People experience conflicts throughout all their lives, from birth to death. They include conflicts between man and nature, man and society, man and a group of people, individuals, inner conflicts. Conflicts are varied and inexhaustible. This article focuses on the ones arising in the course of human labour activities.Conflicts are clashes brought about by disagreement, during which a person feels hostility and anger. At the same time, conflicts are a norm of life. If you have no conflicts at all, check  if you are still alive.Inevitability of conflicts in a human life does not mean their absolute necessity. Unfading power of conflicts over man causes a lot of harm. More often than not conflicts are hazardous for a person, even if they are useful for the society and the employer. Conflicts lead to stress, driving people to hospitals, mental asylums and graves. It is true for both the «bad» and the «good» conflicts.A sure-fire way not to take part in a conflict is to avoid it. But this is not always possible and necessary. That is why man learned to prevent conflicts, settle the negative ones and manage the positive ones, which bring about development. And it is not easy, for a conflictis disguised under a multitude of sophisticated and elaborate masks.There can be no winners in a conflict, for it is not something to be won – a conflictis settled. Whatever the outcome of the conflict is, all the conflicting parties suffer losses. The difference can be only in the proportion of these losses.People have always been interested in the nature of conflicts, conflict studies date back to the Ancient Times, but only now they are being shaped into a science and a discipline. Even more: conflict studies as a science are very young if we consider them from a historical perspective (Table 1).