I've been working in IT for 20 years. I worked at a large, reputable company for 10 years. While with that company, I learned that people can try to resolve conflict by themselves and that managers will become involved when people can't resolve those conflicts. Since I left, I've worked at many start-up companies, and I've noticed that there seems to be a trend in management to let parties resolve their own conflicts. While I believe that people should resolve their conflicts directly if they can, I also believe that many times the conflict can't be resolved without a mediator. And as long as there is conflict, people will not truly work together effectively for a common goal. Is this just bad management practice, or is it a trend? There's an ongoing debate about how to manage in general, and how to manage conflict in particular.
On one side are those who suggest that managers should lead quietly from the sidelines and only facilitate the activities of their teams. On the other side are those who believe that Machiavelli probably had it right: Pure power is the route to order and productivity.
Most of the time, these arguments are based on the successes (rather than the failures) of political, military, religious, moral and/or high-level business leaders. Rarely are they couched in the down-to-earth lives of middle managers in modern corporate structures. The underlying assumption is that what works for the grand and heroic will transfer unchanged into the ordinary, workaday life of the cubicle.
These arguments are by nature philosophical and not necessarily practical. They explore general principles of management and are rarely subtle enough to account for differing styles and behaviors appropriate for different types of work, different staff populations and different corporate or national cultures.
That said, I doubt that all the philosophical wrangling among academics, journalists and consultants is responsible for the behavior you are witnessing with increasing frequency. Despite engaging in such conversations myself, I don't know how much influence they have on the practice of individual managers. My guess would be that what you are experiencing is not the result of a management trend but of some patterns in technical management that I have observed.