Identifying and defining conflicts is not a cake walk. It needs skills of conflict management. Especially in the workplace, two main types of disputes have been noted.
These are: Disputes of rights and Disputes of Interest. Disputes of Rights are where people or groups are allowed by law, by contract, by previous agreement or by customary practice to certain rights.
Disputes of right will focus on conflict issues such as service contracts, legally enforceable matters or one-sided changes in accepted or traditional practices.A dispute of rights is, therefore, usually settled by legal judgment or adjudication and not by conciliation.
Second stage in identifying and defining conflicts is "Disputes of interests"; where the disagreement may be a subject of judgment, such as where a person or group is at liberty to some resources or rights. Because there is no recognized law or right, a clash of interest will usually be solved through combined bargaining or compromise.
Identifying and defining conflicts requires alertness of its various developmental stages. If leaders in the circumstances can recognize the conflict matter and how far it has developed, they can every so often resolve it before it becomes much grave.
Identifying and defining conflicts comprises some typical stages which may comprise a situation where possibility of conflict exists - in other words where people distinguish that lack of resources, diversity of language or civilization may result in argument if people are not receptive to the latent conflict where a competitive state could easily spill over into conflict.
An open conflict can be generated by an event and abruptly become real conflict. And last but not the least is aftermath conflict - the condition where a particular dilemma may have been resolved but the possibility for conflict still subsists. If one person or group perceives itself as being caught up in a win-loose situation then the potential may be even more than before.