Assessment of Conflict Management Practice: A Case Study of Admas University College

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Date

2007-07

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Conflict is the situation in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party which is in the same group, in another group, in the same organization or in another organization. Accordingly, we can classify those conflicts in to: intragroup conflict, intergroup conflict, intraorganizational conflict and interorganizational conflict. There is also other type of conflict which happens within one self and between peoples who came from different cultures, which are called intrapersonal conflict and cross cultural conflict respectively. The fact that individuals have different backgrounds, point of views, values, needs, personalities and other additional realities prevailing in an organizational environment made an organization a place where conflict is common. Regardless of the quality of a manger’s leadership or his or her style of management and regardless of how well planned the organizational structure is, conflicts will occasionally arise within an organization. These conflicts can be functional or dysfunctional in nature. This study is conducted on Admas University College under a title of “Assessment of Conflict Management Practice”. The major problems which initiate this research are: the prevalence of conflict between several parties in the University College, problem on perception of conflict and the unsatisfactorieness of the conflict management system of the institution. The out comes of all these problems made conflict an issue at Admas University College. The major objectives of the research are: Assessing the conflict resolution practice of Admas University College, assessing the major sources of conflict in the organization, assessing the attitudes that an employees of the organization have towards conflict and forwarding possible solutions for the problems identified from the collected and analyzed data.The major limitations faced in conducting this research are: Some respondents did not give the required full information because of the fear that they have on this area and insufficiency of time that is provided to conduct this research. Both primary and secondary sources of information are used in collecting the data. Questionnaires are distributed to the institution’s academic, non academic and administrative staff members and the information gathered is analyzed accordingly. According to the analysis made, there is a wide range of conflict in the organization, a problem of conflict perception is also observed but, there is no special training and orientation prepared to change this perception. The conflict management practice of the organization is found to be poor. There is also a tendency to relate the effectiveness in conflict management to gender difference. To avoid the above problems; the organization should prepare several occasions in which the employees can develop the relation ship between them, a special training and orientation program should be prepared in order to create better grasping on conflict related issues. Additionally, several points are forwarded as a recommendation to solve the problems observed.

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Conflict Management Practice

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