One conflict management strategy a manager can use is to compromise, which means the parties to the conflict settle on a solution that gives both of them part of what they wanted. Neither the manager nor the employees get exactly what they initially wanted. Instead, all parties agree to an organizational change that they presumably can accept.

Managers who choose to compromise generally feel that a solution completely acceptable to everyone would be difficult to reach and that they would rather not force someone to accept a completely unwanted choice. Compromise is generally appropriate to adopt as a conflict management technique if a planned change is relatively minor and the time in which to make the organizational change is somewhat limited.

Some managers use the avoiding technique as means to manage conflict. Avoiding is a conflict management technique whereby managers simply ignore the conflict. For example, if a sales manager finds that individuals in the human resources department are a continual source of conflict because they are inflexible and resist proposed changes, the manager might choose to avoid dealing with the department. The manager can opt to propose and implement desirable changes by dealing with others in the organization besides the human resource personnel.

This strategy makes sense if you assume that all conflict is bad. If you successfully avoid all conflicts, the work environment might seem positive on the surface. However, managers do often disagree with others in the organization, and sometimes people with opposing, conflicting viewpoints have important ideas to share. Managers should thus be selective in avoiding conflict. The avoiding technique is perhaps most appropriate when the potential conflict will not limit organizational goal attainment.

The avoiding technique should also be assessed in relation to the high level of workforce diversity that exists in most modern organizations. An employee’s point of view can often seem puzzling, irritating, or completely incorrect to a manager if the employee is of another race, age, or sex. Managers must work hard to understand people who are different and must give equal attention to the views of all employees, not just those the manager easily understands. Pretending that everyone views a situation the same way is inappropriate and may give some employees the belief that their manager is discriminating against them.

Managers must keep in mind that people from many non-Western cultures believe it is best to avoid conflicts, and they thus place a higher value on harmony than on confrontation. Employees with such values are less likely than employees from Western cultures to become involved in conflict with a manager regarding an organizational change that is being implemented. To make sure that organizational change is designed and implemented most effectively and efficiently, a manager must ensure that employees know he or she wants to be informed of all employees’ thoughts about how to improve organizational change.

Rather than avoid conflict, a manager may try a more direct approach to manage conflict. Forcing is a technique for managing conflict in which managers use their authority to declare that conflict is ended. In essence, managers can declare this because they have the authority to do so. For example, assume that a worker complains to a manager that a recently changed and implemented procedure is unfair because the procedure does not allow the worker a fair share of overtime hours. Managers can force the acceptance of a change simply by declaring, “I make the assignments, and your job is to do what you’re told.”

The management of work teams also illustrates how managers can force an end to conflict. For example, assume that a manager is leading his employees in a project to reduce the time needed to deliver a product and that because of conflict within the team regarding what change should be made and how it should be made, the team is virtually deadlocked about what to do. In such situations, managers may simply force or dictate what organizational change needs to be made and how it should be made.

Forcing a solution is a relatively fast way to manage a conflict, and it may be the best approach in an emergency. However, forcing a solution can frustrate employees, and this frustration might lead to future management–employee conflict.

Perhaps the most direct—and sometimes the most difficult—way to manage conflict is to work out the difference(s) between managers and employees. This conflict management strategy is called resolving. The manager initiates this technique by pinpointing differences related to organizational change that exist between managers and employees. Pinpointing these differences requires managers and employees to listen to others’ viewpoints in a sincere effort to understand rather than to argue. Next, managers and employees should identify the issues on which they agree and the ways they can both benefit from implementing the change. Both management and employees should examine their own thoughts honestly and carefully to reach a mutually agreed-upon change-related strategy.

Resolving is based on an assumption about the conflict that is somewhat different from the assumptions of other strategies for conflict management. The other techniques tend to assume managers and employees are in a win–lose conflict. In other words, the outcome of the conflict will be that one side wins (achieves a desired outcome) and the other side loses (does not achieve a desired outcome). In contrast, resolving assumes that many conflicts are win–win conflicts, in which the resolution can leave both management and employees achieving desirable outcomes and, correspondingly, can help the organization maximize organizational success.