Functional vs. Dysfunctional

When most people hear the word conflict, they think of the term in a negative manner. However, conflict can actually be a positive within an organization. Conflict can offer new solutions, improve situations, and bring about change. Two types of conflict that can occur within a company are functional and dysfunctional. Functional conflict is healthy, constructive disagreement between groups or individuals, while dysfunctional conflict is unhealthy disagreement that occurs between groups or individuals. The difference between functional and dysfunctional conflict is that functional serves a purpose in the organization such as the interest and dysfunctional serves no purpose but to threaten the organization.

Functional conflicts are constructive, support your company's goals, and improve performance. It generally involves people who are interested in solving a problem and are willing to listen to others. Functional conflict is a great way to improve your company’s performance and generate new ideas. It involves getting your company to either defend or criticize ideas based on relevant facts rather than on the basis of personal preference or political interests. There are two techniques for doing this: devil's advocacy and the dialectic method. The devil’s advocacy is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position they do not necessarily agree with for the sake of debate or to explore the thought further. The dialectic method is discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation. These methods help to find a better solution to the problem which is done peacefully and without any problems. Positive results of functional conflict include, improvement of working conditions due to accomplishing solutions together, solving issues together to improve overall morale, making improvements within an organization.

Dysfunctional conflicts are disputes and disagreements that impede your company's performance. This generally involves people...