1.0 Introduction
Conflict is a state of serious disagreement and argument about something perceived to be important by at least one of the parties involved (Schramm-Nielsen, 2002). Conflict is wide spread in human societies and runs through the whole organization both profit and non-profit making organization. It arises among members in an organization and even within the personality of an individual. Thus, conflict is one of the most difficult challenges a manager faces.
Conflict is different from competition and co-operation because in competitive situations, the two or more individuals or parties have mutually inconsistent goals, as either party tries to reach it goals it undermine the attempt of the others to reach others. Therefore, competitive situations will, by their nature, caused conflict. Conflict can also occur in cooperative situations, in which two or more individuals or parties have consistent goals because the manner in which one party tries to reach its goal may undermine the other individual or party.
The Nigerian-Cameroon boundary dispute where each party tries to gain the peninsular is an example of economic conflict. Another example is workers’ union and management conflict. Conflicts can also be caused by value when incompability in ways of life, ideologies – the preferences, principles and practices that people believe in. This was the case in the cold war which has a strong value component, wherein each side asserts the rightness and superiority of its way of life and its political economic system.
Miscommunication and misunderstanding can create conflict even when there are no basic incompabilities. In addition, parties may have different perceptions as to what the facts are in a situation and until they share information and clarify their perceptions, resolution is impossible. Self-conteredness, secretive perception, emotional, prejudices are all forces that lead one to perceived situations very differently from the other party. Lack of skill in communicating what we really in a clear and respective fashion often result in confusion, hurt and anger, all of which simply feed the conflict process by making it more complex.
Conflict have a definite tendency to escalate that is, to be come more intense and hostile and to develop more issues on what the parties say the conflict is about. Escalating conflicts becomes more difficult to manage. The process of escalation feed on fear and defensiveness. Threat leads to counter threat and the self-fulfilling prophecy comes into play:
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research questions, Limitation of the study and Definition of technical terms.
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REFERENCES
Schramm-Nielsen, J. (2002) “Conflict Management in Scandinavia” Department of Intemational Communication and Management, Copenhangan Business School, Denmark.
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