Conflict Resolution in Project Management Teams

This paper presents work in progress that attempts to identify the unique characteristics of current engineering project management teams that tend to foster conflict and the best practices to maintain healthy levels of conflict without allowing either artificial suppression or uncontrolled proliferation. Many factors are often proposed as sources of conflict in modern engineering projects including greater interdependencies of diverse specialists, tighter budget tolerances, accelerated schedules, information overload, and incompatible individual differences in personal characteristics of team members. This paper discusses the role of these factors and the suitability of particular conflict resolution approaches in different project stages.