Meaning, Nature and Scope of Conflict in Nigerian Workplaces

Conflict is a pervasive reality which resonates and occurs globally in diverse forms. UNDP (2014) noted that conflict and a sense of personal insecurity have pervasive adverse impacts on human development and leave billions of people living in precarious conditions. Conflicts have short and long term impacts which affect both conflicting and non-conflicting parties in different ways. This is most poignant at work, where workplace conflicts can escalate, inflict enormous harm on firms, employers, managers, employees, unions etc and pose a great threat to societal as well as national stability and progress. Hence, it becomes expedient for stakeholders at work to promptly and amicably settle conflicts whenever it erupts. It is against this backdrop that this paper calls for synergy between workplace parties and institution in developing accessible and transparent mechanisms for resolving workplace conflicts in Nigeria, given the complexities of our economy and low industrial capacity utilization in private and public enterprises