Workplace Conflict Resolution

This revised and updated edition of Rahim's classic work on managing conflict in organizations presents new evidence that suggests, contrary to generally accepted views, that organizational conflict need not be minimized or avoided in all cases. Some conflicts are functional and others are dysfunctional. Substantive or task-related conflict is functional for nonroutine tasks, but affective conflicts are dysfunctional irrespective of the task conditions. Classifying conflicts as intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, or intergroup, Rahim explains how to diagnose conflict, how to intervene effectively, and how to handle all the different types of conflict that typically arise in organizations.

This edited collection examines organizational conflict and how it is handled in seven different countries (and cultures) around the globe: France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Turkey. Experts on each country discuss how various social, cultural, and economic forces affect conflict management; how managerial styles differ with regard to organizational and interpersonal conflict management; alternative dispute mechanisms available in each country for the resolution of conflict; and how general managerial effectiveness can be improved with respect to organizational conflict.

With the explosion of workplace litigation and the skyrocketing costs associated with it, employers in both the private and public sectors are seeking new ways to swiftly and inexpensively resolve disputes with their employees. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedures offer ways to do this and, according to recent reports, more than 100 major corporations have made use of them. Not only are the costs of trying a workplace dispute before a jury avoided, but also due process requirements have been observed. McDermott and Berkeley introduce executives to ADR, how it's done, and its benefits. This book will be interesting and important reading for executives and for legal counsel that may be unfamiliar with ADR.

The twelve essays collected here offer a wide-ranging look at the latest theory and research in conflict management. Organized around six broad topical areas, the volume explores organizational conflict, communication and conflict, negotiation and bargaining, mediation and arbitration, conflict in the public sector, and international conflict. Interdisciplinary in scope, the essays are designed to help human resource professionals, industrial psychologists and managers learn to manage conflict by identifying ways to maximize its positive effects while minimizing its negative and potentially disruptive influences.

An ability to feel comfortable with ambiguity, with constant and increasingly demanding change, with a new, unique commitment to teams and teamwork, and with a willingness to stay customer-oriented: Sims sees these as the prime requisites for success in management today. Marshalling evidence from academic research and practical experience, Sims shows how researchers continue to redefine the roles and responsbilities of executives and their reports. His book provides not only the reasons why the new organization is what it is, but how to cope with it and succeed in it. A must-read for supervisors, managers, executives, and recent graduates who are ready to take their own places in the new world of business.

Organizations can be viewed as living entities and their leaders as parents, stewards, even physicians. From "living systems theory", as it is known, Tracy provides ways to help manage and guide the organization through its growth and development, and assist in attaining the organization's goals. In doing so, Tracy covers all of the essential topics in management theory and practice - motivation, power, efficiency, effectiveness, communication, control, conflict, stress, leadership, change - but in the clarifying light of this new, dynamic theoretical approach. Organizations are alive or they should be, says Tracy, and thus they derive many of their most important characteristics from the genetic makeup of their members. In fact, they display the same essential human processes and structures. To lay the foundation for understanding the living organization, Tracy first explains what these processes and structures are. From there, he goes on to tackle the overarching question: How should a living organization,be managed? When asked as a practical, results-seeking question, it produces answers that echo much of the "natural wisdom" that has been acquired about conventional management methods - flaws that can be diagnosed as ills and corrected, cured. Tracy's book is not only a "treatise" (out of necessity) and perhaps even a polemic; it is also a manual on the "care and feeding of living organizations". The result is a readable, challenging, ultimately useful resource for management in all capacities in private and public sector organizations.