**Author details**

**7. Concluding remarks**

14 Organizational Conflict

work before a conflict is likely to arise.

flicts arise in the various ways described above.

social conflict, then they have not really communicated well.

The five-step model I have presented in this chapter can be understood as a resource in managers' conflict resolution practices, to be used individually or in dialog with discussion partners, like other managers in management teams. It is a tool for analyzing conflicts to gain a deeper and more systematic understanding of the situation in question so that it becomes clearer how it can be resolved step by step. The model can be used to understand complex conflicts between employees, or between employees and managers, so that the initial understanding of a conflict is transformed into knowledge of the underlying deep structure. The model can also be used in debriefing after a conflict, to understand why the conflict escalated, so that managers are better prepared to resolve a similar escalating situation the next time it occurs. The principles in the model can, additionally, be used to analyze situations in which conflicts have not arisen even though there is a risk that they will arise, typically in processes of reorganization. Furthermore, if managers have knowledge of the characteristics of conflict types, they are better prepared to resolve destructive conflicts not only between persons they are

managers for but also in their own relations to other people in their organization.

Obviously, the degree to which it is possible for managers to use the resolution model comprehensively will depend on contextual matters. Practical limitations can make it impossible for managers to pursue extensive analyses of conflict situations, but it would be wrong to think that the model is irrelevant in such situations. It does not take much time to explore the six questions above in reactive analysis of a given conflict, during a conflict or in preventive

The resolution model is generally applicable to conflict situations, but it is particularly useful for dealing with social interaction in organizations. The complexity of the model corresponds to the complexity of organizations in which people come together from a variety of perspectives, with different beliefs, values and interests [36, 49]. These differences influence how con-

Theoretically, the aim of overcoming the diversity of perspectives and reaching agreement in organizational work is often associated with the philosopher Gadamer and his idea of a fusion of horizons [49]. For Gadamer, agreement and absence of conflict are connected to successful communication: it is impossible to separate the issue of how we understand each other from how we agree and cooperate. According to Gadamer, this implies that if people are in a

Gadamer's philosophy has been developed outside an organizational context, but it is widely recognized that it is eminently applicable to organization theory. The heterogeneous nature of many organizations makes it challenging to achieve a shared understanding and a shared sense of commitment. It has been extensively documented that knowledge gaps and lack of contact between various organizational levels can lead to destructive conflicts directly through lack of teamwork and indirectly through lack of psychological effect such Halvor Nordby1,2\*

\*Address all correspondence to: halvor.nordby@inn.no

1 Department of Social Work, Faculty of Health and Social Work, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway

2 Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Health and Society, The University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
