Combined with examples of how to prevent harmful conflict in organizations and stimulate beneficial conflict at the right time

Robbins, a famous American organizational behaviorist, believes that "conflict is a process that begins when one party senses that the other party is negatively affecting or will negatively affect something they care about". Simon, a representative of the school of managerial decision-making, defines conflict as "the disruption of an organization's standard decision-making mechanisms, leading to difficult choices for individuals and groups". Professor Joss Ward, who was the president of the International Association for Conflict Management, believes that: "Conflict is a state of tension in which individuals or organizations interact with each other due to mutually incompatible perceptions of goals or emotions", and he believes that conflict arises when one person's behavior creates obstacles and interferences with others, and that conflict and violence and quarrelling are two different things.

With the development of management, people's understanding of conflict has also changed, foreign scholars to the evolution of the concept of conflict is divided into three phases, namely, the traditional point of view, interpersonal relations point of view and interaction point of view of three stages. The traditional view of conflict is that conflict is undesirable and negative, and it is often used as a synonym for riot, destruction and irrationality. Therefore, conflicts should be avoided. The interpersonal view is that conflict is inherent and unavoidable, and that it should be accepted and its existence rationalized. Conflict cannot be completely eliminated, but sometimes it can be beneficial to the performance of the group. The interaction view is that conflict should be encouraged and kept at a low level, which keeps the group alive.

The study of the top management team (TMT) in Western theory first originated with Hambrick and Mason (1984), and the purpose of the study was to explore whether it was the individual leader (CEO) or the top management team that played a role in the development of the company's growth. A large number of studies and corporate practices have shown that top managers, as the management of a series of issues such as development strategy, performance management, stakeholder management and senior talent assessment, stand in a visionary position and operate as a team that plays an important role in performance improvement.

So what exactly is the senior management team? At present, the theoretical community to define the composition of the senior management team has a number of perspectives, mainly: the senior management team is composed of the company's founders of the collective; senior management team refers to at least 10% of the company's ordinary shareholding of a group of people's collection; the senior management team is composed of the CEO, the general manager and the functional managers of the team; the senior management team is to actively participate in the discussion of the issue and decision-making management personnel. In China, the senior management team generally refers to the leadership team responsible for the day-to-day production and operation of the enterprise decision-making, including the general manager, chairman of the board of directors, deputy general manager and other managers.