Evaluating Conflict between Employees: Exploring the Costs to an Organization

Conflicts between employees result in decreased job satisfaction, negative relationships within the organization, and a loss of employee commitment to both the organization and the specific job performed. Workplace conflicts have high costs to businesses. In aviation, the results of conflict can be deadly. The Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) is designed to help people learn practical strategies to mitigate conflict. A sample of 228 people from the aviation industry completed a pre-training survey, participated in scenario-based SDI training, and then completed a post-training survey regarding the effectiveness of the SDI to help them manage conflict. Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance was conducted to determine how conflict management training, based on the Strength Deployment Inventory assessment, affected cognitive improvement in handling and successfully managing conflict situations. Results show following training, conflict management skills increased. Additional studies should be conducted to further validate these findings across other industries.