This study investigated a strategy designed to reduce the level of organizational conflict associated with the selection of individuals to be included in an organizational management development program. In this context, it was hypothesized that the application of the assessment center concept, as a means of selection personnel for management development programs, would minimize organizational conflict development associated with this organizational function. In testing the hypothesis, the level of dissatisfaction among the members of an organizational sub unit which had been subjected to assessment center evalua tion was compared with that in another organizational sub unit wherein a different process was used in performance evaluation.
The hypothesis was accepted. Thus, it was concluded that the use of an assessment center for performance evaluation, as opposed to some other evaluation process, would lead to lower levels of organizational conflict development with respect to the selection of individuals for participation in management development programs.
Some 20 odd years ago, Paul Lawrence (1969, 4), at the Harvard Business School, said that one of the most "baffling and recalcitrant of the problems which . . . executives face is employee resistance to change." Resistance to change is a form of organizational conflict. In the late 1950s, James March, and Herbert Simon (1958), in their classic, Organizations, identified two major types of organizational conflict. The first type involved decision related problems, in which the conflict was primarily within individuals, while the second type was related to the different choices made by different individuals and was, thus, conflict between individuals.
Many instances of organizational conflict involve elements of each of the conflict types. One such instance is the selec tion of individuals for inclusion in an organization's manage ment development programs. Th...