Governing Change: Why Conflict Competence Is a Strategic Capability

By Janne Sven Krippl

Negotiation Consultant, Rational Games Academy

March 3, 2026

In almost every major organisational transformation project I have worked on in

recent years, conflict has emerged early on and persisted for longer than anticipated.

This is not because people are incapable of change. It is because transformation

creates conditions under which conflict becomes inevitable.

The frequency and impact of transformative dynamics affecting organisations have

increased in recent years due to spending cuts, regime changes and the rapid

adoption of new technologies. These create perceived uncertainty among staff,

overload management and increase coordination costs.

Nevertheless, many organisations treat conflict as a side issue, avoiding it or delegating it to HR until it becomes unavoidable and extremely disruptive. From a practitioner's perspective, this is a costly strategic mistake. Conflict is a feature of transformation.

In the context of transformation, conflict rarely stems from "individual bad behaviour".

Instead, it emerges across all organisational levels and topics. Typical examples include:

• Employee: „I am no longer sure whether this new role fits who I am“ (identity conflict).

• Team: „I feel disadvantaged by my responsibilities compared to those of my colleague“ (conflict of perceived fairness).

• Manager: „I am expected to make decisions on matters that I do not have time to fully understand“ (decision overload conflict).

• Organisation: „Cutting HR spending while relying on external labour markets“ (conflict of incentives).

Conflict creates measurable cost.

Six months into a departmental reorganisation, an employee experiences burnout

due to a sustained heavy workload and ambiguous role. He leaves and is quickly

replaced. Within another six months, the new employee shows similar symptoms.

After repeated periods of sick leave, he leaves the organisation as well.

On further inspection, the root of the problem was not a lack of individual resilience, but the unchanged organisational setup that was producing chronic overload. Treating stress as a personal problem merely postpones the conflict at significant cost.

As John Paul Lederach illustrates with his earthquake metaphor, conflict has both a

root cause (geocentre) and a visible manifestation (epicentre). Addressing only the

visible manifestation leaves the underlying dynamics untouched.

In organisational transformation, when root causes are ignored, and only symptoms are managed, conflicts resurface repeatedly, often with greater intensity.

Conflict usually manifests emotionally, but is paid for economically: eroded trust, staff disengagement, change fatigue, and leadership time spent on firefighting are just some examples of measurable organisational costs if change management does not address conflict early and seriously. Conflict competence as a core strategic capability for transformation

management.

Organisations invest heavily in conflict and negotiation training. However, training individuals alone is neither effective nor sustainable if the surrounding system does not support its application. Training individuals without changing leaders' mindsets and team dynamics is like teaching people to swim against the current. Handling conflict and negotiating well during periods of change, both within the organisation and externally with shareholders and clients, depends as much on leadership culture and incentives as on individual skill.

Conflict competence describes an organisation's ability to surface, address, and work through conflict in a productive manner while minimising the risk of escalation and negative consequences. As part of strategic transformation management, it must be deliberately developed at all organisational levels where conflict arises, including:

• Employee level: Develop emotional regulation and negotiation skills through targeted training.

• Team level: Clear roles and processes that enable psychological safety and facilitate the use of disagreement for co-creation.

• Management level: Leaders develop a mindset that increases their capacity to manage and de-escalate conflict rather than outsourcing it.

• Organisational level: Aligning management incentives with long-term value

creation, and building in-house conflict resolution capacity to support teams

and units during periods of change.

In practice, this means that conflict competence and negotiation capacity must be

embedded in any organisational transformation management process. These are not

just nice-to-haves, but core strategic competencies that empower organisations to

embrace change and innovation.

Organisations that fail to invest in these capabilities pay the price elsewhere, in the

form of delays, disengagement and burnout. Those who do invest move faster, learn

earlier and recover better when tensions inevitably arise.

Get in touch if you'd like to discuss how organisational conflict competence can be

incorporated into transformation and governance structures. Comments and

questions are welcome.