CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0   BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The word 'conflict' is universal because today organizations are faced with vast array of conflicting situations.
Conflict is wide spread in human societies and runs through the whole organization both profit and non-profit making organization. It arises among members in an organization and even within the personality of an individual. Thus, conflict is one of the most difficult challenge a manager faces.
The American Heritage College Dictionary defines conflict as "a state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideals, or interest; a clash". A modern view of conflict is defined as follows: "conflict is a process in which one party perceives that its interest are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.
The use of the word perceived in the Second definition is a reminder that the source of a conflict can be real or imagined. Conflict can also mean that there is a difference in opinion or agreement between two parties or groups who are trying to achieve the same goal, causing one of the parties to feel that his or her efforts to achieve the goal is being hindered or .challenged by the other party. When disagreement is poorly dealt with, the outcome can be contention, creating a sense of psychological dissonance between people.
Conflicts occur due to the dynamic state of things today in organization and the society at large. In this way we could say that there is a growing recognition of the importance of conflict in organization. A recent survey that managers spends a considerable portion of their time dealing with conflict, and that conflict management has become increasingly important to their effectiveness most especially in the area of organizational productivity, therefore we can say that conflict is inevitable and important in human process.
In the earlier stage, conflict was viewed as evil and also linked with violence, destruction arid irrationality to re-engage it negative connotation by this definition "Conflict" is regarded as harmful and must be avoided.
To the "traditionalist" the absence of conflict in an organization is an evidence of success in status- quo interest, yet the existence of conflict in an organization shows that the degree of co-operation is generally present in a well-managed organization. Due to this, we could say that conflict is better off when it is managed than eliminated. In this way one agrees that with the growing realization, conflict has a number of benefits as well as costs.
Therefore it needs to be managed rather than eliminated. The various ideals about conflict, human relations argued that conflict is a natural and inevitable occurrence in all groups and organization and that conflict is a normal and natural consequence of human interaction :n organization settings, but they are complex and its occurs for many reasons. For example, internal stress coming from the person and overlapping with the job, incompatible expectations among workers, workers group and values etc. With these the human relations come out with the idea that conflict need not be evil, but rather has the potential to be a positive drive in determining organizational productivity, thus it is inevitable and unavoidable.