CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

74 JAFFEE
As human action renders the strategy problematic, produces unintended
consequences, or provokes challenges and resistance, new organization
theories are developed and applied. The new theories and practices meet
with the same fate as their predecessors.
Though conflict is often viewed as a dysfunctional aspect of organizations,
particularly by those interested in preserving the status quo and
maintaining predictable control, it is, in fact, as Marx might have said,
the “motor of history.” In this case, the engine of change compels organizational
owners and managers continually to develop alternative techniques
that acknowledge the human factor and that may advance positive
and progressive change.
The tension, conflict, and change framework advanced in this chapter
is based on the fundamental sociological tenet that situates human
behaviors within a social-structural context. While the unique capacity
of humans provides the raw material for organizational social dynamics,
it is when individuals are embedded in organizational structures—that
constrain, control, and differentiate—that the likelihood of tension and
conflict increase; that is, we would expect to find various forms of organizational
conflict regardless of the particular individual, psychological,
or personality characteristics of the population. The big question for the
field of organizational conflict is the extent to which conflict stems from
the individual traits transported into the organization by organizational
members, or whether it is based on behaviors that emerge out of the organization’s
social structure. Ideally, both levels of analysis must be incorporated
into conceptual models and empirical investigations.
referenCes
Aldrich, H. (1979). Organizations and environment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Argyris, C. (1964). Integrating the individual and the organization. New York: Wiley.
Bacharach, P., & Lawler, E. L. (1980). Power and politics in organizations. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Barzelay, M. (1992). Breaking through bureaucracy. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Bazerman, M. H., & Neale, M. A. (1992). Negotiating rationally. New York: Free Press.
Bendix, R. (1956). Work and authority in industry: Ideologies of management in the
course of industrialization. New York: Wiley.
Blau, P. (1955). The dynamics of bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boswell, T. (1987). Accumulation innovations in the American economy: The
affinity for Japanese solutions to the current crisis. In T. Boswell & A. Bergeson
(Eds.), America’s changing role in the world system (pp. 95–126). New York:
Praeger.
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1990). Contest exchange: New microfoundations for the
political economy of capitalism. Politics and Society, 18, 165–222.