Abstract

The article focuses on difference between conflict management and conflict resolution. The early evidence suggests that the 1970s may be remembered in the annals of management history as the decade that conflict management came to the forefront as a major interest of both practicing managers and academic researchers. A recent study of middle and top-level executives by the American Management Association can be generalized from managers spend approximately 20 percent of their time dealing with conflict. Conflict is defined here as any kind of opposition or antagonistic interaction between two or more parties. It can be conceptualized as existing along a continuous range. The development of conflict thought has gone through three distinct stages. Practitioners are not alone in their enamoration with the traditional philosophy. Most current academics, in spite of their explicit recognition that conflict can have positive value, direct their efforts singularly to the topic of conflict resolution.