Conflicts in Teams: Review of an Exemplary Study

Seminar paper from the year 2000 in the subject Psychology - Work, Business, Organisation, LMU Munich (Psychology), course: Seminar Organizational Culture and Top Performance. How to Create a Center of Excellence, language: English, abstract: 'The point is not how to eliminate or prevent conflict but rather how to make it productive.' Morton Deutsch 1 Introduction to Conflict Conflict is found in all realms of social interaction and is therefore an important topic for all kinds of social scientists. Thus, there are various definitions of conflict. As Deutsch (1973) simply puts it: 'A conflict exists, whenever incompatible activities occur.'(1) Pruitt (1998) distinguishes two categories(2): a) definitions referring to conflict behavior - opposing actions taken by two (or more) parties (close to Deutsch´s view) b) definitions referring to sources of conflict behavior - most commonly divergence of interest and annoyance that is attributed to another party As can be seen from these quite broad definitions, conflict is a term that can be applied to numerous situations in daily life. A couple trying to figure out where to vacation (if for example he wants to spend the holidays in a cabin in the mountains and she prefers staying in a luxury hotel at the Cote d´Azur) as well as the arms race between the Soviet Union and the US during Cold War can be considered a `conflict´. [...] ______ 1 p.10 2 p.470