1. Project Management
8. Managing Project Conflict

2. Week 8

3. Q
Why is learning about conflict management relevant?
A
To help develop and facilitate leadership, team building,
performance management, and conflict management skills in an IT
environment

4. Required reading:
Darling, J., & Walker, W. (2001).
Effective conflict management.
Leadership and Organization
Development Journal, 22 (5), 230-
242. Retrieved February 10, 2006
from:
http://faculty.business.utsa.edu/dwalz/Classes/
Recommended reading:
Cadle & Yeates,
2004, Ch 23.

5. Nature of Conflict
Responding to Conflict
Handling Grievances
Emotional Stress

6. Nature of Conflict
Responding to Conflict
4
Handling Grievances
Emotional Stress

7. Conflict
Conflict is a form of relating or
interacting where we find ourselves
(either as individuals or groups) under
some sort of perceived threat to our
personal or collective goals.
These goals are usually to do with our
interpersonal wants. These perceived
threats may be either real or imagined
(Condliffe, 1991, p3).

8. Sources of Conflict
(Bisno)
Project Sources of Conflict
(Thamhain & Wilemon)

9. Sources of Conflict
(Bisno)
Biosocial
Personality and interactional
Structural
Cultural and ideological
Convergence

10. Bisno’s Sources of Conflict
(Condliffe, 1991, p6)

11. Sources of Conflict
(Bisno)
Biosocial
Personality and interactional
Structural
Cultural and ideological
Convergence

12. Sources of Conflict
(Bisno)
Biosocial
Personality and interactional
Structural
Cultural and ideological
Convergence
Project Sources of Conflict
(Thamhain & Wilemon)
Project schedules
Project priorities
Workforce

13. (Nicholas, 2001, p519)

14. (Nicholas, 2001, p519)

15. Components of
Conflict

16. Components of Conflict
Values: ideas and feelings about right and wrong (difficult to resolve)

17. Components of Conflict
Interests: things that motivate eg. managers and workers have different
interests

18. Components of Conflict
Emotional: feelings that accompany human interactions eg. anger, fear,
reject, and loss

19. Components of Conflict
When you have to deal with conflict
tackle the emotional issues first
then address values and interests
Emotional: feelings that accompany human interactions eg. anger, fear, reject, and loss
Interests: things that motivate eg. managers and workers have different interests
Values: ideas and feelings about right and wrong (difficult to resolve)

20. Consequences of conflict

21. Good Consequences
of Conflict

22. increased creativity

23. It forces people to clarify their views

24. It can produce
constructive social change

25. It gives people the
opportunity to test
their capacities

26. development of group and
organization cohesion

27. Bad Consequences of
Conflict

28. Violence

29. breakdown of relationships

30. polarization of views into static positions

31. A breakdown of
collaborative ventures

32. destruction of
communication

33. Groupthink

34. Groupthink
Groupthink is a tendency for strong conformity pressures within
groups to lead to the breakdown of critical thinking and encourage
premature acceptance of questionable decisions

35. Lack of conflict is a sign of over conformity.

36. It is unhealthy when there is no conflict

37. You need
diversity of
opinion

39. Consequences of conflict

40. Nature of Conflict
Responding to Conflict
3
Handling Grievances
Emotional Stress

41. Conflict Handling Styles
Avoiding
Compromise
Competition
Accommodation
Collaboration

42. Which conflict handling
style will you use?

43. Which conflict handling
style will you use?
Project Managers may have a preferred
style for managing conflict

44. Which conflict handling
style will you use?
Project Managers may have a preferred
style for managing conflict
You should use different styles depending
on the problem – and get there by using
your ability to read situation

45. avoiding
compromise
competition
accommodation
collaboration

46. Avoiding
Characteristics When to use
• ignoring conflicts and hoping • Trivial, small/unimportant
they’ll go away issue
• putting problems under • no perceived chance of
consideration or on hold resolution
• use of secrecy to avoid • To allow a cool down period
confrontation • To allow others to resolve the
• appeal to bureaucratic rules situation

47. Compromise
Characteristics When to use
• negotiation • goals are important, but not worth effort
• looking for deals and • opponents with equal power are committed
trade-offs to mutually exclusive goals
• finding satisfactory or • achieve temporary settlements to issues
acceptable solutions • arrive at solutions under time pressure
• back-up to collaboration or competition

48. Competition
Characteristics When to use
• create win-lose • quick, decisive action is vital, very
situations important
• use of power plays • unpopular actions eg. cost cutting
• forcing submission • issues are vital to company welfare
• against people who take advantage of non-
competitive behavior

49. Accommodation
Characteristics When to use
• giving way • find you are wrong
• submission and • issues more important to others than yourself
fulfillment • maintain cooperation
• build social credits for later on
• minimize loss
• harmony and stability are important
• allow team members to learn from their mistakes

50. Collaboration
Characteristics When to use
• problem-solving carriage • find an integrative solution when
• tackle differences both sets of concerns are
• sharing ideas and information important
• seeing problems and conflicts as • objective is to learn
challenges

51. 2 Methods for Resolving Conflict in a team
• Role Clarification Technique (RAT)
• Intergroup Conflict Resolution

52. Role Clarification Technique (RAT)
This is a systematic procedure which involves all team members
understanding the requirements of their of own and everyone
else's position, duties and expectations
You’ll need to clarify roles for team and individuals; for example
via questionnaires (or for project teams - RAM matrices!)

53. Intergroup Conflict Resolution
Each group should prepare list of what they would like the other
groups to start doing, stop doing, and continue to do.
This list narrows he scope of the dispute and makes it easier to work
on the core problems.

54. Nature of Conflict
Responding to Conflict
Handling Grievances
Emotional Stress 2

55. What is a Grievance?

56. A grievance is any behaviour or action of another member or
members of a team, which has or is likely to have an unreasonable
negative impact on the ability of a team member to undertake their
duties

57. Most grievances are never raised with management
Why?

58. Our complaints Lack of trust
are trivialized
No action
gets taken! They only take
defensive
action

59. What you should do?

60. Listen
Discuss
Plan

61. Nature of Conflict
Responding to Conflict
Handling Grievances
Emotional Stress 1

62. Stress

63. What is Stress?
A pattern of emotional states and physiological reactions occurring
in situations where individuals perceive threats to their important
goals that they feel unable to meet
(Greenberg & Baron, 1993, p257).

65. Effects of Stress
 Physical illness
 Lack of sleep
 Reduction in task performance
 Poor quality decision making

66. Causes of Stress in Projects
Causes of Stress in Projects
Long hours
Tight schedules
Transient work force
High risks
Work overload
Role uncertainty
Social relations

67. A Stress Survey
How many of these for you
in the last year?

68. (Greenberg & Baron, 1993, p238)

69. Stress Management
1. Organizational Level
2. Individual Level

70. Stress Management at
the Organizational
Level
setting reasonable work plans
and schedules
delegating responsibility and
increasing independence
clarifying responsibilities,
authority, and performance
criteria
clarifying goals, procedures, and
decision criteria
giving consideration and
support in leadership

71. Stress Management
for the Individual
stress management program
relaxation training
diversions from work-related
problems

72. Review
1. Conflict is the opposition of people or forces that develops into an
aggressive state or action.
2. Sources of IT project conflict includes; schedules, priorities and
workforce issues.
3. Conflict can be good and bad.
4. Conflict handling styles include; avoiding, compromise,
competition, accommodation, and collaboration.
5. Grievance handling strategies include; listen, discuss, and plan.
Not dealing with grievances can be harmful to projects.
6. Work environment improvements and reducing stress is essential
to a team’s health and the success of the project.

73. References
Condliffe, P. (1991). Conflict management – A practical guide. Collingwood,
Vic.: RMIT.
Greenberg, J. & Baron, R. (1993). Behavior in organizations (4th ed.). Syd.,
NSW: Allyn and Bacon.
Nicholas, J. (2001). Project management for business technology – Principles
and practice (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

74. Photo credits
Photos come care of Flickr, CC and generous
community members.
Most photo credits are in the notes section of the
page itself. Some are below.
Steve9091 Karthik kodama Helico assbach orionoir bfick bootload Destinys Agent BryonRealey
James Gordon _uncommon
Sudhir

75. BetterProjects.net
Title page pic care of Helico & CC @ Flickr