Authoritative Conflict: Causes, Management, and Resolution

Introduction: Authoritative Control and Organizational Conflict

Authoritative control can become an issue within any organization. Leaders at times feel as though they are not wrong in their actions and will confront anyone who questions them. This may not always be the case, but it does occur. That is where conflict arises and leads to problems within the organization. The conflict may generate issues concerning communication, where someone may feel a lack of control, feel dominated, coerced, or even shut out. It is important to understand why this conflict exists and how to identify the components of authoritative control that can lead to conflict and confrontation.

At times, people who are given the position of leader abuse their power and lack empathy or compassion for those below them in rank or position. They assume everything they do is correct and that those who question them are wrong, simply because they feel more experienced than their subordinates. Senior personnel also sometimes do not wish to give credit to their subordinates for fear of losing their position as leader and losing confidence in their own abilities.

Furthermore, the organizational environment that houses this type of conflict is one where participants feel closed off from communication and from expressing how they feel or think about anything that bothers them. In many instances, expressing feelings and thoughts — or questioning superiors — is frowned upon because it is seen as a sign of weakness and insecurity. The truth is, suppressing these expressions breeds more conflict, because participants feel ignored, neglected, and misunderstood. In any organization, whether a business or a military unit, voicing one's opinion is often not well tolerated.

To illustrate this dynamic, consider a scenario in which a senior personnel tells a junior personnel that he is wrong to question his leadership. The senior personnel did not follow protocol on a project, and the resulting outcome produced negative consequences for both parties. The junior personnel attempts to offer an alternative method for dealing with the problem in the future, but the leader rejects it, stating he knows better because of his greater experience. The conflict is then exacerbated by the senior personnel's refusal to accept blame and his decision to place blame on the junior personnel instead.

History shows that organizations tend to treat staff as a group rather than as individuals. The problem is that, regardless of how the organization views them, employees remain individuals. These individuals are subject to the negative effects of poor leadership — if such leaders arise — and are typically expected to cope by simply following orders or instructions. Leaders feel they can call the shots and subordinates must obey or leave. This does not apply to all organizations, but it does happen, and when it does, it is sometimes mistakenly believed to lead to positive outcomes.

The Wheel of Conflict: Identifying Root Causes

Conflict is complex and can stem from a variety of causes. Bernard Mayer uses a wheel metaphor to define the causes of conflict. Human needs are the definitive causes of conflict and are seen as the "hub." Other immediate causes — including history, feelings, values, communication, and structure or context — comprise the spokes of the "wheel of conflict." In order to understand a conflict, it is important to examine these immediate causes. "A better understanding of the conflict's history and its context, and of the parties' feelings, values and patterns of communication, will reveal their deeper needs" (Mayer). The range of human needs runs from subsistence, to practical, technical, and emotional anxieties, to identity-based needs for community, familiarity, and self-sufficiency.

Selecting three of these — subsistence, technical anxieties, and emotional anxieties — as examples can help paint a clearer picture of how conflict arises and why it persists within organizations and personal relationships alike.

Illustrating Conflict Through Human Needs

Survival is a key instinct in any human being. Looking at wars throughout history, survival has played a significant role in many of the conflicts that have existed over time. People need to know they will be safe and that their loved ones will be safe. They will therefore fight or challenge anyone or anything that might jeopardize this safety or stability.

Emotional anxieties are another immediate cause that is easy to understand and that can exist for any person. People sometimes fight with others because they feel scared, threatened, or angry. Anger — a complex emotion stemming from any number of underlying feelings — usually leads as the primary feeling experienced by people for whom emotional anxieties are the immediate cause of conflict. People want to feel good as much as possible. When someone causes them to feel a negative emotion, conflict becomes a way of confronting and addressing that feeling.

An example of a survival-based conflict is a man who fights another man because the latter threatened violence against him. He may experience various emotions during the confrontation, but his immediate thought is that if he does not fight back, he will be harmed. Another example involves two women lost in the woods who both spot a piece of food on the ground; a conflict arises from both of their desires to eat and survive. In both examples, the fear of death or harm triggers the conflict.

For emotional anxieties, one example is a man who becomes jealous of another man flirting with his girlfriend. This emotional response causes him to become angry and confront the other man, leading to conflict. Another example is a woman who overhears her friend talking about her negatively behind her back. She feels betrayed and angry, propelling her to confront her friend — and so a conflict is born. Although the feelings differ between examples, the underlying dynamic is the same: strong emotions propel the individual to confront the source, and a conflict arises.

People need to recognize what causes conflicts in order to eliminate or reduce them. These conflicts are not purely emotional; they can also have technical dimensions. Technical anxieties arise when a person fears they are — or will be — seen as incompetent in the actions they perform. As noted earlier, senior personnel sometimes do not want their subordinates to question their actions, because they fear appearing less capable and risk having their position of power taken away. Leaders value authority and control, and when that is challenged, conflicts form around the desire of each party to appear more competent than the other.

The old saying "knowledge is power" applies here: the more someone appears to know what they are doing, the more confident others become in following that person, and the more confident that person becomes in themselves. Conflict will therefore emerge from the need to prove one is right in order to preserve one's role in the group, company, or organization. Although the nature of the conflict may differ — with subordinates sometimes feeling incompetent or insecure — the cause remains the same. No one wants to feel inept, and people will strive to appear capable and confident in order to gain the trust of others.

Conclusion

The initial case of authoritative control can bring several kinds of conflict. Identifying the causes of conflict — such as emotional and technical anxieties and survival needs — is key to understanding how conflict comes to exist and how to recognize it early. Once identified, it is important to manage the conflict effectively. Among the five styles of conflict management, collaboration emerged as the most effective for the scenario examined here. The reason is that both parties need to feel heard and to appear competent, as their positions within the organization demand it.

From there, conflict resolution can arise through the establishment of trust. Trust is integral to collaboration, and without it, a resolution cannot be reached. After the conflict is resolved, it is important to self-reflect on the course of events that led to the conflict, how it was managed, and the resolution achieved. This process is not only helpful in the moment but will also contribute to more effective management of future conflicts.

People will always experience conflict. Learning to identify what causes conflicts — and, most importantly, how to manage and resolve them — benefits everyone involved. Developing conflict resolution skills is ultimately a way of developing more effective ways of navigating life itself.

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