CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

17. CONFLICTS IN THE STUDY OF CONFLICT IN ORGANIZATIONS 447
not escalated as much as been ignored and avoided. I also offer my own
position on these conflicts not as the final word but as a means to stimulate
opposing views and help us engage in full, constructive controversy.
DefininG ConfliCt: We have to
The most critical conflict is the definition of conflict. But conflict researchers
generally and those who contributed to this volume in particular were
not very concerned about defining conflict, perhaps because they assumed
that there already is an accepted consensus. The Raver and Barling chapter
distinguished conflict from a host of related “dark side of workplace”
concepts, but they did not discuss alternative ways of defining conflict.
Paul Spector and Valentina Bruk-Lee, in their chapter on health and wellbeing,
were the exceptions in that they argued that the failure to reach a
consensus on conflict is a major obstacle to our progress.
But our common definitions are misleading and have significantly disrupted
our understanding. Although, as the Schulz-Hardt, Mojzish, and
Vogelgesang chapter documented, researchers recently shed light on the
positive face of conflict, common definitions have interfered with understanding
the various ways that conflict can contribute to individual development
and organizational performance.
Traditionally, conflict is defined in terms of opposing interests involving
scarce resources and goal divergence and frustration (e.g., Pondy,
1967). This tradition has continued with little discussion.
Carsten De Dreu and Michele Gelfand, in their excellent introductory
chapter, defined conflict as a “process that begins when an individual or
group perceives differences and opposition between oneself and another
individual or group about interests and resources, beliefs, values, or practices
that matter to them” and cite Pondy (1967) as a source. This definition
is an improvement over the traditional definition, but it is so general
that it does not directly challenge the traditional definition of conflict as
opposing interests.
In addition to obscuring the reality that people with completely compatible
goals not only can but often do have conflict, conflict as opposing interests
is confounded with competition defined as incompatible goals. This
confounding makes it unclear whether effects theorized or found are due to
conflict or to competition. We need definitions that clearly and explicitly do
not assume that conflicts involve competitive, negatively related goals.
The traditional definition of opposing interests, which assumes conflict is
competitive, frustrates effective operations as conflict is confused with win–
lose ways to manage it. Indeed, studies that ask people to complete questionnaires
that use the term conflict by itself typically indicate that conflicts of
various kinds are negatively related to outcomes (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003).
Spector and Bruk-Lee cited a number of studies using the interpersonal conflict
at work scale, where one of the four items is “people do nasty things to