Unawareness of conflict among partners: a sociodramatic intervention/El conflicto no reconocido entre los socios: una intervencion socio-dramatica/O nao reconhecido conflito societario: uma intervencao sociodramatica

This article displays a key managerial problem, involving conflict among eight owners-partners of a medium-size service company located in Rio de Janeiro. It describes the search of the circumstances that brought about the conflict, the undertaken investigations, and the results of the intervention which was carried out. Taking into account the analysis and interpretation of the conflicting situation, two encompassing themes were considered as the key for understanding and solving the issue: a) the theoretical studies about conflicts within organizations; and b) the theoretical foundations of sociodrama and the sociodramatic intervention techniques. Theory on organizational conflict was used for designing the script of a semi-structured interview, performed with each owner-partner, aiming at arousing individual perceptions on the conflict. These interviews were the first part of the fieldwork. Treating the evidences under the discourse analysis viewpoint, categories were identified and provided more accuracy for framing the issue. in a second phase, sociodramatic intervention techniques were applied in meetings with all the owners-partners. Results point out that sociodrama is a possible alternative at small and medium-sized companies' disposal for managing conflict among several owners. Key words: Conflict, Partners, Intervention Techniques, Sociodrama. Este trabalho apresenta um problema administrativo de carater estrategico envolvendo um conflito entre oito socios proprietarios de uma media empresa prestadora de servicos, constituida na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, por meio do levantamento das circunstancias que deram origem ao conflito, das investigacoes empreendidas e dos resultados alcancados com a intervencao feita. Tendo em vista a analise e a interpretacao da situacao conflituosa, dois temas abrangentes foram considerados centrais para a compreensao e o equacionamento do problema: (a) o referencial teorico sobre conflitos em organizacoes e (b) a fundamentacao teorica do sociodrama e as tecnicas sociodramaticas de intervencao. As referencias teoricas sobre o tema "conflito" foram utilizadas para a elaboracao do roteiro de uma entrevista semiestruturada, realizada individualmente com cada um dos socios, que constituiu o primeiro momento do trabalho, a fim de observar como cada um deles percebia o conflito vivenciado. Essas referencias foram tratadas segundo a perspectiva da analise do discurso e permitiram identificar categorias que deram maior precisa