Constructive Conflict – Why is it good for a Business Organization?

“Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. “ – Martin Luther King Jr

Conflicts are inherent in any business. They arise in someway or the other in the workplace, as such, there is no escpae from conflict. However, the need is not just to consider as to how the conflicts may be eradicated, but for managing conflicts successfully – considering or differentiating whether they are constructive or destructive to a business entity.

Thus, understanding the very nature of a conflict, paying due attention on constructive conflicts and managing and resolving them in a positive way is one of the important skills of a business manager.

Constructive conflict refers to conflict in which the benefits exceed the costs; it generates productive, mutually beneficial, shared decisions. In constructive conflicts, the process becomes as important as the end result.

Being relatively important in a business organization constructive conflicts may lead to bring better results. It is nothing more than the ability of a business manager to apprehend properly the nature of conflicts so as to take necessary actions accordingly. Without discouraging, constructive conflicts are supposed to be promoted in a business organization, while ensuring the consequences are not damaging and creating strong disagreements among the team members.

Constructive conflicts are important to bring better change and development. The need is to identify the relating factors involving in such conflicts. As an illustration, Mr. X is a marketing executive, on the basis of his analysis and being in anticipation of sales increase and greater profits, he suggests advertising campaign that leads to spend a good deal of money. In case, the proposal is not considered by Finance department as worth, because it incurs huge expenses, this could lead a conflict between Marketing department and Finance department. In fact, it’s a constructive conflict, because both department heads are right at their places. It may be regarded as having a good fight, because both parties are considering better prospects of a business.

Similarly, while processing the payroll of the employees, it is essential to ensure whether the salaries and the allowances are being computed accurately or not. A little negligence of an accountant can create a big problem that in turn increases the expenses of particular month. Since the increase in expenses decrease the current cash position of a business entity, it affects the working capital as well. It is therefore important to develop some check points so as to ensure that accurate computations have been made in terms of salaries and allowances of the employees through payroll processing. Considering this a senior accountant may suggest developing some controls, such as, displaying previous month’s salaries on the payroll register to make comparisons. In case this suggestion is ignored by a junior accountant, it might give rise to create a conflict which is nothing but a constructive conflict that finally brings better results to organization.

In such events, a manager must consider that the suggestions are based on the facts and genuine reasons and that they are beneficial to organization. Therefore, it is good to promote the constructive conflicts while resolving them effectively.

Constructive conflict, as the term itself implies, can work in the most constructive terms helping a business entity to develop in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. It may also lead to better performance of the employees, as the employees develop healthy competition among them. In this way, it is necessary for department or division heads to promote such constructive conflicts, so that they may bring better change and development in a business organization allowing the team members to perform better than before.

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Written by:
K. A. Fareed (Fareed Siddiqui)
Writer, Trainer, Author, Blogger, Software Developer
BBA, MBA-Finance, MPhil-Financial Management, (MSc-Software Engineering)
(PhD-Management)
MA-English, MPhil-English
Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and Programming
Certificate course in English language proficiency
Level 1 – Leadership and Management ILM – UK
Pursuing CMA-USA
Individual Member of Institute of Management Consultants of India