How to Resolve Conflict in Organizations

2Relationships between organizations

The computer users’ groups

I was once hired by three autonomous but conflicted computer users’ groups in Europe. One was relatively small and the other two moderate sized, one larger than the other. There were many arguments among them especially concerning the idea of having one large organization representing all of them, with the three separate organizations merged into one. The main justification for this was that it would leave them all more powerful and more dominant in the computer market. If they weren’t ‘strong’ enough, didn’t have enough ‘weapons’, it wouldn’t help to ‘win the war’. To an outsider, the questions arose “what war?”, “what weapons?” but that was how these computer groups saw the world. ...