Conflict Management In Organizational Structures of The Future: A Comparative Analysis Between Conflict Management In New Organizational Structures Vs. Conflict Management In Traditional Organizational Structures

Organizational structures are evolving, and so too is conflict management. Environmental and technological catalysts are provoking organizational structures to become more digitalized and remote. Over the past few years, new organizational structures have arisen to address changing work environments. For the first time within conflict management literature, we investigate conflict management in emerging, non-traditional organizational structures. More specifically, we illustrate how conflict management and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices are conforming to the innovative and hyper-decentralized nature of these new structures. Over the course of four months, we collected empirical and qualitative insights on different mechanisms new organizational structures are using to handle conflict. More specifically, we examined conflict management practices within the emerging “Decentralized Autonomous Organizational” (DAO) structure. At a lower level, this article finds that DAOs and traditional organizational structures significantly differ in the ways that each structure handles conflict. DAOs are redefining traditional practices of conflict management to complement the idiosyncrasies of their structure. More broadly, this article reinforces the theory that organizational structure is a key determinant of how conflict manifests itself within an organization, and ultimately, how that conflict is managed.