Pondy’s view in the “process of conflict” Essay

Pondy views deviation as a process consists of 5 stages authority dispute, perceived fight, felt conflict, transparent conflict and conflict aftermath. Managers can use Pondys molding to interpret and analyze a conflict situation and take action to resolve it.In latent conflict, theres no outright conflict but theres a potential for several sources of conflict, such as interdependence, differences in cultivations and priorities, bureaucratic factors, incompatible performance criteria and competition for resources.As arrangement differentiate, activities of different subunits ar interdependent. Each subunit develops a desire for autonomy and begins to pursue goals and interests that it values everywhere the goals of other subunits. Since the activities of the subunits are interdepedent, subunits desire for autonomy leads to conflict amongst groups.Differences in subunit orientation impact the mien all(prenominal) division views the world and cause each subunit to pursu e different goals that are often inconsistent or incompatible. The potential for conflict arises once their goals become incompatible. This is because the goals of one subunit whitethorn affect the ability of anothe to achieve its goals.Latent conflict may also arise by the focus which task relationships develop in organizations. Conflict can buy the farm because of status inconsistencies between different groups in the organizations bureaucracy. One of the bureaucratic conflict occurs between staff and discover functions. A rakehell function is directly involved in the production of the organizaions outputs while staff functions advise and sustentation the line function such as personnel and accounting.In most organizations, people in line functions view themselves as the critical organizational resource and people in staff functions as subaltern players. Thus, they always uses its status a the producer of in effect(p)s and services to justiry putting its interests ahead of the other functions interests. This results in conflict.Sometimes goals incapability are not the souce of conflict. However, it is because of the way organization monitor, evaluate and rewards different subunits. The way an organization designs its structure to coordinate subunits can affect the potential for conflict as well.Other than thses, conflict may arise because of the limited resouces as well. When resources are limited, choices aobut the allocation of them have to be made and the subunits volition have to compete for their share. Divisions forget have to fight to increase their share of funding because the more bullion they can obtain, the faster they can grow.Perceived conflict is the second stage of Pondys model. Perceived conflict begins when subunits perceives that its goals are being thwarted by the actions of another group. Each group searches for the origin of the conflict and constructs a scenario that accounts for the problems that its experiencing with other s ubunits. For example, the manufacturing function suddenly realize that the cause of many of its production problems is defective inputs. aft(prenominal) some investigation, they found that the materials management always buys inputs from the lowest-cost sources of supply and makes no attempt to develop the kind of long-term relationships with suppliers that can raise the quality and reliability of inputs. So, the manufacturing lead perceive the materials management as thwarting its goal and interests.In felt conflict stage, subunits in conflict quickly develop an emotional response toward each other. Cooperation between subunits and organizational effectiveness will fall if conflict arises. The conflict arises as the different subunits in conflict battle and argue their points of views. The real problem may be relatively minor, but it will turn into a big conflict which become more and more difficult to manage if we didnt resolve it. It will quickly reach the fourth stage, which is the manifes conflict if the conflict is not resolved.In the manifest conflict stage, one subunits gets back at another subunits byattempting to thwart its goals. Open aggression between people and groups is common. There are many stories and myths in organizations about board-room fights in which managers come to blows as they taste to promote their interests. Infighthing in the top-management team is very common as managers seek to promote their own careers at the expense of others. Once manifest conflict occur, organizaional effectiveness will suffer because the intefration and coordination between managers and subunits will recrudesce down. Managers have to avoid conflict from reaching this stage.If the sources of the conflict was not resoved, it will cause conflict to occur again, but may be in another context. Every stage of conflict leaves a conflict aftermath which affects they way the parties percieve conflict and react to future conflict stages. The aftermath will prom ote good future working relationships if a conflict is resolved before it gets to the manifest-conflict stage. However, if the conflict wasnt resolved, the aftermath will be worse future working relationships.