Conflict is widely seen as one of the central principles of organizational life. Interpretations of its origin, nature and effects vary substantially, however. In particular, beginning in the 1980s, accounts associated with human resource management and Japanese management often argued that conflict was being eliminated, or at least being made into a minor feature of organizations. This developing orthodoxy contrasts with an earlier one, that conflict was inevitable and even desirable: the issue was not its elimination but its management.

The continuing centrality of conflict is indicated by, first, the conceptual argument that conflict is a central principle of any organization in which workers labour under the authority of management. Second, levels of overt dispute in the Western world have not declined by as much as is sometimes thought, and such declines have been balanced by increases in overt conflict in the Third World. Last, studies in organizations where conflict may appear to have been eliminated, notably Japanese firms and 'high-tech' companies, show high levels of work pressure and a tendency for conflict and tensions to be internalized within employees, rather than being expressed as open disputes between management and worker. Claims that conflict can be eliminated misunderstand how organizations work. It is not a question of its elimination, but of the changing ways in which it is organized and expressed.

Paul K. Edwards