organizational conflict - Midterm part

 Organizational_conflict

https://hrmars.com/hrmars_papers/Organizational_Conflicts_Causes,_Effects_and_Remedies.pdf

Suggestion for midterm examination: Exam schedule

Time: 1.5 Hours Full marks: 30
Part A Answer any four of the following questions. 2.5x4 10
1.What is Organizational Conflict?
2. What is Organizational Negotiation?
3. Define emotion.
4.Define task conflict.
5.Discuss process conflict.
6. Define negotiation
7. What is conflict management?
8. What is personnel conflict?
9. What do you mean by employee disagreement?
10. What do you mean by concession?

Part B Answer any two the following questions. 2 x5 10
11. What Causes Employee Conflict in the Workplace?
12. What are the positive & negative effects of conflict in workplace?
13. What are the sources of conflict?
14. What are the causes of conflict?
15. Discuss Decenzo conflict management styles. 
16. Write three examples of conflict resolution skills.

Part C Answer any one the following Questions 10x1 10
17. Identify the important psychological features in employee participation in decision making. Discuss the assumptions that managers must make if they wish to use participation to strengthen operational effectiveness and competitive advantage to reduce conflict.
18. You are a manager in Prime Bank. How can you handle conflict in your work?
19. You are a HR director in Nestlé Bangladesh. You are facing some problem regarding the delegation of authority. As a HR director how can you negotiate? Discuss the negotiation process with diagram.
20. ‘Organisations have to meet the challenge of change by adopting multiple strategies.’ Describe these strategies. Consider what qualities a good planned change programme has and outline the steps in the planned change process to reduce conflict.

sources-of-organizational-conflict

Write three examples of conflict resolution skills

sources-of-organizational-conflict and Write three examples of conflict resolution skills 

What are the causes of conflict?

Answer:

Causes of Conflict

Before attempting to resolve any conflict it is always important to determine exactly what is causing it. Understanding what triggers can cause conflict makes resolution easier to reach and conflict easier to avoid in the first place. There are an infinite number of reasons why conflict can occur in the workplace, however a small number of causes are most common and we have looked at them here.

1. Conflicting resources

Employees rely on accessing resources, such as technology, office supplies and meeting rooms, to perform effectively. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for everyone to access the resources they wish to at all times. If the reason someone cannot access the resources is that someone else is using them then this can lead to conflict. A manager’s job may then be to decide who has the rightful access to the resource and how it will be distributed in the future. 

2. Conflicting styles

No two individuals will work the same. Different methods of organisation, communication and time-keeping are very common in any organisation. This is generally effective as each individual should be allowed to work in their own style. However, when it comes to team tasks this can become problematic, as some individuals will have to compromise on how the work is done. A manager can avoid conflict occurring here by selecting teams based on their similarities and strengths.

3. Conflicting perceptions

Different perceptions of what the organisation’s goals are, the methods used and who is responsible for what can often lead to conflict. Open and transparent communication is the key to avoiding this happening.

4. Conflicting goals

Often different managers will set targets and goals for the same individual and this can often lead to conflicting goals being set. For instance, it is hard to deliver on both speed and quality and hence setting both these targets may cause issues. The conflict here may be between the individual and on or both of the managers or between the managers themselves.

5. Conflicting pressures

Conflicting pressures are similar to conflicting goals, except they usually exist over a shorter space of time. Individuals may be pressured to complete two different tasks by two different managers before the end of the day and this can lead to conflict. 

6. Conflicting roles

Often employees can be asked to perform a task that they are not usually responsible for. This can cause conflict as either the individual feels the task is not appropriate for them or another individual believed it was for them. Whilst this can be avoided by delegating the same tasks to the same individuals, differentiating your team members’ roles can be a good opportunity for learning and development.

7. Different personal values

Personal values determine the way we behave and the work we produce. Often, individuals will disagree about the actions they should take due to their personal values and this can lead to conflict. As a manager, you can ensure your team members are never put in a position where they are asked to compromise their values

8. Unpredictable policies

Rules and policies are not always communicated across an organisation effectively. This can lead to a poor understanding of them and confusion amongst team members. It is important to ensure policies, and particularly their changes, are communicated effectively throughout the organisation to avoid conflict like this from occurring. 

Conflict management

Conflict management refers to the process of eliminating the negative results of conflict while also highlighting the positives that come along with it.

When working on any team, conflict management is a necessary skill. Your business can run like a well-oiled machine, but conflict will persist.

Contrary to what most would think, conflict in the workplace doesn't necessarily mean you're dealing with a difficult employee. When coworkers experience conflict, it not only means they are comfortable enough to express their opinions, but lessons in internal communication are learned on both ends during the conflict management process.

While some personality types might stick with one method in particular, there is more than one way to resolve a conflict. Actually, there are five.

1. Accommodating
2. Avoiding
3. Compromising
4. Collaborating
5. Competing

Accommodating

An accommodating conflict management style is used when you set aside your own wants or needs and focus on those of others. You leave your own concerns behind and accommodate for those of someone else.

Avoiding

An avoiding conflict management style ignores the situation altogether. Either one or both of the people involved in the conflict steer clear of it.

Compromising

A compromising conflict management style tries to find a way to partially satisfy people on both sides of the argument. Adjustments are made on both ends to resolve the conflict at hand.

Collaborating

A collaborating style includes finding a solution that will completely appease all involved parties. A win-win situation, if you will.

Competing

A competing style is for all you headstrong folks. With this approach, you take a firm stance and refuse to budge until you get what you want. You are unmoved by the perspectives of the other parties involved in the conflict.

Part A Question No 2. What is Organization Negotiation?

Answer:

Negotiation in organization, as has already been introduced, involves interaction between two conflicting groups to reach a solution acceptable to both the groups. Thus, effective negotiation intends to resolve conflicting situations, striking a win-win solution acceptable to both the conflicting parties.

Depending on the situation, styles of negotiation may differ. For successful negotiation, managers have to prepare beforehand. In the first place, they must understand the scale of disagreement. If the disagreement is a major one, thorough preparation is necessary, using preferably a work sheet. For minor disagreements such preparations may not be necessary, as it may turn out to be manipulative.


What are the positive & negative effects of conflict in workplace?
Answer:
Conflict: Conflict is a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about.
Effects of Conflict in workplace:
Conflict within an organization can lead to creative solutions. As organizations strive to achieve their goals, they are often met with challenges they must overcome as a team.
Positive effects of conflict in workplace:
• Social Change
Conflict contributes to social change ensuring both interpersonal and intergroup dynamics remain fresh and. reflective of current interests and realities.
• Decision Making
Conflict serves to “discourage premature group decision making,” forcing participants in the decision-making process to explore the issues and interests at stake.
• Reconciliation
Conflict allows for the reconciliation of the parties’ concerns, which can lead to an agreement benefiting both parties’ needs, and often their relationship and organizations.
• Group Cooperation
Conflict between groups produces intra-group unity as the conflict provides the opportunity for increased intra-group
cooperation while working towards the group’s common goal for the conflict’s outcome.
• Inspire Creativity
Fortunately, some organization members view conflict as an opportunity for finding creative solutions to solve problems. Conflict can inspire members to brainstorm ideas while examining problems from various perspectives.
• Share and Respect Opinions
As organization members work together to solve a conflict, they are more willing to share their opinions with the group. Conflict can also cause members to actively listen to each other as they work to accomplish the organizations’ goals.
• Improve Future Communication
Conflict can bring group members together and help them learn more about each other.
Negative effects of conflict in workplace:
• Decrease in Productivity
When an organization spends much of its time dealing with conflict, members take time away from focusing on the core goals they are tasked with achieving. Conflict causes members to focus less on the project at hand and more on gossiping about conflict or venting about frustrations. As a result, organizations can lose money, donors and access to essential resources.
• Members Leave Organization
Organization members who are increasingly frustrated with the level of conflict within an organization may decide to end their membership. This is especially detrimental when members are a
part of the executive board or heads of committees. Once members begin to leave, the organization has to recruit new members and appoint acting board members.
• Violence
When conflict escalates without mediation, intense situations may arise, between organization members. It’s unfortunate, but organizational conflicts may cause violence among members, resulting in legal problems for members and possibly the organization.
• Psychological Problem
Conflict can have both short term and long-term effects on the physical and psychological health of the individuals involved in or affected by the conflict. In worst-case scenarios the psychological consequences can include deep trauma and diminished coping mechanisms.
• Distract Primary Purposes
Conflict can distract individuals and groups from their primary purposes, leaving them with less time and resources for other activities.
When a conflict involves the use of “heavy contentious tactics,” it can cause the individuals or groups involved in the conflict as well as individuals or groups not involved in the conflict to divert time and resources away from other needs.

Concession: 
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word "concession" is “something that is allowed or given up, often in order to end a disagreement, or the act of allowing or giving this.” Concession is a natural element of negotiation and as such the art of conceding is important to master. As conceding deprives us of something, we may feel an intuitive reluctance to make concessions. A necessary skill of a business negotiator is being aware of emotions associated with giving way and rational assessment of every concession. Here the mechanisms of concessions are a helpful tool. Concessions should be made in a way that is consistent with our interests, e.g. conducting talks with a partner, because it can lead to achieving our own goals.
It is important to remember that after some time the situation may prove to be different - one of the signs of such a scenario is the pressure to accept very large concessions. It can also signal that the parties’ interests are more divergent than was originally thought. Awareness of your goal hierarchy is crucial. If a partner demands that you give up the most important thing, it is time to ask for a break and grab the spread sheet. First, check if you have not made a mistake in calculating the expected values, then consider whether this might be a time for looking for another partner, one who respects your interests.
The most known concession mechanisms are:
1. Diminishing steps - each subsequent concession has less and less value. In this way, you can let your partner know that they are approaching the minimum value below which you will not be able to go down. At the same time, instead of making a single concession, a few smaller ones are made. Thanks to this, more stages are created, which means more opportunities to gain something. 
2. Leverage - sometimes a small loss on our side can bring a large profit to our partner. Concessions are not made equal. Keeping in mind the importance of different areas, it is worth checking if a small concession on our part can have a disproportionate value for the partner. In this way, we can provide a substantial profit to the partner at a small expense, and vice versa.
3. Packages - concessions in several areas. The combination of value exchange in several areas gives more opportunities because there are more potential combinations.
4. Gifts - if we give something and we do not take anything in return, two things can happen. First, in the case of a small gift, we can create a desire to reciprocate or increase the partner’s vigilance, depending on the experience of the other party. Secondly, by giving a gift, we teach the recipient that we are the kind of people who give away gifts. In the future, they may demand it.
Using different negotiation techniques and mechanisms of concessions a compromise can be achieved. (“Compromise: an agreement in an argument in which the people involved reduce their demands or change their opinion in order to agree or use mechanisms of concessions” 

5. Questions: Discuss process conflict?

Answer:

Conflict:

A conflict is a clash of interest. The basis of conflict may vary but it is always a part of society. Basis of conflict may be personal, racial, class, caste, political and international. Conflict in groups often follows a specific course. Routine group interaction is first disrupted by an internal conflict, often caused by differences of opinion, disagreements between members, or scarcity of resources. At this point, the group is no longer united, and may split into coalitions. This period of conflict escalation in some cases gives way to a conflict resolution stage, after which the group can eventually return to routine group interaction.

The conflict process—that is, the process by which conflict arises—can be seen in five stages. Those stages are:

1. Potential opposition or incompatibility
2. Cognition and personalization
3. Intentions
4. Behavior
5. Outcomes

Potential Opposition or Incompatibility

The first stage in the conflict process is the existence of conditions that allow conflict to arise. The existence of these conditions doesn’t necessarily guarantee conflict will arise. But if conflict does arise, chances are it’s because of issues regarding communication, structure, or personal variables.

Cognition and Personalization

In the last section, we talked about how conflict only exists if it’s perceived to exist. If it’s been determined that potential opposition or incompatibility exists and both parties feel it, then conflict is developing.

If Joan and her new manager, Mitch, are having a disagreement, they may perceive it but not be personally affected by it. Perhaps Joan is not worried about the disagreement. It is only when both parties understand that conflict is brewing, and they internalize it as something that is affecting them, that this stage is complete.

Intentions

Intentions come between people’s perceptions and emotions and help those who are involved in the potential conflict to decide to act in a particular way.

One has to infer what the other person meant in order to determine how to respond to a statement or action. A lot of conflicts are escalated because one party infers the wrong intentions from the other person. There are five different ways a person can respond to the other party’s statements or actions.

Behavior

Behavior is the stage where conflict becomes evident, as it includes the statements, actions and reactions of the parties involved in the conflict. These behaviors might be overt attempts to get the other party to reveal intentions, but they have a stimulus quality that separates them from the actual intention stage.

Behavior is the actual dynamic process of interaction. Perhaps Party A makes a demand on Party B, Party B argues back, Party A threatens, and so on. The intensity of the behavior falls along a conflict oriented continuum. If the intensity is low, the conflict might just be a minor misunderstanding, and if the intensity is high, the conflict could be an effort to harm or even destroy the other party.


Outcomes

Outcomes of a conflict can be either functional or dysfunctional:
Functional outcomes occur when conflict is constructive. It may be hard to think of times when people disagree and argue, and the outcome is somehow good. But think of conflict, for a moment, as the antidote to groupthink. If group members want consensus, they’re bound to all agree before all the viable alternatives have been reviewed. Conflict keeps that from happening. The group may be close to agreeing on something, and a member will speak up, arguing for another point of view. The conflict that results could yield a positive result.

Dysfunctional outcomes are generally more well known and understood. Uncontrolled opposition breeds discontent, which acts to sever ties and eventually leads to the dissolution of the group. Organizations meet their ultimate demise more often than you’d think as a result of dysfunctional conflict. People who hate each other and don’t get along can’t make decisions to run a company well.