A Review of Conflict Management Techniques in Projects

Abstract

This paper aims to find the mostly occurring reasons for conflicts in projects and mostly used techniques to resolve the conflicts. It is/was proposed a model of conflict management for projects. Total a hundred five reasons for conflicts in projects are identified from secondary research. From that top-10 reasons for conflicts in projects are founds based on number of references in the literature. Abstract management literature. Hence, this paper is a contribution in that direction describing a conceptual model of conflict management, conflict lifecycle, conflict management process, different reasons for conflicts in projects, frequently used conflict resolution techniques in projects and implementing the solution in projects. The different reasons for conflicts in projects are identified using the collected literature based on each reason and its frequency of occurrence in gathered literature. Similar technique is used to find the frequently used conflict resolution techniques in projects. These details are tabulated in [Table 1-Table 4]. They are arranged in the decreasing order of occurrence in the literature.

A conceptual framework for effective management of conflict risk within Agile software development environments

“…Conflict risk that is effectively mitigated yields positive team interactions and engagements (Gren 2017). Studies by Crawford et al (2014), Sudhakar (2015) and Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016) agreed on the following benefits of effectively managed conflict risk within project teams:…”

“…When there is accomplishment of the above benefits within an Agile environment, there is likelihood of successful, an effective team environment, which positively influences the attainment of successful implementations of various Agile projects within organisations (Sudhakar 2015).…”

“…The existing literature (Balbes 2014;Crawford et al 2014;Gren 2017) has tested this theory within Agile environments in other countries. Researchers such as Sudhakar (2015), Nesterkin and Porterfield (2016) and Gren and Lenberg (2018) have investigated conflict and its significant presence within software development teams. The study findings show that about 76/179 participants, which makes over 40% of the participants experienced conflict risk or some sort of disagreement within their respective Agile teams (Table 2).…”

“…Effective conflict risk and Agile environments are two facets that need to be orderly and effectively coordinated to achieve organisation technology sufficiency (Saxena et al 2016). Sudhakar (2015) stated that effective conflict-risk management delivers an improved and increased team maturity and effectiveness within Agile environments. Agile assists companies to fulfil the demand for the increasing ever-changing customer needs and requirements.…”

A knowledge management perspective of the project management office

“…The notion of culture in a project management context is complex because projects involve a number of experts from various fields, backgrounds and professions, who typically have their own cultures and ways of working, which are not necessarily in harmony with one another or with the prevailing culture of the entire project (Ajmal et Koskinen, 2008). These cultural differences can either be a source of creativity, broadening perspectives on organizational issues, or they can be a source of difficulty and miscommunication (Sudhakar, 2015).…”