Perspectives of Conflict in Workgroups
In the first edition of this Handbook, we identified three scholarly traditions in the literature on workgroup conflict. Each tradition had a unique point of view with respect to the nature of conflict, sources and causes of conflict, and outcomes associated with conflict.
Because of these unique points of view, we referred to these distinctions as perspectives. For the current edition, we review these perspectives paying particularly close attention to research that might fall outside of our prior delineations. The most promising of these new directions included research that integrated the instrumental and developmental perspectives, and we discuss that near the end of the chapter. We also see at least one novel method of study within the instrumental perspective that has the potential to be a new perspective as that research grows; in its present form, we believe that it remains part of the instrumental tradition in terms of how researchers using that method see conflict similar to how other scholars in this tradition see it. Table 12.1 presents what each perspective considers the source of conflict, a definition from each perspective for productive conflict, and the research focus of each perspective. Additionally, two ways in which it is particularly useful to conceptualize these perspectives are in terms of whether they focus on public or private aspects of conflict and on whether they regard conflict as being primarily based on rational or nonrational grounds (Kolb & Putnam, 1992). The reader is invited to refer to our chapter in the first edition of this Handbook for more complete definitions.For the most part, the instrumental, developmental, and political perspectives have developed independently of one another. Studies in the three perspectives tend to focus on different types of questions, use different designs, and appear in different journals. As stated earlier, recent research has begun addressing some of the ways in which perspectives may be brought to inform each other, but generally speaking, all three perspectives have followed parallel paths with remarkably little dialogue or influence on each other. The following review summarizes and analyzes research in each perspective separately, and the final section considers possible relationships, debates, and points of cross-fertilization, including the limited research that has pursued such interplay.