Why might a manager want to stimulate conflict in a group or team? How could conflict be stimulated?

Stimulating conflicts in a team or a group seems to be an odd thing to do.  

I can think of  two possibilities

1. The good possibilty that the manager  wants to see how his team/group members deal with conflicts as some sort of training, where the manager interferes in the situations arising from these conflicts to resolve them and teach his people how to deal with the subject of crisis and crisis management.
2. The bad possibility that the manager wants to live and prosper by planting conflicts among his people to get them busy fighting each other instead if fighting him/her, this way also mitigating any risk or threat from any of the group/team members against him/her personally.

I may agree with the first case, but with caution so as not to create/encourage negative feelings to grow within the team/group.  However, I am totally against the other case and I really feel sorry for the team/group members, the managers themselves and even for the organizations and companies having such practices in them

As a manager this is a dangerous strategy and should be avoided as conflict can cause long term damage.   However, it is perhaps necessary when a team is going no where or are not performing and are in a comfort zone.  It may be necessary to create chaos as a process to awaken the team to new possibilities and in this chaotic process conflict will occur but at the same time learning happens and people start finding each other in the group and new friendships are forged as well as improved performance.  however one must be guarded with such interventions as one must have a strategy to install order when chaos has reached its limit or goal.