Conflicts in organizations

First check: Is this a conflict?

Organizations have plenty of problems and disruptions, but comparatively few real conflicts. Two intentions that can be reconciled do not make a conflict, even if the conversation about them gets loud. An annoyance or an unsolved problem is not a conflict either.

The distinction is practical. If you treat every bit of friction as a conflict, you bring out heavy tools where clarifying responsibility, information, or priority would have been enough. If you dismiss real conflicts as bad moods, you let them grow until they block decisions. That is why any attempt to address a conflict starts with a simple check:

Conflicts can lie within a single person, for example when two expectations of the same role do not fit together. They can lie between people, groups, or departments. And they can be built into the organization itself: into its structure, its interfaces, and the distribution of power and resources.

What the close look is for

An unresolved conflict costs time, ties up managers' attention, delays projects, and shifts energy from the task to winning. But it also has a useful side: It makes differences visible. A conflict between sales and production often shows more precisely than any metric where an organization makes two demands at once without weighing them against each other. A structured look helps in three ways:

What kind of conflict?

Six basic types can be distinguished. In practice they rarely appear in pure form, but the question of which type is in the foreground changes the next step.

Organizational conflicts are especially important for companies. They arise less from the people than from the way an organization is built:

Behind apparent relationship conflicts there are often structural questions, too: going it alone or deciding together, independence or conformity, competing for the favor of a third party, such as executive management. As a rule of thumb: Conflicts are caused by violations of rules. This includes the unwritten rules about who decides what, who gets informed, and who is responsible for what.

Intentions, motives, causes

A conflict can be described in three layers, each for both sides. At the top, the parties visibly clash. The solution does not lie there, but underneath.

If you negotiate only over intentions (“we need three positions,” “we're not giving any up”), you stay stuck in positions. Only the question of what it is for opens up room to maneuver, because the same motive can often be served in several ways. An example: A division head insists on additional staff. Any of the three basic motives can be behind this, and each reading leads to a different solution that holds.

How far has the conflict escalated?

The best-known model of how conflicts unfold comes from Friedrich Glasl. It describes nine stages on three main levels. With each stage, the ability of those involved to resolve the conflict themselves declines. That is why the staircase leads downward.

Glasl himself assigns more finely graded, overlapping interventions to the stages: facilitation (stages 1–3), process consultation (3–5), process consultation that includes the relationship level (4–6), mediation (5–7), arbitration or court proceedings (6–8), and power intervention (7–9).

Two caveats belong with the model. The stages describe the state of a conflict, not the people involved. And the behaviors of the stages also occur without conflict: Someone who looks for allies or debates pointedly is not automatically caught in an escalation.

Diagnosis in five questions

Before deciding on measures, a sober diagnosis is worthwhile. Karl Berkel proposes five questions for it:

Above all, the diagnosis clarifies one thing: What is the highest stage of escalation already reached? This determines which path still fits. Add to that a look at each side's share, in both directions: What is missing, and what is already there to build on?

Ten basic assumptions

Some assumptions change the way conflicts are handled considerably. They serve as touchstones before deciding on a path.

What it looks like in a company

In midsize companies, conflicts rarely appear as textbook cases. They show up as delays, as sluggish coordination, or as a recurring item in the leadership team. Five constellations come up again and again.

Small cracks in trust

Many conflicts do not begin with a big break, but with small cracks in credibility. Typical situations in everyday business:

Each of these situations seems harmless on its own. Taken together, they erode the trust that collaboration depends on and prepare the ground for the first stage of escalation. For executive management, this means: commitments with a date, decisions named openly, participation not just announced.

Limits of the models

• Tools for observation, not verdicts. The models organize and sharpen your view. They replace neither a professional review nor the responsibility for a decision.
• No labels. Escalation stages and conflict types describe situations, not people or departments. Anyone who says “they're at stage five” is using the model itself as a weapon and adding to the escalation.
• From the second main level on, not alone anymore. From then on, those involved usually can no longer resolve a conflict themselves; from the third, usually only decisions, facts, or legal action move things forward. A factual, structural view clarifies responsibilities and decision paths. It does not replace mediation or legal advice.
• Every diagnosis is provisional. Precisely because conflicts are quiet and those involved often cannot name them, an outside assessment remains an approximation.
• Not every conflict needs to be resolved. Some tensions are intended by the structure, for example between cost and quality. Then the point is to hold them consciously and to set clear rules for who decides when in doubt.