Dialog across difference #24: We're working on it: Conflict on the job? It's cultural

Like the three generally accepted methods of approaching conflict management in the literature--positional, accommodating, and principled--research into organizational conflict management tends to show that workplaces usually feature one of these approaches as part of their organizational culture (Munduate, Medina & Euwema, 2022).

This can be a challenge to anyone versed in principled negotiation who joins that organization, as employee, manager, or even conflict consultant (mediator).

Openly discussing whatever conflict culture exists in any organization is a first step toward gently steering it away from a "traditional" hierarchy of domination and toward transformative participation. When someone outranks another and therefore assumes the sole right to voice opinion and make decisions, poor outcomes can be expected in most cases. Even many militaries seem to be learning that. 

When I was a little hockey player boy in Minnesota decades ago, my Dad, who skated for the University of Minnesota, was our coach. Amongst other aphorisms, he would tell us when we were losing, "Number one thing to do when we are losing: change something." 

And that is frequently why a malfunctioning organization will bring in a conflict consultant to facilitate, mediate, and introduce initiatives that begin to address an organizational conflict culture with problems. If the owner or boss had all the answers and tended to impart an organizational conflict culture based the search for productive collaboration, no consultant would be particularly necessary.

An organizational structure may be an artifact of decades of tradition and may have served the organization well when all other competing organizations also practiced the norm of domination and hidebound hierarchy. But two factors can change that. 

One, a younger generation of leadership seeks to adapt and evolve. 

Two, the organization is being outcompeted by others who have learned participatory, engaged problem-solving conflict culture. 

"Because we always have" is no longer much of a reason for certain organizational conflict practices. Stepping up the conflict culture can raise morale, elicit better thinking, and generate a successful edge. 

References

Munduate, L., Medina, F. J., & Euwema, M. C. (2022). Mediation: Understanding a Constructive Conflict Management Tool in the Workplace. Revista de Psicologia Del Trabajo y de Las Organizaciones, 38(3), 165–173. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.5093/jwop2022a20