Effective Conflict Management Technique 3

In the last byte, we discussed about some of the effective techniques to resolve conflict. In today's byte, we look at how changing organization structure could assist in resolving conflict effectively.

There are many ways to change the structure in an organization and thereby reduce conflict:

• Use of the integrators' role:  An integrator is a liaison between groups with very different interests - if this integrator is a neutral third part, it would help disperse even severe conflicts. This is a way of opening dialogue between groups that have difficulty in communicating.
• Use of Cross functional teams: The traditional method of new product design involved many departments contributing and this created delays due to coordination. The use of cross functional teams reduces delays and by allowing many activities to be performed at the same time instead of sequential execution.
  Also the team approach allows members from different departments to work together and reduce the potential for conflict. Team work helps break the larger tasks into smaller, less complex tasks - this helps reduce conflict, and organizations can potentially improve the performance over the overall team by improving the outcomes in each sub team.