A Two-Level Perception of Conflict in Organizations

A Two-Level Perception of Conflict in Organizations

Thomas R. Fiutak

University of Minnesota

Oscar A. Aliaga

University of Louisville

Chelsea McKendree

University of Louisville

Corresponding author e-mail address:

A Two-Level Perception of Conflict in Organizations

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose behind this study was to introduce a two-level approach to the analysis of organizational conflict. Traditional research has studied conflict within the context of specific organization levels and conflict types, but this study explores an individual’s perception of conflict at the level to which they belong within an organization as well as their perception of conflict within the organization.

Method: This study used the Conflict Management Continuum (©) survey instrument,
developed by Fiutak (n.d.), asking participants to provide responses about how they perceived conflict at their group or team level (collegial perspective) and then again at the organization level (bureaucratic perspective).

Findings: Participants perceived themselves as dealing with conflict more positively and flexibly, while they perceived the organization as approaching conflict in a more traditional manner.

Originality/Value: Addresses the complexities of the organization and conflict within it, considering perception of conflict across organization levels. Understanding this complexity is vital to creating appropriate, long-term interventions.

Keywords: Conflict; Organization; Perception; Organization Levels

A Two-Level Perception of Conflict in Organizations

Background and Purpose

Conflict in organizations has been vastly studied from different perspectives. Predominantly, studies in the field of conflict have focused, among other topics, on conflict management styles (Thomas & Kilmann, 1978; Thomas, Thomas, & Schaubut 2008), in levels or units or individuals in the organization where conflict takes place (Gupta, Boyd & Kuzmits 2011), about the interaction between conflict and culture (Yuan 2010), and whether conflict is related to relationships, tasks, or processes (McMillan, Chen, Richard & Bhuian 2012).

A unique characteristic of this body of research is the fact that conflict is analyzed using a unidimensional approach, i.e. conflict is studied from the perspective of the person whom is being asked about how she or he sees conflict at a given organization level, or how she or he approaches conflict and the style she or he may use to deal with conflict.

Because organizations are more complex, and more organization levels exist, a body of research has focused on conflict at the different organization levels. The idea is that since conflict is perceived differently, or the cognition of conflict varies at the different levels within the organization, a distinctive analysis needs to be made to understand conflict better and to prepare appropriate responses. Thomas, Thomas & Schaubut (2008), for example, explored the different styles of solving conflict associated with levels in the organization and gender, stating that both are “salient and ubiquitous in organizations” (p. 149), and therefore researchers need to be aware of the interaction of both variables and its impact on the organization.

Little is known, however, about the perception of conflict a person has simultaneously, regarding (a) their group or team, and (b) the organization as a whole. This distinction is useful because it provides a more complete understanding of conflict and its dynamics, and thus does not segment the perceptions nor confine them to a particular unit within the organization. More importantly, a unidimensional approach does not take account for the influences from outside the group or team, neglecting to acknowledge the influence of the organization as a whole (culture, climate, etc.) and its effect on the behavior related to conflict in a group or team.

The purpose of this study is to examine basic concepts and understandings from an individual’s concurring perceptions about conflict (a) as it occurs in a group or team, and (b) as it happens in the organization as a whole, and to determine whether any differences exist between these two levels. Hence, our analysis examines conflict from the perceptions using a two-level approach.

Research Questions

We are interested in understanding how the perception of conflict occurs in employees in at-level groups or teams, as well as at the organization level. Since we argue those perceptions are related but are not necessarily the same, we propose three research questions:

1) What is the perception of conflict at the group or team level?

2) What is the perception of conflict at the organization level?

3) Are there any differences in the perception of conflict in the two organization levels?

Conceptual Framework

Perception and Conflict

Of all characteristics of conflict, perhaps the most critical one is that conflict is based on perceptions. Perceptions “are the processes of organizing and interpreting information received from the outside world” (Hernes 2005, p. 86), and thus we build our own reality based on that perception and interpretation. Robbins & Judge (2009) argue that in that sense none of us see reality, but rather see the world through our own specific lenses. They claim that there are multiple factors that can shape an individual’s perception and that they can reside either in the perceiver, in the target being perceived, or in the situation in which the perception is being made. More importantly, they indicate that people’s behaviors are based on the perception of what reality is—but not on reality itself, and this perception of reality also impacts the way we view other individuals.

People use perception not only to create a view of others, but also to make judgments about them, and therefore to determine whether or not a conflict exists. When we observe someone’s actions, we make assumptions about them in order to understand why they behave in a particular manner. Attribution theory discusses this tendency and attempts to explain how we judge others based on our assumed meanings of their behaviors. Attribution theory argues that when we observe a behavior, we try to determine whether it is caused by internal or external factors. Thomas and Kilmann (1978), for example, explored the “causal attributions involved in diagnosing sources of the conflict” (p. 60) and thus created a framework that can be used for a better diagnosis of the conflict and more appropriate interventions. The important application of this framework resides in the fact that the perception of conflict is moderated by internal or external causes. This explanation supports our approach to differentiate between more than one level of perception of conflict, as we will discuss below.

Perception has been incorporated in most of the definitions used in current research on conflict, and it is used to explain how conflict is built through the eyes of the person involved. For example, Rahim, Magner & Shapiro (2000) argue that conflict “begins when one individual perceives that his or her goals, attitudes, values, or beliefs are incongruent with those of another individual” (p. 9). In turn, Dana (2001) defines conflict in an organization as “a condition between or among workers whose jobs are interdependent, who feel angry, who perceive the other(s) as being at fault, and who act in ways that cause a business problem” (p. 10). The essential part is that perception will somehow block the person’s own goals, a condition that is enough to start a conflict. Similarly, JehnMannix (2001) explain conflict as an“awareness on the part of the parties involved of discrepancies, incompatibles wishes, or irreconcilable desires” (p. 238).

Understanding perception and conflict is critical to anticipate a person’s choices in terms of behaviors, and therefore about the evolving conflict. It has been indicated that “conflict is the interaction of interdependent people who perceive incompatibility and the possibility of interference from others as a result of this incompatibility” (Folger, Poole & Stutman 2013, p. 4). In other words, group or team work will depend on the behavior expressed by a person, which is in turn based on perception. Furthermore, perception and conflict will not only determine the behavior of individuals inside teams or groups, but they can also determine potential outcomes within the organization that are the product of behavior interaction. This is one of the primary conclusions of a study conducted by Avgar, Lee & Chung (2014), who studied individual perception of team conflict, arguing that perception of conflict varies among team members and that this perception influences that individual’s work outcomes (p. 278). Since this perception is also related to the larger organization, it helps understand conflict in a more comprehensive way.

Conflict and Organization Levels

In addition to the areas of research in conflict outlined above, studies in conflict have turned their attention to the conflict responses that take place at several levels in the organization. From that perspective, they have departed from analyses that would study organizations as a single unit. That redirection is a consequence of the changes introduced in the design of the organizations themselves, motivated in turn by need to improve financial performance and global competition.

The complexity of organizations has thus resulted in more levels in which conflict can be analyzed. Gupta, Boyd & Kuzmits (2011) explain that conflict types are inter-organizational, intra-organizational, inter-departmental, intra-departmental, inter-group, intra-group, inter-personal, and intra-personal, which points to general levels in the structure and hierarchy of the organization itself. Because people belong to any of those levels, conflict has been analyzed from the perspective of the person in the context of the level to which she or he belongs. Most of the recent literature in conflict takes this approach, but rather with a focus on one level at a time. In order to do that, research in the past 30 years in particular has mostly concentrated on conflict as it occurs in teams and groups.

Examining conflict in each level at a time has resulted in two main bodies of research we would like to focus on in this section. One set of such studies has focused on inter-group conflict, which is described as the amount of conflict between a person’s department and other departments in the organization (Labianca, Brass & Gray 1998). The content of conflict being examined at this level in the organization relates to task, process, and relationships. Most of these studies highlight the association between task or relationship conflict between teams or groups in organizations with, respectively, positive or negative results (Pelled & Adler 1994). Guerra, Martínez, Munduate & Medina (2005) indicate that “the existence of relationship conflict within the group produces negative emotional reactions in workers such as anxiety, fear, mistrust, or resentment” (p. 159) and that workers are affected by frustration, tension and fear. That is not the case of task conflict, which is related to quality of ideas and innovation, constructive debate,better use of resources, etc. (De DreuWeingart 2003; Hon & Chan 2013).

At the basis of these considerations are the potential consequences of behavior related to conflict. Wolf, Cohen, Kirchner, Rea, Montoya & Insko (2009), for example, conducted a research study where they examined the impact of future considerations on the behavior of team members in intergroup conflict. That link has been further explored to relate conflict with positive or negative performance outcomes in individuals belonging to teams or groups, as reported by Avgar, Lee & Chung (2014).

The second body of literature has focused on intra-group conflict in organizations. Studies in this area have predominantly focused on task, relationship, and to lesser extent, process conflict. O’Neill (2013) defines relationship conflict as the conflict that involves “interpersonal tensions, frictions, and resentment” and is typically considered to be harmful to team dynamics and performance. Task conflict, on the other hand, revolves around “ideas, perceptions, and viewpoints regarding the work itself” and occasionally improves team outcomes. Jehn’s (1997) third type, process conflict, describes disagreements regarding how work should be approached (p. 236).

Rahim (2001, p.76) discusses two additional and distinct types of conflict. Firstly, affective conflicts are those generally caused by negative reactions to organizational members and those that result in a higher level of stress and anxiety. Some examples of affective conflict might be racial disharmony, sexual harassment, and personal attacks on organization members. This type of conflict “diminishes group loyalty, work group commitment, intent to stay in the present organization, and satisfaction” (Rahim 2001, p.76). The other type suggested by Rahim (2001) is substantive conflict, that can have a positive impact on individual and group performance. These types of conflict relate to disagreements about tasks, business issues, and policies and can lead to a productive level of debate and discussion. In fact, it has been found that groups that experience substantive conflicts are more likely to make better decision because they gain a better understanding of diverse viewpoints and are able to find multiple solutions. Nevertheless, too much of this type of conflict can also lead to negative attitudes and decreased loyalty (Rahim, 2001, p.77). Therefore, organizations should attempt to develop a culture that is supportive of healthy levels of disagreement in connection with tasks and management issues, while being careful to control affective conflict.

Organizational Complexity and Conflict: A Person’s Two Level Perception of Conflict

Differences at Different Organization Levels

The studies summarized above point to critical questions--do people have the same approach to conflict in all levels of the organization? Is there any difference between the perception of conflict in a lower-level unit in the organization and a higher-level unit? Is the approach to conflict of an entry-level employee the same as that of a manager? These are important questions that have prompted a further interest in looking at conflict in organizations and consideration of the complexity of the phenomenon as it happens in a complex structure.

As research on conflict in organizations continued, it became clear that having a one-size fit all approach would not provide a clear picture about conflict in organizations. Thus, it was imperative to take a different stand. Studying the impact of the different organization levels on people and their perception of conflict is supposed to allow a better examination of the shape of the relationship between organization level and conflict styles. That was the main reason, for example, for Thomas, Thomas & Schaubut (2008) to conduct a study on organization levels and conflict--in which they also included the variable gender. They found that unassertive styles are highly used by entry-level and non-supervisory employees, whereas supervisors and managers show more assertive scores for conflict solving styles.

Brewer, Mitchell & Weber (2002) also conducted a study to examine the influence of organization levels in conflict solving styles. Consistent with other studies, they reported employees at lower levels in the organization used unassertive styles with more frequency, while those in the upper-organizational status used more collaborating styles. Taking a different perspective, Weider-Hatfield & Hatfield (1995) studied different levels of personnel and their conflict styles and the styles’ correlations with either intra-personal, intra-group and inter-group conflict.

There are two additional issues regarding the studies that focus on at-level conflict. The first one is that people in organizations perceive conflict depending on the role they hold and may act accordingly providing specific types of behavior. Brewer, Mitchell & Weber (2002) have indicated that a person’s behavior within an organization may vary according to the position she or he may hold in the structure of the organization and that it may be an important contributor to conflict management styles. At the core of these differences is the existence of power--that has been called the “architecture of conflict.’ Holt & DeVore (2005) explain that “given power differences, superiors are generally predicted to prefer problem-solving, compromising and forcing” and that “peers are predicted to be less aggressive with superiors than each other, but more so with subordinates, and subordinates are predicted to tend toward the least aggressive styles” (p, 173). What follows is that in organizations, individuals not only perceive conflict according to the position they have in the hierarchy of the organization, but will also perceive conflict depending on the position the other person has in the structure of the same organization. This is a central point in our argumentation, since we propose that, in fact, people in organizations have more than one conflict perception and that those perceptions are differentiated. Furthermore, we argue that people may concurrently have those two levels of perception with regards to their group or team and with any other unit in the organization.

The second point is that perceptions of conflict are not homogeneous among group, team or organization members. Jehn & Chatman (2000) explain that not every member of a team will experience conflict the same way, and thus it is necessary to consider the amount of conflict perceived by individual members of a team and avoid assuming team conflict perception is universal. They described the proportional conflict composition relationship between the three types of conflict at the team level “as the level of each type of conflict proportional to the other two and to the overall level of conflict within the group” (p. 56). They also considered the perceptual conflict composition or the comparison of each member’s perception of conflict within the team to all other team members’ perceptions of conflict within that same team (p. 61). The study illustrated that there is, indeed, variance within a particular team regarding types of conflict experienced and individuals’ perceptions of those conflicts, both of which can impact team outcomes. When group members cannot agree on the degree of each type of conflict within that group, this meta-conflict can lead to member dissatisfaction and negatively impact team productivity (p. 62). The same argumentation is raised by Labianca, Brass & Gray (1998). We use this approach also to support our claim that there are differences (or variance) among individuals working on the same unit of analysis.

A Two-Level Proposal

In this study, we take a two-level approach on the perception of conflict in organizations. Based on an intervention effort with a public institution in the American Midwest, we explored the notion of conflict among employees. What distinguishes this study from others is that we investigated the notions about conflict at two levels. First, we attempted to understand the prevailing perception of conflict among participant employees at the level of their group or team affiliation—the perception of conflict they have for their own role in that level. However, we took a second approach, in which we also examined their perception of conflict in the organization at large—in other words,how they perceived the organizational approach to conflict. We did this in order to analyze whether there were substantial differences in how individuals perceived, understood, analyzed, and approached conflict when examined with their perceptions about how they saw conflict in connection to their immediate co-workers and with the organization itself.