A workplace is always composed of people with different personalities, tempers, communication styles, and worldview. Their interrelations are thus affected by these factors and whenever there is a miscommunication, a conflict will be triggered. Although the conflicts vary in nature, the most severe cases occur when there is inter-role conflict due to a communication breakdown that has failed to highlight and allocate responsibilities efficiently. Both employees and the organisation are affected in the process. Some tasks may go unaccomplished due to the collision of responsibilities that later leads to a blame game when the work is not done. Organizations have thus encountered instances of high employee stress due to this issue. However, with an effective communication strategy, the roles allocation can be done in such a manner that they do not overlap hence improving efficiency, accuracy, and productivity of the workforce. It is, therefore, important to highlight the issue of role conflict that is currently affecting many organizations in the world.
Role Conflict
While trying to meet the demands of two forces, an employee will face a collision of functions that requires his/her attention despite being only able to tackle one at a time. For instance, when trying to serve clients and undertaking a manager’s directions, the two responsibilities overlap, and thus the productivity of such an employee is deemed to reduce (Beehr, 2014). Although there may be instances where conflicting roles makes an employee more aggressive to work and challenges them to develop pace in their tasks delivery, it remains one of the major contributors to stress in the workplace. The intervention of a manager in solving such cases is paramount.
According to Durkheim and Lukes (2014), communication is a significant tool in addressing conflicts in an organisation. It is ironic that it is the primary source of conflicting roles and at the same time the perfect solution to it. Any misunderstanding due to the unclear communication of roles in an organisation can lead to a massive backlog of tasks that would have been easily done by clearly and carefully assigning them to the available staff. Depending on the domain of the conflict, the most affected persons are those working on the delegates tasks. Although the organisation may be affected due to reduced productivity, their effect is negligible and in most cases can go unnoticed if the employees do not forward any complaints (Einarsen et al., 2016).
Domains of Role Conflict
Role conflict occurs in two major categories both touching on the workplace. First, intra-role conflict experience by task allocation from different persons creates an environment that quickly triggers high job stress level. Due to the hierarchy of communication that is to be followed, the affected employee may not be able to reach out to the management about the issue. Furthermore, the aspect of job security confronts most staff making them mute about the issue. As a result, their psychological well-being is affected at work, and according to Beehr (2014), it serves as the beginning of a series of emotional attacks, which may make an employee more hostile to others. Further, the authors claim that at some point, the staff may consider it as a discrimination hence lowering his/her morale at work.
The second category is an inter-role conflict, which has its effects across the entire domain of life. For instance, when an employee who is both a parent and a nurse at the same time will experience inter-role conflict as both ends demands attention at some point. It is known that such a career, for instance, has no designated working hours as situations may force one to override certain activities. Under such circumstances, the employees may feel detached from his/her family hence triggering a resistance to function in the workplace fully. According to Ghorpade, Lackritz, and Singh (2011), the effect of inter-role conflict is majorly felt at the workplace rather than at home since most people find solace whenever they are with the family. Although such is not attached to any miscommunication at the workplace, its implications on, the organisation can be long term and managing it takes the contribution of both the organisation and the affected individuals.
Leading causes of Role Conflict in the Workplaces
Conflicts in a work environment do not naturally occur. There has to be a channel that has propelled its emergence, and in most cases, it is associated with miscommunication or purely managerial error. However, several more specific causes of the clashes in responsibilities witnessed by many workers.
Role ambiguity is among the key contributors of conflicting functions in any organizations. Due to lack of a proper outline that demarcated the responsibilities of each employee, the supervisors/managers may randomly allocate tasks without prior confirmation of whether there are any ongoing activities at the moment. This leads to uncertainty among the staff who in most cases will tend to take on the tasks that best suits their capabilities (Jemielniak, 2014). Other than just leading to role conflict, several other issues can arise in the process if it involves a team. The uncertainty and lack of clarity of each’s role in the organization may create another crisis at interpersonal levels. Majorly, the work may not be completed according to the requirements.
In relation to clarity, a change in structure or general organizational change may provide a platform for the development of confusion between roles. For instance, when new positions are created in organizations, their responsibilities needs to be specified, and all the staff notified of the new post together with those accountable to him. Without such a plan, the staff may not know to whom they are supposed to report to and whose orders to follow. Under normal circumstances, employees tend to embrace the previous organizational plan and culture until they are given new instructions (Durkheim and Lukes, 2014). For this reason, some will continue undertaking tasks they were initially doing before the change hence creating a conflict of interest.
When there is no any system that provides employees with a chance to report any form of conflicting roles, the suppression may continue unnoticed for a long time. Despite role conflict being a short-term problem, an inconsistency in placing demands on the workforce can make the problem permanent until the management addresses the issue. As much as there may be some complaints within the workforce, lack of a proper communication channel barricades the issue from reaching the responsible persons within the management structure (Obermaier and Koch, 2015). Regular meetings can be a perfect solution to such a problem that will, in turn, reduce the instances of role conflict.
Finally, the absence of induction programs in many organizations has cultivated an environment that fosters a misunderstanding of roles and its allocations. Both a manager and a director can at some point give instructions to the junior staff, and because they (junior staff) lack an overview of their exact roles, they may be faced with a dilemma on whose orders are to be implemented first. In most severe cases, the tasks may be the same, but the instructions may differ. Under such cases, the employees become uncertain of which orders to follow (Schmidt et al., 2012). Furthermore, newcomers are more affected by such a confusion as they may still be in the process of learning the culture of the organisation.
Other than the mentioned causes, there are still other issues that trigger conflict based on roles. They include; unclear organizational chart particularly on communication channels, inadequate training, and allocation of tasks that conflicts with employees personal schedules. Without avoiding such problem, the conflict will be inevitable, and its implications are felt by both the organisation and the workforce as a whole.
Managing Role Conflict
Considering that many different factors trigger conflict within a workforce, resolving them it thus imperative if productivity and welfare of the employee’s os to be upheld. With role-related stressors disturbing the workforce, its input in achieving organisation goals will significantly reduce. Furthermore, their concentration on tasks allocated will decrease making it possible for huge errors to be committed (Martin and Nakayama, 2015). Although enhancing means of communication will partially solve the problem, other aspects also need to be considered for the issue to be addressed entirely. Such strategies include the following.
Ensuring workers have an up-to-date outline of their responsibilities and to whom they are responsible. This effectively deals with the issue of confusion that is created when tasks and instructions are being delivered to the employees. Further, it serves as a communication channel which any affected staff will follow and report the issue to their seniors. According to Chui, Liu, and Mak (2014), the dynamics of changes in organizations has to be considered to enhance understanding of roles by the staff. The interdependence that usually exists between the top management and junior staff should be transparent to enable all of them to understand what each of them is to undertake in their daily duties. It is thus vital to assist the employees to develop personal plans/work schedule to avoid clashing of roles.
To further foster the eradication of role conflicts, employees have to be granted access to assistance programs. In some organizations, the staff may suffer from this problem for a long time because a system that can bail them out is lacking. As a result, their psychological stability may be at altered leading to change of behavior or productivity. Research was done by Jia, Cheng, and Hale (2017) indicated that workplace emotions are affected by emotions which are further dependent on the working environment. If there are any miscommunication, improper training, and inadequate counseling programs within an organisation, the impacts of role conflict can become more severe.
In reducing the severity of the effects and development of this problem any change in the structure of the organisation should be clearly communicated to the entire staff to seek their consent on the new structure and responsibilities. With such a plan it will be easier to avoid collision of roles within the organisation. Also, in trying to reduce role conflict and miscommunication, there is need to establish a system that allows consultation and launching of complaints by the staff. Going by this strategy, Beehr (2014) affirms that psychological stress due to conflicts will be reduced significantly. Therefore, the management of role conflicting roles within an organisation needs the participation of everyone within they structure if it is to be countered completely.
Conclusion
Communication has significant impacts on the performance of the workforce and the organisation as a whole. The clarity of responsibilities and structure needs to be upbeat and updated frequently. Issues related to roles can thus be avoided if each staff is aware of what he/she is supposed to do, where and at what time. Without such a system, the organisation will struggle to sustain a performing workforce since role conflicts create a stressful environment to the staff hence reducing their efficiency at work. In essence, a perfect workforce needs to be motivated and satisfied with what they are allocated to do according to their responsibilities within the organisation. It is thus essential to maintain a psychologically fit workforce through reducing conflicting roles.
List of References
Beehr, T. (2014). Psychological stress in the workplace. 1st ed. London: Routledge.
Chui, H., Liu, Y. and Mak, B. (2014). Code switching for newcomers and veterans: a mutually constructed discourse strategy for workplace socialization and identification. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 26(1), pp.25-51.
Durkheim, E. and Lukes, S. (2014). The division of labor in society. 1st ed. [Place of publication not identified]: Free Press.
Einarsen, S., Skogstad, A., Rørvik, E., Lande, Å. and Nielsen, M. (2016). Climate for conflict management, exposure to workplace bullying and work engagement: a moderated mediation analysis. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp.1-22.
Ghorpade, J., Lackritz, J. and Singh, G. (2011). Personality as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Role Conflict, Role Ambiguity, and Burnout. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41(6), pp.1275-1298.
Jemielniak, D. (2014). Laws of the knowledge workplace: changing roles and the meaning of work in knowledge-intensive environments. 1st ed. Sage.
Jia, M., Cheng, J. and Hale, C. (2017). Workplace Emotion and Communication. Management Communication Quarterly, 31(1), pp.69-87.
Martin, J. and Nakayama, T. (2015). Reconsidering intercultural (communication) competence in the workplace: a dialectical approach. Language and Intercultural Communication, 15(1), pp.13-28.
Obermaier, M. and Koch, T. (2015). Mind the gap: Consequences of inter-role conflicts of freelance journalists with secondary employment in the field of public relations. Journalism, 16(5), pp.615-629.
Schmidt, S., Roesler, U., Kusserow, T. and Rau, R. (2012). Uncertainty in the workplace: Examining role ambiguity and role conflict, and their link to depression—a meta-analysis. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(1), pp.91-106.
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