Conflict In The Workplace For Electronic Communication

Types and Causes of Conflict in the Workplace

Discuss about the Conflict in the Workplace for Electronic Communication.

Conflict in the workplace has been a global challenge, but it has been attributed to poor strategies laid by the organization towards capping such incidences. Conflict occurs due to the organization’s inability to provide very basic services to the employee and employers. For instance, inability to have a well-formulated communication framework, poor job responsibility allocation, biases in the process of salary increment and promotion as well as biasness promote different types of conflicts such as  employee to employer , and employee to employee conflicts. However, some conflict has as well risen from one’s personal emotions, which may have been brought by the organization or by her/him. From most reviews, conflicts within the organizational set up have various effects such as increased rate of employee turnover, reduced profitability, increase resource wastes by employees and poor productivity.

Conflicts in the workplace have been among the rising trends in most of the organization. According to McConnon & McConnon (2011)’s research, most of the managers spend almost 25% of the time in the office working on conflicts in the workplace. As also explained by Harper (2012), with the rising cases of globalization, conflicts have been enhanced by various changes within the organization’s   set up, structures and strategies. Different generation within the workplace has also been one of the major challenges facing most managers within the workplace.   According to Henly & Lambert (2014), to some of the organizations, conflicts have been positive comparing to most negative cases experienced by most nations. Despite the encouragement synthesized by managers on   mild level conflicts, most of the organizational conflicts have always resulted to destructing and a general decline in performance or operations of the organization (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2011). Lytle (2015) explains the various types of conflicts of Interdependence conflicts, differences in style, differences in background/ gender, differences in leadership and personal clashes.

According to Institute of Leadership & Management ( 2012), the major causes of conflicts have been attributed to, poor communication among employees, and between the employers and their employees. Different personalities among the organizational employees have been one of the other causes of conflicts. Leka & De Alwis (2016), also provides three more causes of conflicts in the workplace such as: different employee values, internal and external competition regarding salary, promotion, and productivity and lack of equal opportunities. On the other hand,  as explained by Butts, Becker, & Boswell (2015),  conflict within the organizational set uprising due to unclear job roles, ineffective or insufficiently trained management, an increase in workload, unresolved issues from the past, unfair treatments, poor working conditions and unfair treatments.

Dealing with Workplace Conflict

According to Matsudaira (2017)’s research, dealing with conflicts in the workplace is hard, but this relies on the strategies formulated by the organization‘s mitigating procedures. Regardless of the provided steps of tackling the conflicts within the organizational set up, the process has not yet been achieved. However, sometimes with the help of either employee unions, labor trade unions always solutions have been achieved. In most cases, a conflict has not always been following the required channels of communication. This is based on the nature of conflicts, sometimes it requires direct address form tend manager in comparison to others that may require legal asset procedures of solving. But Shweta & Jha (2010), provides the better solution, better keys used in dealing with workplace conflicts, he states the major parts were providing better communication channels, hitting conflicts head on I.e. managers rather managers need to reduce the channels used in solving the conflicts if it’s an Internal controlled conflict. Third, he express high optimism in understanding the WIIFM factor, and as manager, conflicts need to be seen as opportunities for learning and teaching.

The study will chronicle around the employee-employer conflict at workplace in respect to organizational performance. The study hypothesis includes:

H1: Constant employees’ workplace conflict slows organizational performance

H2: Employee-Managers conflicts hinders proper managerial strategy formulations

Conflicts for a long time have been part of the failures of some organizations. For instance, conflicts have led to either the distraction of the organization’s properties, increased employee turnover, and reduced employee morale which entirely leads to: reduced productivity and the general reduction of the firm’s profitability. However, according to Karabay, Akyüz, & Elçi (2016), conflict can result in amazing ideas; they can also lead to changes and improvement.

For the effectiveness of the research, I would involve two Interviewees from one of the major manufacturing company with more than 5,000 employees. I would opt to use such Interviewees, first based on their ability to have a wide perspective of various reactions and behaviors from the other workmates considering it is the company with largest employees within the region. As a nature of displaying gender equality, I would use the company’s Human Resource Manager, a female and the company’s casual employee who was a man. On selecting, I would decide using the company’s resource manager considering their wide knowledge of the company’s employees. In most cases, different generation interaction may result in the conflicts, but as for the case, I would opt not to discriminate regarding age differences as there existed several generations within the organization which would have to complicate the whole process of the research.

Method

In conducting the Interview I would interview them separately starting with the manager on how they are perceived e the issue of conflicts, their strategies of solving the conflicts, the organizational set up aimed at reducing conflict, the departmental managers on why do conflict always occur at the departmental level, which is the best ways does the departmental level managers solve the issues what are the main causes of the conflicts. As for the employees, I would entirely focus on directly questioned son why do they get involved in conflicts, how does the management vary the issues of conflicts towards solving them? 

As the way of getting the required data, I mainly focused on using simple questionnaire but mostly applied Interviews as this would help me get the personal experience of the research issue. The question would always vary from employee to the manager. Thus, the data was majorly collected through questionnaires, Interviews, observation and focus groups of the employees and the employers. The whole process would take 2 days with the first day interviewing the executive manager, the second day the employees.

Interview Questions	Feedback
Manager
What are major causes of conflicts at the departmental level?	Poor communication strategies between the departmental managers. Inappropriate delegation of a job from the top executives. Poor managerial skills from the top management. Due to personal differences. Noncompliance with the organizational policies and regulation. Misunderstandings.
What do you consider when promoting and increasing employee salary?	As for the company, we don’t have a well-stated platform through which the employee can be compensated; we just award promotions and salaries by the behavioral manner of the employee.
How do you handle the conflict cases between employers and employees?	We have a structured platform and channel to follow to the final stage.
Have you ever experienced any conflict within the organization, if yes how did it affect you like the organization?	The key effects accompanied by the conflict would involve, increased employee turnover rates, reduce a rate of production, and low-profit realization.
What is the organization doing to reduce the issues of conflicts?	Proper Communication. Eliminating biases. Providing an effective framework to salary increments, promotion and in rewards.
Employee
What are the most causes of conflicts?	Poor communication strategies Poor managerial activities Poor job allocation framework. Poor rates and means of salary increment and employee rewards on promotions. Do you consider the process of conflict resolution by the organization to be effective?
How do conflicts incidences affect you personally?	First, it lowers y working morale, it inserts job insecurity in me and highly results to stress.

As per the results, conflicts result from various organizational challenges which are brought by both the organizational management and employees.  Conflict is the reality within organizational setup and it has the negative impact on the functioning and the operations of the organization. As from the results received, the nature of conflict tends to vary depending on the nature of activities. It would be clear that there exist differences between the employees and employees, managers and departmental mangers and between departmental managers themselves.  The major reasons for the occurrences of these conflicts as defined from both the employee and managers are poor nature of communication. Communication is an important tool for passing information.  Inadequate or inaccurate information or message creates differences responsibilities within the workplace creating a channel to conflicts. As explained by Ko (2016), the nature of communication within the business entity may result in either its destruction or its construction. On the other hand, major causes of conflicts would entirely involve biases in the process of promotion within the organization. This reflects the nature of either nepotism, racism.

As explained by Lawless & Trif (2016), conflicts have significant impacts towards the company’s daily activities and the level of productivity. He explains that, conflicts form the major causes of organizational strikes which may lead to material destructions. In most of the incidence, strikes usually result in either a closure or a temporal closure of some organization. Conflicts have a negative impact based on the decreased rate of production.  Better productivity within an organizational set up is achieved with well-established strategies that provide employees with the working morale (Johnson & Keddy, 2010). Thus, conflicts lead to employee morale reduction, increased employee turnover which leads to the general reduction in the organizational productivity. The whole process of conflicts as described by solving through some steps such as maintaining a positive outlook, as a manager there is need to establish a program aimed at providing the fair  rate of promotion and salary increment. Conflicts cases can as well be reduced through establishing a good structure framework in case there exists no current conflict resolution framework.

References

Butts, M. M., Becker, W. J., & Boswell, W. R. (2015). Hot Buttons And Time Sinks: The Effects Of Electronic Communication During Nonwork Time On Emotions And Work-Nonwork Conflict. Academy of Management Journal , 53 (8), 763-788.

Cloke, K., & Goldsmith, J. (2011). Resolving Conflicts at Work: Ten Strategies for Everyone on the Job. John Wiley & Sons, .

Harper, J. (2012). 10 Tips for Tackling the Toughest Workplace Conflicts. Retrieved 04 5, 2017, from https://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2012/07/18/10-tips-for-tackling-the-toughest-workplace-conflicts

Henly, J. R., & Lambert, S. J. (2014). Unpredictable Work Timing In Retail Jobs: Implications For Employee Work-Life Conflict. ILR Review. , 67 (3), 986-1016.

Institute of Leadership & Management, (2012). Managing Conflict in the Workplace. Routledge.

Johnson, C., & Keddy, J. (2010). Managing Conflict at Work: Understanding and Resolving Conflict for Productive Working Relationships. Kogan Page Publishers.

Karabay, M. E., Akyüz, B., & Elçi, M. (2016). Effects of Family-Work Conflict, Locus of Control, Self Confidence and Extraversion Personality on Employee Work Stress. 12th International Strategic Management Conference, ISMC 2016 , 235, 269-280.

Karabay, M. E., Akyüz, B., & Elçi, M. (2016). Effects of Family-Work Conflict, Locus of Control, Self Confidence and Extraversion Personality on Employee Work Stress. 12th International Strategic Management Conference, ISMC 2016 , 235, 269-280.

Ko, C.-H. (2016). Exploring The Relationship Of Conflict Between Family And Work Among Hotel Employees. International Journal of Organizational Innovation. , 8 (3), 239-247.

Lawless, J., & Trif, A. (2016). Managing interpersonal conflicts at work by line managers. Irish Journal of Management , 35 (1), 74-87.

Leka, S., & De Alwis, S. (2016). Work, Life and Personality: The Relationship Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Work-life Conflict. South Asian Journal of Management. , 23 (4), 31-53.

Lytle, T. (2015). How to Resolve Workplace Conflicts . Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/070815-conflict-management.aspx

Matsudaira, K. (2017). Resolving Conflict. Communications of the ACM , 60 (1), 42-44.

McConnon, M., & McConnon, S. (2011). Managing Conflict in the Workplace 4th Edition: How to Develop Trust and Understanding and Manage Disagreements. Little, Brown Book Group

Shweta, & Jha, S. (2010). Antecedents of Interpersonal Conflicts at Work-place. Journal of Management & Public Policy. , 1 (2), 73-79.