ASSESSMENT OF CONFLICT MANAGMENT PRACTICE: THE CASE OF ARBA MINCH UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Conflict is the situation in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party which is in the same group, in another group, in the same organization or in another organization. Accordingly, we can classify those conflicts in to: intragroup conflict, intergroup conflict, intraorganizational conflict and interorganizational conflict. There is also other type of conflict which happens within one self and between peoples who came from different cultures, which are called intrapersonal conflict and cross cultural conflict respectively. The fact that individuals have different backgrounds, point of views, values, needs, personalities and other additional realities prevailing in an organizational environment will make organization a place where conflict is common. Regardless of the quality of a manger’s leadership or his or her style of management and regardless of how well planned the organizational structure is, conflicts will occasionally arise within an organization. These conflicts can be functional or dysfunctional in nature. This study is conducted on Arba Minch University under a title of “Assessment of Conflict Management Practice”. The major problems which initiate this research are: the prevalence of conflict between several parties in the institution, problem on perception of conflict and the unsatisfactoriness of the conflict management system of the institution. The outcomes of all these problems made conflict an issue at Arba Minch University. The major and specific objectives of the research are: Assessing the conflict management practice of Arba Minch University, Assessing the major sources of conflict, Finding out the conflict resolution mechanisms of the university, Assessing the attitudes that an employees of the organization have towards conflict, Identifying the types of conflict which are commonly existed, Measuring the success of the conflict resolution techniques in resolving the conflicts encountered by the organization, Identifying the parties who are frequently involved in conflicting situation and in conflict resolution. The major limitations faced in conducting this research are: Some completely denied taking part in this research and few others also did not give complete information because of the fear that they have on this area and insufficiency of time that is provided to conduct this research. Both primary and secondary sources of information are used in collecting the data. Questionnaires are distributed to the institution’s academic, non academic staff members and the information gathered is analyzed accordingly. According to the analysis made, there is a wide range of conflict in the organization, a problem of conflict perception is also observed, there is no enough special training and orientation prepared to change this perception, interpersonal conflict is mainly arises in the institution. The conflict management practice of the organization is found to be poor. To avoid the above problems; the organization should prepare several occasions in which the employees can develop the relationship between them, a special training and orientation program should be prepared in order to create better grasping on conflict related issues. Additionally, several points are forwarded as a recommendation to solve the problems observed.