Managing Conflicts
In his search to evolve new patterns of management based on cooperative and supportive relationships, Likert focused attention on new ways of managing conflict. In the capitalist mode of production conflict is inherent in management-worker relations and manifests in several forms. Likert himself to the nature of this conflict when he states that “There is ample evidence in the mass media and elsewhere that bitter, unresolved is widespread and increasing in frequency. It occurs at all levels of society; among nations and within nations, among organization and within them”. Likert defines conflict, ‘as the active striving for one’s own preferred outcome, which if attained, precludes the attainment by other of their own preferred outcome, thereby producing hostility. He differentiates two kinds of conflicts substantive and affective. Substantive conflict is rooted in the substance of the task and affective conflict is derived from the emotional, affective aspects of interpersonal relations. Likert considers methods to handle substantive conflict even in situation where the presence of affective conflict makes this task more difficult. The widely prevalent win-lose strategies of conflict resolution in organizations distort the perceptions of individual and groups, maintain a polarized adversary orientation at all times and escalate the costs of chronically defeated groups to organization. In conflict situations, leadership migrates to the aggressive, relegating the emotionally mature to the background.