Diversity conflict at work

DIVERSITY CONFLICT AT WORK
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According to Pelled, (1996), within a workgroup, diversity with regards to the demographic background of members can affect both the performance of the group on cognitive tasks and turnover. This means that managers are in the best position to enhance the effectiveness of a workgroup through gaining an understanding of the effects that diversity has on the outcome. One of the models that managers can adopt to enhance the latter is a speculative model that helps to explain the revenue and the consequences of mixed performance of the miscellany of demography within a working environment.
Some of the intervening variables in this model include communication frequency, internal task process, and social integration. However, as much as the latter is considered as concrete variables, effective and substantive conflict are somehow different from the other variables (Pelled, 1996). In one way or another, the manner and means of communication determine whether a conflict will resurface or not. In the event that members of a workgroup send hostile or negative messages whether verbally or non-verbally, the outcome will result in a conflict between the members. As a result, members of the administration including the employees themselves ought to come up with strategies that will help minimize the rate of conflict as much as possible.
However, as much as conflict can reduce workgroup outcomes, studies suggest that it can also increase work outcome performance.

Substantive conflict is proposed to promote or rather improve performance on cognitive tasks while affective conflicts ought to reduce cognitive performance even though it enhances and promotes turnover. Therefore, the nature of diversity present within a workgroup directly determines whether a conflict within a group of workers would increase or reduce the level of performance.

Reference
Pelled, L. H. (1996). Demographic diversity, conflict, and work group outcomes: An intervening process theory. Organization science, 7(6), 615-631.