The experts have been divided over the role of conflict in organizations and groups. However there are mainly three schools of thought that emphasize the different roles of conflict in the organizations. These three schools of thought present the traditional view, the human relation view and the interaction view.

(i) The traditional view: The traditional view believed that conflict is harmful for the organization. This view considered conflict as a totally negative phenomenon and considered it synonymous with violence and destruction. In the traditional view conflict was believed to be a dysfunction outcome of factors like poor communication, lack of trust among the employees and a failure of the management to respond to the needs and desired of the employees. It was believed that conflict could cause a loss in productivity and too much conflict at the work place could also distract the managers from efficiently discharging their duties. In this way we see that the traditional view considered conflict as a totally bad thing and advocated its complete avoidance. This sometime resulted in a tendency to suppress the conflict and push it under the carpet. By ignoring the presence of conflict, we somehow try to wish it away. Both the scientific management approach and the administrative school of management related heavily on developing such organizational structures that would specify task, rules, regulations procedures and authority relationships so that if a conflict develops, then these inbuilt rules will identify and correct problems of such conflict. Thus, through proper management techniques and attention to the causes of conflict, it could be eliminated and organizational performance improved.

(ii) Human Relation View: The proponents of human relations view believe that conflict was a natural occurrence in all groups and organizations and the management should accept conflict at work place. This theory says that conflict is avoidable by creating an environment of goodwill and trust. But still conflicts are bound to happen due to differences in opinions, faulty policies and procedures, lack of cooperation, allocation of resources which will lead to distortion and blockage in communication. Accordingly, management should always be concerned with avoiding conflict if possible and resolving it soon if possible, in the interests of the organizations and the individuals.

(iii) The Interactions view: The inter-actionist approach went a step further from the human relations approach which accepted conflict but the inter-actionist view in fact encouraged conflict. This view is based on a belief that conflict could be a positive force in a group but it is even necessary for a group to perform efficiently. Thus this approach encourages conflict as these approaches believes that if there is harmony, peace and co-operation in a group it can become static and non-responsive towards the needs for change and innovation. Therefore it becomes imperative that the leader of the group allows some conflict in the group so that it remains creative viable and self critical. This conflict however should be kept under control at all times so that the dysfunction consequences of conflict avoided.

Conflict is present in everyday life of individual as well as organizations. We can say that wherever there is an interaction, there is conflict. Conflict influences is the behavior, performance and satisfaction of the employees and is a major challenge for the managers when they have to deal with differences among the employees or groups at work. The conflicts pose regular challenges for the managers thus it becomes important for the managers to understand the concept of conflict and also the ways to handle to conflict effectively. There are many ways to define the conflict it has been considered as an expression of hostility antagonism aggression rivalry and negative attitude. It is also linked with situations which involve the contradictory or irreconcilable interests between two opposite parties. Louis R Pondy has given a comprehensive definition of conflict in which he says that the term conflict is used in four different ways:

(i) Antecedent conditions of conflict-full behavior such as scarcity of resources or policy differences.
(ii) Affective states of individuals involved such as stress, tension, hostility anxiety etc.
(iii) Cognitive state of individuals, that is their perception or awareness of conflict situation; and
(iv.) Conflict behavior ranging from passive resistance to over aggression.

Thus we see that conflict is a predictable social phenomenon which can be channelized to used purposes by the managers. From the organizational point of view conflict has following features:

(i) Conflict arises when individual are not able to select the available courses of action

(ii) A conflict between two individuals means that they have contradictory values, perception and goals.

(iii) Conflict involves a series of events and is a dynamic process. Every conflict is made up of a series of inter connected episodes.

(iv.) A conflict should be perceived by the parties involved in it if the parties are not aware of the conflict it is commonly assumed that there is no conflict between the parties.

To create high performing teams that are more effective, following steps could prove to be helpful:

1. Size of the work Teams: The size of the work teams affects the performance of the teams to a larger extent as the best work teams tend to be small in size. As the group members have to share the ideas and information, interact with each other and take the decision, it will become difficult if the group is very large. Larger groups generally lack commitment, cohesiveness and mutual accountability, which are very essential for achieving high performance. The optimum member of members in a group should be from 10 to 15. If the group is larger, manager should try to break it into sub groups.

2. Selection of Members: Efficient managers choose members for teams on the basis of their existing skills and also on the basis of their potential to improve the existing skills and learn new ones. No team succeeds without all the skills needed to meet its purpose and performance goals. To perform effectively, generally a team requires three different types of skills:
(i) Technical skills.
(ii) Problems solving and decision making skills, so that the employees are able to identify problems, generate alternatives, evaluate those alternatives and make competent choices.
(iii) Interpersonal skills e.g. good listening, feed back, conflict resolution etc.
The right mix of all the three skills is essential for the teams for achieving their performance potential.

3. Belief in the purpose of the team: Teams work best in a compelling context. All the members of the team are required to believe that the team has worthwhile and urgent purposes. They like to know the expectations from them. the more meaningful and urgent is the purpose of the team, the more are the chances that the members of the team will live up to the expectations, as was the case for a customer-service team that was told that further growth for the entire company would be impossible without major improvements in that area. Teams work best in a compelling context. This is the reason why organization that have strong performance ethics generally form teams willingly.

4. Selecting right people for the tasks: Effective teams are those which properly match people to various roles. The principle of “Right man for the right Job” should be followed by the team. Teams have different needs and people should be selected in the teams on the basis of their personalities and preferences. By matching individual preference with team role demands, mangers increase the likelihood that team members will work well together. Therefore, the job of every manager is to understand the strengths that each person can being to a team, select members with their strengths in mind and allocate work assignments that fit with member’s preferred styles.

5. Preliminary observations: Particular attention should be paid to actions and the first meetings as the first impression is always very important. When the members of prospective teams meet for the first time, every member is looking at the signals that are given by other members. This way the members make their own assumptions or in case they already have some information, they use these signals to substantiate, defer or dismiss these assumptions. Actions speak louder than words. Particular attention is paid to what, the team leaders or the executives, who otherwise influence the team, do or how they behave. Initial impressions always carry weights.

6. Purpose of the team: Every team should have a meaningful purpose towards which all the members should be committed. This common and meaningful purpose, which is generally broader than the specific goals, provides direction, momentum and aspiration for members. Every team should have a common purpose which is acceptable to the whole team. Members of successful teams spend a tremendous amount of time and efforts into discussing shaping and agreeing upon a common purpose. This purpose should be such which is acceptable to them as individual as well as collectively as a team.

7. Code of Conduct for the members of team: All the effective teams set some clear rules or behavior in the beginning which helps these teams to attain their goals. The most critical codes of conduct pertain to:
(i) Attendance, punctually and regularity.
(ii) Confidentiality
(iii) Analytical approach i.e. to speak only on the basis of facts.
(v) Constructive confrontation i.e. no finger pointing.
(vi.) Contributions in the form of real work.

8. Establishing Specific Goals for teams: The common purpose of the successful team is translated into specific, measurable and realistic performance goals. The success of most of the teams can be traced back to major performance oriented measures. Such measures can be initiated by establishing the performance goals. Teams cannot exist without performance outcomes. Specific goals help teams maintain their focus on getting results.

9. Common Approach: After the specific goals have been established, high performance teams also need leadership and structure to provide focus and attention. A common approach ensures that the team is unified for the purposes of achieving the goals. In this context the team members must agree upon the following issues. Who is to do what, How to share the workload, How the schedules are to be set, how and what skills are to be developed, how to resolve the conflicts, how to make and modify the decisions? To agree upon all the above matters, team leadership and structure are required. Leadership and structure can be provided by the management or by the team members themselves.

10. Supplying latest information to the teams: Teams generally make mistakes when they come to the conclusion that all information required is already present in the combined understanding and experience of the team members. A team leader should challenge the team members regularly by providing them with new information. It will cause the team to redefine and enrich is understanding of the performance challenge thereby, helping the team shape a common purpose, set clearer goals and improve its common approach.

11. Encouraging personal bonding: Team members must spend considerable time with each other, particularly during the early phases. It is very important to build up the personal bonding and creative insights which is possible through casual interactions as well as analyzing the facts and interviewing the customers. It is not necessary that all the members should always be together physically, but they can be together by talking over the phone or with the help of other means of communication.

12. Making every member individually responsible and accountable: In an effective time, individuals are made individually and jointly accountable for the team purpose, goals and approach. Every member should be very clear as to what he is individually responsible for. Otherwise some members try to hide inside a group. They try to take advantage of the group efforts because their individual contribution can’t be identified. This tendency can be curbed by making the individuals accountable at both individual as well as team level.

13. Suitable Performance Evaluation: As the individuals are accountable at both the individuals at both the individuals as well as the team levels, the traditional methods of evaluating individual’s performance will not be consistent with the development of high performance team. Thus, the management should consider group based performance appraisals along with individual performance evaluations.

14. Recognition and Rewards: Positive reinforcement can improve teams effort and commitment. There are a lot of methods to recognize and reward the performance of a team like profit sharing, small group incentives etc. Suitable awards can be given to the members of the team to recognize the contributions made by them. However, in the end the satisfaction shared by a team over its own performance becomes a cherished award in itself.

15. Developing Trust among Members: These should be high level of mutual trust among members. They should believe in the integrity, character, competence, consistency loyalty and openness of each other. Building up and maintaining trust requires a careful attention by the management as it takes a lot of time to build but can be easily destroyed and is hard to regain. Moreover trust and distrust begets distrust. Thus, for high performance teams, it is a must that there should be high degree of mutual trust among the team members.

The teams are classified on the basis of the objectives they have to achieve. Generally we find these three types of teams in organizations self manage teams, problem solving teams and cross functional teams. These three different types of teams are discussed in detail:

(i) Self managed teams
Usually there are ten to fifteen members in a self managed team who have taken the responsibilities of their former supervisors. They are responsible for the collective control over the speed of the work and the determination of work assignments. They are also responsible for the organization of breaks and the collective choice of inspection procedures. These teams even select their own members and these members evaluate each others performance. Supervisory position take on decreased importance and in some cases, can even be eliminated.

Business journal are all over the world are full of articles describing successful operation of self managed teams. These teams help to increase the employee satisfaction and the volume of business of the companies. These teams lead to reduction in costs and increase in productivity.

In spite of the increasing importance of self managed teams, some organizations have been disappointed with the results of these teams. The overall research on the performance of these teams has also not been very positive. The employees working in self managed teams seem to have higher absenteeism and turn over rates than do employees working in traditional work structures. The specific reasons for all this are not very clear and require some additional research.

(ii) Problem solving teams
These are the traditional types of teams and in the beginning almost all teams of this form. Generally there are five to ten employees in every department who meet for a few hours every week to discuss the methods to improve efficiency and the quality of work. The purpose of these teams is to share the ideas and listen to the suggestion about the methods of improving the work processes. These teams usually give the suggestions only and do not have the authority to implement these suggestions. The quality circles are the most common form of problem solving teams. These teams are not very popular among the present day organizations as these could only suggestions but could not implement these suggestions and take the responsibility for the outcomes of these suggestions.

(iii) Cross functional teams
The cross functions teams are most popular forms of teams in the recent days. These days teams are made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. The examples of cross functional teams can be task forces and committees. A task force is a temporary cross functional team and committees are group made up of members from across departmental lines.

Cross functional teams are an effective means for allowing people from diverse areas within an organization (or even between organizations) to exchange information, develop new ideas and solve problems and co-ordinate complex projects.

Despite the usefulness of cross functional teams, these teams are quite difficult to manage. Particularly, the initial stages of development are very time consuming as in these stages members learn to work with diversity and complexity. When people from different back grounds, experiences and with different perspectives come together, is takes time to build trust and team work. It will depend upon the capabilities of managers to facilitate and build trust among team members.

The experts are almost unanimous on benefits of teams in the business organizations. Teams have become immensely popular in the organizations as these offer the following benefits:

1. Improved output due to Positive Synergy: Teams have the potential to create high levels of productivity due to positive synergy created by them. The output in the form of performance productivity is generally more than the summation of inputs put in the form of employee efforts. There is draw back of positive synergy also. Sometimes, managements resort to cuts in staff to use the positive synergy to get the same or greater output from fewer people.

2. Improved Organizational Communication: As the teams encourage interactions, it will lead to improved communication. In case of self managed teams, interpersonal dependencies are created which require the members to interact considerably more than when they work on jobs alone. Cross functional teams create inter-functional dependencies and increase organization wide communication.

3. Enhanced Employee Motivation: Work teams help in enhancing the employee motivation. Because work teams encourage employee involvement, these make the jobs more interesting and fulfill the social needs of the employees. Individuals are likely to perform better when they are working in the presence of other people. Individuals will work harder and put in a lot of extra efforts to remain in the team’s good graces.

4. Organizational Flexibility: Management has found that teams are more flexible and responsive to changing events than the traditional departments or other forms of permanent groupings. Teams have the capability to quickly assemble, deploy, refocus and disband. All this is because of the reason that teams focus on processes rather than functions. They encourage cross training so members can do each other jobs and expansion of skills. This expansion of skills increases organizational flexibility.

5. Satisfaction of Social Needs: Man is s social animal. He always feels the need of affiliation. Teams can satisfy this need of the employees by increasing worker interactions and creating a feeling of brotherhood and friendship among team members. Such employees are always in a better position to cope with stress and they enjoy their jobs more.

6. Commitment to Team Goals: Teams generally develop a common purpose, commitment to that purpose and agreement upon specific goals. All this combined with the social pressures exerted by the teams result in a high degree of commitment to common team goals. The individual members sublimate their individual goals for the common goals of the group.

7. Benefits of Expanded Job Training: The implementation of teams work always leads to expanded job training. Through this training employees build their technical, decision making and interpersonal skills.

Though the introduction of teams does not always achieve these benefits, but we can’t ignore the reality that team movement currently has tremendous momentum and reflects management’s belief that teams can be successful in a wide range of settings. These are obviously contingency factors that influence the acceptance and success of teams.