**5. Discussion of results**

This research shows that economic reason is responsible for the conflict that affects a good number of environmental and agricultural companies in the Far North region of Cameroon. This is because in many work situations, workers have to share common resources; therefore, the scarcer the resources in an organization, the greater the chance for a conflict situation. Resource scarcity leads to a conflict because each person that needs the same resources necessarily undermines others who pursue their own goals. Limited resources may include money, supplies, people or information Mcshane, S. L and Glinow, M.A. (2008). [15] but in this case, it is money. Equally, concerning the environmental companies in Maroua those in the private sector particularly suffer from this scarcity the more. This is due to conflict of interest in which there is a disorientation between the personal goals of the individual and the goals of the organization. As *Daniel K.; Robert L. (1966)* [17] puts it, this conflict of interest arises when the individual fights for his personal goals which hinders the overall success of the project.

This scarcity of resources creates conflict between the hierarchy as well as the workers and the surrounding environment as it is the case in HYSACAM. More so, the benefits of the organization are not equally shared; most often, the hierarchy takes everything giving little or nothing to the employees as it is the case in ACEFA. This shows that, the major prime factor of internal sources of conflict is the "opposing interests" of industrial actors. Differing interests bring about conflict because the two parties in organizations try to share the "industrial cake". Therefore, members of a company competes with each other over scarcity of resources like time, money, materials etc. leading to conflict between them.

Equally, the research also shows a generational gap between the older generation who is less-educated with a long experience in the company and a younger and educated generation who are more qualitative in the production process than the older generation thereby producing a generational conflict between them which is later resolved most often in favor of the younger generation. This shows that, conflict serves a social purpose even if reconciliation comes with the total destruction of one party. Conflict socializes members into a group and reduces the tension between group members. Conflict may end with a victory of one party over another or it can be resolved through compromise; or through conciliation. One of the main benefits of constructive conflict is that it gives its members a chance to identify the problems and see the opportunities. It also inspires new ideas, learning, and growth among individuals (KInicki, A. and Kreithner, R., 2008) [28]. The generational conflict at Sahel Agro was resolved through an expert engineer of raw material transformation giving reason to the younger generation to the detriment of the older generation.

The win-lose conflict in groups may have some of the following negative effects: Divert time and energy from the main issues, delay decision, create dead locks, drive unaggressive committee members to the sidelines and interfere with listening. The older and experienced workers argue with the young graduates when they explain it to them and it led to conflict between them. It was a serious problem between the two parties until an expert engineer in transformation intervened to clearly explain the young graduates' approach in transforming corn into flour to the older employees. This confrontation between older people who have some experience and young graduates who would like to set up new practices is also visible at

PCP-ACEFA and the most affected are the older generation because young people who have just graduated from the training schools have more improved knowledge of organizational culture, in other words an update of corporate organizational culture. This affects the older generation and they either drop out or resign from committees, their anger is arouse that disrupts a meeting, provoke personal abuse and cause defensiveness. It causes strains such as anxiety, depression, physical symptoms, and low levels of job performance (Richard A 1976) [14].

At the workplace, there is conflict whenever, two or more persons interact, especially when opinions with respect to any task or decision are in contradiction (Business Jargon: -) [6]. Our research clearly shows this when people or workers have it difficult to cooperate because of the attitude of one another either through an impolite usage of language or disrespect for a colleague in front of the population as it was the case at COPRESSA.

### **6. Conclusions**

In this chapter, we have examined the causes of conflict in the agricultural and environmental organizations in the Far North Region of Cameroon whose population suffers the most from poverty and huge environmental challenges and which has the highest concentration of environmental organizations. We discovered that:

There are disputes over how revenues should be divided, how the work should be done, and how long and hard people should work. There are jurisdictional disagreements among individuals, departments and between unions and management. These subtler forms of conflicts involve rivalries, jealousies, personality clashes, role definitions, and struggle for power and favor. There is also conflict within individuals- between competing needs and demands – to which individuals respond in different ways.

We discovered also that conflicts in organizations are regularly triggered by the differences people have in terms of opinions, interests and needs as they work together. These relations may be between employees or with senior colleagues, there are always misunderstandings between collaborators; that is, collaborators hardly understand each other when sharing opinions with each other. There are equally romantic relationships which create conflicts in organizations when two or more male employees fall in love with the same female employees it creates conflict. It also occurs when employees are strict with one another especially when doing dirty or difficult work tasks like cleaning the environment. Equally when one person of the same hierarchical rank encroaches the competent domain of the other, it produces conflict of authority and then leads to jealousy. It also comes about when the religious values of each other is not respected especially that of the Muslims where a majority of the workers are non- Muslims, it provokes conflict because the prayers hours of the Muslims are hardly respected.

There is also generational conflict which is characterized by the confrontation between those who have some experience and young graduates who would like to implement new practices. Young graduates have more theoretical knowledge as compared to older workers who are less-educated or who are not graduates. When the young graduates try to put theories into practice or try to innovate the manufacturing process, they face opposition from the older generation.

One of the causes of conflict in environmental and agricultural organizations is discrimination: workers are not promoted basing on merit but on their ethnic relation to one another. Position intended for one worker is most often given to a completely different person. This leads to a kind of jealousy, lack of respect, denigration between employees hence widening the conflict between them in the company.

*Conflicts in Environmental and Agricultural Organizations in the Far North Region of Cameroon DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.95860*

Another source of conflict is economic which refers to the scarcity of resources in environmental and agricultural enterprises. Conflicts are present due to the non-distribution of part of the substantial profits that ACEFA makes to its staff. Employees complain that the bonuses that suppliers pay do not reach employees not even half and there is also the problem of too low salary at mostly private organization unlike cooperation like GIZ.

Finally, the poor distribution of work tasks is another source of conflict in these companies. Our respondents (the employees) of ACEFA confirmed that workers of the same rank in the organization have unequal distribution of tasks while some workers have more tasks, others have less. Work is mostly informal, unplanned and therefore unpredictable. There are cases where some employees leave work much earlier than others. That is to say, some employees work overtime while others do not.

## **Acknowledgements**

I thank Dr. Obono Felicité the Head of Department of Environmental Sciences and Prof Mohamadou Alidou the Director of the National Advanced School of Engineering of Maroua for issuing a research permit for the Master 1 students of Environmental Sciences to carry out this research.
