomes leads to attempts to find mutually beneficial solutions.
High concern for one's own outcomes only leads to attempts to "win" the conflict.
High concern for the other party's outcomes only leads to allowing the other to "win" the conflict.
No concern for either side's outcomes leads to attempts to avoid the conflict.

Often a group finds itself in conflict over facts, goals, methods or values. It is critical that it properly identify the type of conflict it is experiencing if it hopes to manage the conflict through to resolution. For example, a group will often treat an assumption as a fact.

The more difficult type of conflict is when values are the root cause. It is more likely that a conflict over facts, or assumptions, will be

personality conflict
value differences
goal differences
methodological differences
substandard performance
lack of cooperation
differences regarding authority
differences regarding responsibility
competition over resources
non-compliance with rules (LO)

A definition of a conflict can be the subject of legal action has three invariants^[1] :

legal
technical
emotional

Ways of addressing conflict

Five basic ways of addressing conflict were identified by Thomas and Kilmann in 1976:^[2][3]

Accommodation – surrender one's own needs and wishes to accommodate the other party.
Avoidance – avoid or postpone conflict by ignoring it, changing the subject, etc. Avoidance can be useful as a temporary measure to buy time or as an expedient means of dealing with very minor, non-recurring conflicts. In more severe cases, conflict avoidance can involve severing a relationship or leaving a group.^[4]
Collaboration – work together to find a mutually beneficial solution. While the Thomas Kilman grid views collaboration as the only win-win solution to conflict, collaboration can also be time-intensive and inappropriate when there is not enough trust, respect or communication among participants for collaboration to occur.
Compromise – bring the problem into the open and have the third person present. The aim of conflict resolution is to reach agreement and most often this will mean compromise.^[5]
Competition – assert one's viewpoint at the potential expense of another. It can be useful when achieving one's objectives outweighs one's concern for the relationship.^[6]

The Thomas Kilmann Instrument can be used to assess one's dominant style for addressing conflict.^[7]

[edit] Ongoing conflicts

Main article: Ongoing conflicts

Many NGOs and independent groups attempt to monitor the situation of ongoing conflicts. Unfortunately, the definitions of war, conflict, armed struggle, revolution and all these words which describe violent opposition between States or armed organised groups, are not precise enough to distinguish one from another. For example, the word terrorism is used indifferently by many governments to delegitimate every kind of armed revolt and, at the same time, by many rebel groups to delegitimate the armed repression of sovereign.

See also