FOR PHYLLIS YOUNG ONLY

Running head: CONFLICT MANAGEMENT ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 4

Literature Review: Annotated Bibliography

Joe Student

Liberty University Comment by Bill White: You have done a good job on the title block. It contains the formal title of the paper (centered in uppercase and lowercase letters, a Level I heading), the author’s full name, and the author’s educational affiliation.

Abstract Comment by Bill White: Abstract is well written with Keywords.

Conflict management is a critical leadership and management concept. Conflict is an inevitable part of any organization. With people come conflict. Conflict may be task conflict, relationship conflict, or process conflict. Conflict is influenced by many factors including personal, organizational, and cultural factors. The conflict management style a manager uses is extremely important. Conflict management styles include competitive or dominant, avoidant, and collaborative. Conflict management strategies must be focused on managing and not eliminating conflict. Managers should promote functional conflict while reducing dysfunctional conflict. Managers who are effective at managing conflict must show emotional intelligence, demonstrate fairness and justice, and must understand that managing conflict is about dealing with individuals, and not just following protocols. This literature review provides an overview of the important aspects of conflict management, with a focus on understanding conflict, conflict management styles, and assessing conflict management strategies.

Keywords: conflict management, task conflict, relationship conflict, process conflict, conflict management styles

Conflict Management Annotated Bibliography

Beheshtifar, M., & Zare, E.  (2013). Interpersonal conflict:  A substantial factor to organizational failure.  International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 3(5), 400-407.  Retrieved February 13, 2015, from ProQuest.  http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.liberty.edu:2048/docview/1437525170?pq-origsite=summon Comment by Bill White: The name and volume number of journals are italicized (APA Manual, 6th ed., p. 198). The issue number is not italicized. Comment by Bill White: Great. This is a direct link to the article, which is what I expect. I do not accept a link to the Search page where the article can be found.

Malikeh Beheshtifar is part of the Management Department in the Rafsanjan Branch at the Islamic AZAD University in Iran. Behestifar is a scientific member of this university. Behestifar is also affiliated with Razi University and has a background in computer hardware.

Elham Zare is part of the Management Department in the Rafsanjan Branch at the Islamic AZAD University in Iran. Zare has Bachelor’s degrees in environmental engineering and Spanish language and literature, as well as a Master’s degree in Iranian language and culture.

This article was published in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. The focus of this article is on interpersonal conflict in an organizational context. Specifically, the authors discuss the causes of interpersonal conflict and offer strategies for managing conflict in an organization. Conflict management styles is also an important concept in this research article. Comment by Bill White: This is a good brief description and summary of the article

This is a helpful research article. It provides good discussion on interpersonal conflict, including some of the causes. It offers additional sources of conflict that revolve more around conflicts between individuals, rather than conflicts within groups. This is a relatively broad source. There is a lot of discussion around many different concepts. This is helpful for providing a basic overview of several topics, but it does not offer in-depth analysis about any one topic. It also does not include a research study from which to gather data. The information included is relatively straightforward, however, and does offer some practical strategies that may be helpful for managers and leaders. Comment by Bill White: This is a good description of why the article is helpful. Comment by Bill White: Goo This is a good description of whether the article is too broad or narrow. Comment by Bill White: This is a good description of whether the article is too broad or narrow.

This research article will be utilized for background information on a number of different topics. This article will be included in the topic of conflict. Understanding conflict is the first step to understanding conflict management. This article contains information about what interpersonal conflict is. It also provides information on the different sources of conflict, including personal and organizational factors associated with conflict. This article will also be used in the section on conflict management strategies. Comment by Bill White: This is a good explanation of how the research fits the research paper.

Note from Dr. Bill White:

As per the DB instructions to earn an A grade, the annotation for each reference includes all of the following:

You must follow current APA format for an annotated bibliography, including:

1. A brief description and summary of the article;

2. An evaluation of the source – is the information relevant to your research?

3. A determination of how the article will be utilized in the literature review; and

4. An assessment of the article according to the focus of the research and provide criticisms.

5. Provide answers to the following questions:

a. Who is the author and how are they qualified?

b. How does the source fit in the topic chosen to research?

c. Is the source helpful?

d. Too broad or too narrow?

e. How will this research fit into your research paper?

6. Minimal to non-existent grammatical and current APA errors.

a. The Liberty University Online Writing Center is available for your writing assistance.

Outline

At the end of the Annotated Bibliography, beginning on a new page, you will provide a detailed Outline of your Literature Review. See the outline provided for details regarding preparing an outline for a paper.

You must use full sentences and incorporate all of the references that you have found for the Annotated Bibliography. The outline must be in current APA format and a minimum of 3 pages.

Your Literature Review: Annotated Bibliography and Outline must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday of Module/Week 5.

I encourage you to set up these elements in the above order and separate them when you write each of your 15 bibliographies. Leaving out any of these four elements will reduce your grade significantly.

The Annotated Bibliography requires 14 more peer-reviewed journal articles from scholarly journals (15 total peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles) written in detail like the one above. Leaving out any of these elements in the Annotated Bibliography will reduce the grade significantly. Articles that are not peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals do not count in the minimum requirement of 15, but can be used as supplemental material to the 15 peer-reviewed articles. If there is not an author listed, this is usually a red-flag that you do not have a peer-reviewed article from a scholarly journal.

As you can see, this assignment requires a lot of detail, so I encourage you not to wait until week 5 to begin collecting peer-reviewed articles from scholarly journals. You will do poorly because you will not have time to write the level of detail I will be looking for in each annotation. It will be a very stressful week if you attempt to do this in a weekend and you will most likely not be very satisfied with your grade. Some students fail this assignment because they do not include all the elements listed above in each of the bibliographies. Depending on the number of authors per bibliography, my guess would be that if your paper is less than 10 pages long, you have left out the expected detail to receive a good grade. You should begin collecting your articles as soon as I have approved your topic in week 1.

Once the bibliography has been completed, you also need to include an outline of your literature review at the end of the bibliography. The outline should be approximately 3 pages in length and include Level 1. 2, and 3 headings. I have pasted a very good outline below. Keep in mind, your outline needs to be written out in sentence form and should be a minimum of three pages.

The following outline would earn an “A” grade for this assignment.

Conflict Management Outline

1. Conflict Management

1. Conflict management is a necessary competency for all organizations due to the prevalence of interpersonal conflict and the potential damage caused.

1. Conflict is inevitable (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012). The key is learning how to properly manage conflict.

1. Conflict

1. Conflict is a part of every organization. Interpersonal conflict is “conflict that occurs between two or more individuals that work together in groups or teams” (Beheshtifar & Zare, 2013, p. 401).

1. What causes conflict?

1. Conflict occurs because “of the perception of incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others while achieving goals” (Kim, Yamaguchi, Kim, & Miyahara, 2014, p. 143).

1. Sources of conflict include economic conflict, value conflict, and power conflict (Behestifar & Zare, 2013).

1. Workplace conflict typically falls into three categories: task conflict, relationship conflict, or process conflict (Satterlee, 2013).

1. Task conflict is associated with functional conflict, while relationship conflict is more typically dysfunctional (Boyle, Hanlon, & Russo, 2012). The research, however, is not always consistent (Loughry & Amason, 2014) (O’Neill, Allen, & Hastings, 2013).

1. Process conflict “relates to disagreements as to how the work will be accomplished and the task achieved” (Hopkins & Yonker, 2015, p. 227).

1. Factors associated with conflict

1. Personal factors associated with conflict include individual differences, threats to status, lack of trust, and incivility (Beheshtifar & Zare, 2013) (Kim, Yamaguchi, Kim, & Miyahara, 2014).

1. Organizational factors associated with conflict include limitation of resources, unfair treatment, role ambiguity, role incompatibility, organizational change, contradiction of goals, information deficiency, and environmental stress (Beheshtifar & Zare, 2013).

1. Workplace conflict can lead to information distortion, which interferes with decision making (Boyle, Hanlon, & Russo, 2012).

1. Emotions play a major role in conflict in the workplace (Hopkins & Yonker, 2015) (Posthuma, 2012).

1. Cultural factors must be considered when trying to understand what causes conflict (Kim, Yamaguchi, Kim, & Miyahara, 2014).

1. Conflict Management Styles

1. The conflict management style utilized by a manager can have a strong influence on organizational effectiveness (Choi, 2013). It also can influence employee strain (Way, Jimmieson, & Bordia, 2014).

1. Personality traits are somewhat predictive of conflict management styles (Komarraju, Dollinger, & Lovell, 2012).

1. A person’s mood or feelings may influence the conflict management style chosen (Posthuma, 2012).

1. Dominant or Competitive Conflict Management Culture

1. A dominant, or competitive, conflict management culture “is unlikely to relate positively to team functioning and team effectiveness” (Choi, 2013, p. 688).

1. Those who engage in competitive conflict management “are inclined to compete and dominate the conflict partner and seek victory and perceive both the board room and shop floor as battlegrounds in which you eat or are eaten” (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012, p. 1132).

1. Avoidance

1. “Avoiders tend to shy away from addressing conflict and go to great lengths to suppress the expression of conflict” (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012, p. 1132).

1. There are mixed findings as to the efficacy of an avoidant conflict management style (Choi, 2013).

1. Some argue that avoidance will only make the problem worse (Satterlee, 2013).

1. Avoidance can stifle idea generation and creativity, but some studies have found that avoidance can “increase the effectiveness of both team functioning and team effectiveness” (Choi, 2013, p. 688).

1. Collaborative

1. Collaborative conflict management culture is “consistently associated with positive workplace performance and group level outcomes” (Choi, 2013, p. 688).

1. Collaborative conflict management culture is “positively related to organizational viability—cohesion and potency—and lower levels of burnout” (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012, p. 1141).

1. Conflict Management Strategies

1. Why conflict management?

1. Conflict should not be avoided but rather should be managed in order to “enhance individual, group, and system-wide effectiveness” (Beheshtifar & Zare, 2013, p. 405).

1. A healthy conflict management culture can improve job satisfaction and organizational effectiveness, while an unhealthy culture can have the opposite effect (Choi, 2013).

1. “Organizations increasingly require systems of conflict management to properly administer disciplinary action, minimize adverse personnel consequences, avoid litigation, and provide at least rudimentary organizational justice” (Gross, Hogler, & Henle, 2013, p. 100).

1. Promoting Functional Conflict

1. Task conflict can be utilized to improve organizational decision-making (Boyle, Hanlon, & Russo, 2012).

1. Strategies for promoting task conflict include devil’s advocacy and dialectical inquiry (Boyle, Hanlon, & Russo, 2012).

1. Leaders “model what is an appropriate and a normative way to manage conflict in the unit” (Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012, p. 1141).

1. “Conflict may be more of a concern when members’ satisfaction is the focus compared to objective performance indicators” (O’Neill, Allen, & Hastings, 2013, p. 254).

1. Components of Effective Conflict Management

1. Effective conflict management requires some level of bureaucracy, in the form of “objective, well-defined procedures” (Gross, Hogler, & Henle, 2013, p. 100). Conflict management systems do not provide the benefits that some literature have suggested (Roche & Teague, 2012).

1. Conflict management must involve “reasoned, justifiable, and legitimate discourse” (Gross, Hogler, & Henle, 2013, p. 100). Errors in communication can breed conflict (Spaho, 2013).

1. Effective conflict management requires considering the individual and individual cases, rather than “disinterested application to every case” (Gross, Hogler, & Henle, 2013, p. 94).

1. Emotional intelligence abilities help managers manage conflict better (Hopkins & Yonker, 2015) (Posthuma, 2012).

1. There are “four guiding principles in conflict interaction” (Kolb, 2013, p. 80). The conflict management process includes diagnosis, intervention, conflict, learning & effectiveness, and feedback (Spaho, 2013).

1. Perceived justice or fairness is an important component (Way, Jimmieson, & Bordia, 2014).

1. Conclusion and Recommendations

1. The literature included in this review provides a great overview of the many aspects of conflict management. Understanding conflict management as a concept requires looking at the topic from many different angles. The available literature provides a great deal of research on what works and what does not work, which is critical for organizations that are relying on the research from which to devise and implement strategies.

1. The available literature provided a great deal of information on conflict management. There was a good balance of theoretical discussion and practical applications. It was clear that the researchers understood how important conflict management is and why it is so important. There was also some literature that raised interesting questions, questioning current theory and not simply accepting what prior researchers had found.

1. While there is a lot of literature on conflict management, a great deal of the research felt somewhat redundant. While this is of course not a comprehensive literature review on the subject, in this subsection of research it felt that there could have been more diversity.

1. There were several subjects which could use additional research because of the potential implications. The way that culture may influence conflict and conflict management is an important consideration and should be explored further. Recommendations for conflict management strategies are not very helpful if they do not address a diverse workforce. The concept of justice was also found in several articles, but could be explored further.

1. Effective research requires developing a hypothesis and testing it to find out the results. In order for the research on conflict management to be improved, researchers must be willing to explore new possibilities. Several studies seemed to accept certain things as a given, while other studies raised questions. Why is task conflict accepted as a method for functional conflict while the research does not seem to support it? Why are conflict management systems touted as a solution for organizations when the research does not support their efficacy? Researchers need to address these questions and more. Organizations and employees are depending on quality research in order to become more successful, and poor research will only waste time and money for everyone.

This student did a great job on the outline covering the following requirements that are listed in Blackboard:

You must use full sentences and incorporate all of the references that you have found for the Annotated Bibliography. The outline must be in current APA format and a minimum of 3 pages.