Monday, February 9, 2009

Can Conflict be Good?



We're snowed in. This conflicts with our schedules (but it surely is beautiful). Can conflict be good?

Hall and Williams submit, “There is further evidence that conflict leads to better and more innovative decisions, as well as increased group productivity. It was demonstrated that among established groups, performance tended to improve more when there was conflict among members than when there was fairly close agreement. The investigators observed that when groups analyzed decisions that had been made by the individual members of that group, the average improvement among the high-conflict groups was seventy-three percent greater than that of those groups characterized by low-conflict conditions. (Hall, J. and M.S. Williams. A Comparison of Decision-Making Performances in Established and Ad-Hoc Groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Feb. 1966, p. 217)

Other researchers have found similar results: Groups composed of members with different interests tend to produce higher quality solutions to a variety of problems than do homogeneous groups. (Hoffman, R.L. Homogeneith of Member Personality and Its Effect on Group Problem Solving. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Jan. 1959, pp. 27-32; Hoffman, R.L. and N.R.F. Maier. Quality and Acceptance of Problem Solutions by Members of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Groups. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Mar. 1961, pp. 401-407) The preceding findings suggest that conflict in the group might be an indication of strength rather than, in the traditional view, of weakness.” (176) Robbins, Stephen P. 1997. Essentials of Organizational Behavior, Fifth Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

What do you think?

2 comments:

Kevin said...

YES, conflict can be good... depending on two things (well, at least two things anyway... this is off the top of my head).

1. That open communication is welcome and people's opinions valued... and,
2. The leader of the group (the primary decision maker) allows her/his agenda to be set aside. I've been in too many meetings where the leader knows what they want and no matter what any group comes up with, that's what will happen (the leader's agenda).

If these two obstacles are in place, I do believe conflict can be very good.

This also assumes people won't personally attack others too...

I could probably add alot of "but..." statements to this. :)

Chuck said...

I like your items.

Here's one more:
If people can affirm each others' differences rather than imply that the person who is different is either weak, inferior, wrong, bad, or mean.