Management Organization
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Week 6 Case Assignment

1. How would you describe the conflict between Michael Eisner and the Weinstein brother, the two board members (Disney and Gold), and Steve Jobs” Was it functional or dysfunctional?

The functional conflict is defined as a confrontation between groups that enhances and benefits the organization’s performance’ while dysfunctional conflict is defined as any confrontation or interaction between groups that harms the organization or hinders the achievement or organizational goals.
Though, a point the Ivancevich makes is that in most cases, the point at which functional confrontation becomes dysfunctional is impossible to identify precisely. My opinion is that the conflict was mostly dysfunctional as it was starting to “hinder the achievement of organizational goals.”. It was also to some small degree a functional conflict as well – but it was largely dysfunctional.

One could argue that this was a functional conflict to a point because Eisner helped turn around Disney in the 1980s and mid-1990s. They were functional in that even though the conflicts existed between Eisner and the Weinstein brothers and with Steven Jobs, the company was successful despite these widely publicized issues. Also, even though the conflicts were high profile in the media, Disney was still very successful. And also functional conflict because Eisner’ Conflicts eventually resulted in his resignation and he was replaced by Iger.
Iger, did lead the company to 67th in the Fortune 500 ranks and to a value of $40 billion. He turned the company around with several company acquisitions. And this would have not happened if Eisner would not have been replaced by Iger.

Yet, I would still say this was much of a dysfunctional conflict . No one knows how much more