Towards Understanding of Workplace Conflict: An Examination Into Causes and Conflict Management Strategies

Workplace conflict is regarded as a naturally and unavoidably occurring phenomenon in today's organisations. To identify the causes of workplace conflict it is critically important to determine appropriate conflict management strategies and effectively manage conflict. The purpose of this study was to explore causes of interpersonal conflicts between managers and employees and the conflict management styles used to handle these conflicts. A qualitative approach including thematic analysis and content analysis was employed. The thematic analysis was carried out to explore the themes concerning causes of conflicts between managers and employees. The content analysis was used to identify the conflict management styles. The data for both analyses included 47 individual written assignments describing conflict situations between managers and employees. Four general themes including poor management, manager personality, poor communication and differences in views emerged from the thematic analysis. Each theme also encompassed a number of subthemes. The findings of the content analysis showed that fight was the most adopted style used by both male and female managers. The findings also revealed that three styles emerge as the most frequently adopted by employees including avoidance, adaptation, and collaboration. The practical implications and limitations of this study are discussed. Keywords: causes of conflict, conflict management styles, gender, qualitative analysis, workplace conflict