CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

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Conflict at Work Throughout
the History of Organizations
DaviD Jaffee
university of north florida
This chapter provides a metatheoretical analysis of the sources of
conflict in organizations, and the role of conflict in organization theory,
throughout the past century and a half. The history of organizational conflict
will be conceptualized as a history of tension and change in both organizations
and the theoretical literature. Tension is created by the human
capacity to resist structural constraints and to strive for a more congenial
organizational environment. Change is generated by the dialectical
interplay between these organizational structures and human reactions.
This interchange has produced continuous changes within organizations
and has driven the evolution of organizational theories and managerial
strategies. There is no final resolution to the organizational tensions and
conflicts. They are permanent features of all organizational systems populated
by the human factor. The evolution of management strategy and
organization theory can be chronicled as a history of trial and error in
developing methods and techniques for managing and conceptualizing
these tensions.
The first section of this chapter develops the outlines of a theoretical
approach explaining organizational conflict and a metatheoretical framework
for understanding the evolution of organization and management theory.
This sets the stage for the subsequent sections of the chapter that apply
the framework to the historical sweep of theoretical developments in the
study of organizations. The starting point for this analysis of organizational
conflict is the rise of the factory system and the early effort of industrial owners
to recruit, control, and extract human labor power. The second critical
phase involves the development of scientific management as a formal systematic
method for managing organizational conflict and controlling factory
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