An FCM Approach to Better Understanding of Conflicts: A Case of New Technology Development
A critical problem of organizational conflict management is this fact that managers fail to understand different individuals' (or groups') interpretations about goals, distribution of resources, work procedures, and etc. These various perceptions are based on stakeholders' different values, beliefs, and weltanschauung. This paper argues this main concern of organizational conflict management and develops a general systemic approach to build a platform that makes this kind of conflict easier to be analyzed. The basic idea of this platform is the cognition of individuals' thoughts and representing them in form of fuzzy cognitive maps. Once these fuzzy cognitive maps are drawn, Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) is used to analyze the maps and outrank the concepts according to their importance for a specific individual. Finally, by combining individuals' perceptions through their preference of concepts, a pluralistic environment is built. This platform is very useful for management to study the sources of conflicts among individuals and better strategies to solve them. A conflict on using Voice over IP (VoIP) technology instead of satellite telephones in offshore industry is used as an illustration of this approach.