Conflicts are inevitable in any human 's’ interaction which makes their occurrence normal in the workplace. Conflict can be caused by imbalance of power and communication barriers that arise from the social structure or individual interpersonal’ perceptions, assumptions and expectations. The interpersonal conflict has a huge impact on the individual himself and extends to the workplace. The Human Resources (HR) role comes in light to attempt to help in the conflict resolution process. Human resources professionals take an integral part in facilitating and settling conflict situations. They consider the work environment and personal differences that have led to the conflict to arise. In the workplace, gender influences and permeates the …show more content…
When the 3rd party is contacted, it means that the problem is recognized and one of the parties has made the initial move to seek conflict resolution (McNamara, 2003). The role of HR professional as a third part is extensive. The HR professional has to be trained to look at the cause of the conflict and analyze the situation to be able to manage the conflict process. Because handling conflict is hard, there are certain dynamics that the 3rd party has to consider. When the conflicted parties are in the same room there are some ground rules that needs to be explained. In order to have a clear communication and good outcomes, the HR 3rd party starts the meetings by making sure that both parties are willing to corporate and be honest (McNamara, 2003) After that, he notifies them that each will have enough time to present their view of the conflict to avoid interrupting (McNamara, 2003). The HR 3rd party facilities the conflict by trying to “stop, look and listen” as a technique to show that he is giving the parties his full attention (McNamara, 2003). Sometimes, writing would help to assist the situation and summarizing the main points that have been covered (McNamara, 2003). In addition, the language used in the session is important, not only for clear communication but also to help escalating the conflict. For example, encourage the parties to refer to the action itself not
Often, when the conflict happens, it is more volatile and more debilitating to the organization than it was initially. An open conflict or interpersonal disagreement festers just below the surface in the work environment. It comes up to the surface whenever enabled, and always at the worst possible instant.
The third form of Conflict management is Accommodation. When the task at hand is more important than the conflict that has arisen and when relationships may be damaged putting the entire project in jeopardy. With this method a team member may minimize the conflict in order to protect the relationship and ultimately the project. Some of the negative aspects in using this
These differences and gender expectations make the contact and the conversation more difficult (Borchardt, 2014). The role of the HR 3rd party is to ease the communication by first acknowledging the differences. The most prominent hindrance to communication, is having a real understanding to the conflict cause, for this reason, the HR 3rd party starts by examine the basis of what need is not being met by the conflicted parties (BreakthruInMarketing, 2014). Then evaluate if the need can or cannot be met (BreakthruInMarketing, 2014). By reaching to this point, the HR 3rd party finds out if the need can be meet then he has a resolution. However, if the need cannot be met, he starts the negotiation process(BreakthruInMarketing, 2014). This process is problematic because managing the conflict does not mean finding a solution but generating possible options between both parties with paying attention to their differences.As mentioned, in conflict resolution between opposite genders, the interpretations and perceiving of messages are different. During the meeting, the HR 3rd party has to keep in mind that the language of men might be more harsh and aggressive to try to rephrase and reshapes the
The article “Managing conflict: Third-party interventions for managers” delineates the essential steps followed by a manager in effectively and efficiently managing organizational conflict and the various approaches adopted for its resolution. It identifies certain key variables to consider for each step of the decision process concerning intervention and presents guidelines for making appropriate choices. It also describes a variety of pitfalls that a manager must beware of when intervening as third party in managing conflict. Third-party intervention by the manager assumes greater significance in the light of increasing use of teams and participatory management approaches used by organizations wherein timely
For example, the finance department in the organization might need to make drastic cuts to the budget while the HR department is in need of extra funds due to counter a shortage of recruits in a given field that year. Such problems are ideally resolved proper channels. In reality, if there are already interpersonal issues between employees when there is a legitimate conflict of interest in the workplace, these issues could be far more difficult to resolve since those involved might be less likely to compromise.
To manage conflict effectively you must be a skilled communicator. That includes creating an open communication environment in your unit by encouraging employees to talk about work issues. Listening to employee concerns will foster an open environment. Make sure you really understand what employees are saying by asking questions and focusing on their perception of the
In this paper I will discuss the conflict that is occurring at General Hospital, the conflict management styles that are evident in the case, and how General Hospital could have used teams to address the cost reductions needed to stay competitive. I will also describe how the CEO of General Hospital, Mike Hammer can us negotiation skills to get buy-in for the cost reductions and finally I will recommend a strategy for Hammer to resolve the problem.
In trying to resolve the conflict between Reece and Patel, Edwards used an avoidance strategy. Instead of speaking directly about the root causes, or sources, of the conflict, Edwards focused on the behaviors and treated Reece and Patel like children. Edwards scolded them, and sent them off without bothering to find out what was bothering the two. Of course, this type of conflict resolution is ineffective because it fails to address the underlying issues. As Anderson (n.d.) points out, addressing the problem is key to conflict resolution. "When a conflict does happen, a manager needs to focus the conflicting parties on the issue and have them leave out any personal problems they may be having," (Anderson, n.d.).
Whenever there is a difference of opinion there will also be a chance for some form of conflict to arise. To resolve and manage conflict, any organization or persons’ must try to understand the causes, theories, approaches and strategies of conflict management. Resolving conflict requires a great deal of attention and thorough understanding in seeking resolution. In this review, conflict management will be explored in general from different perspectives in light of how conflict effects teams or groups, workplace relationships and recommended strategies or styles that help to manage it.
Conflict is inevitable and occurs all around us all the time. Conflict is not about whether something is good or bad, but what is important is how we deal with this conflict. There are many types of conflict and one prominent conflict that I remember in my life is an intragroup conflict. This was in grade 10, when I and three others were working on a Business ED project. The conflict was that I had a really good idea and I was expressing my opinion, but my groupmates were not listening and kept constantly interrupting or calling my idea stupid. This led to a buildup of a lot of tension between us and therefore affected our teamwork as we ended up not working efficiently towards our goal of a good mark. The resolution style I used for this particular conflict was avoidance. This is because eventually, I just let my idea go and just did as the other people in my group said and suppressed my own opinions. This conflict was left unresolved and resulted in us getting a lower mark than expected in the project. At this point, I was thinking of just submitting to their wants and letting my opinions get put to the side. Although I did not act like I was angry on the outside, like most other avoiding individuals, I built up my anger by not releasing it, which in the end just went away. Also, I became less verbal and let the other three lead rather than taking an active role in this project. One advantage of avoiding a conflict is that for a short-term, it allows us to delay solving and facing the issue, giving us time to think about solutions. Another advantage is that individuals that avoid conflict tend to help calm the atmosphere down and realize that the conflict will most likely resolve itself, which was also what I believed for my conflict. However, this tends to make these individuals deny and avoid the conflict entirely, sometimes making it even worse. Also, avoiding a conflict leads to the opinions and needs of those individuals get suppressed, which also happened to me. Avoiding this conflict led the situation to never get resolved, and because of this, I still do not really talk to those individuals. So, for this intragroup conflict scenario, I used the conflict resolution
The second area of training is conflict management. Conflict management research has distinguished four different ways of managing conflict (contending, conceding, avoiding, collaborating), but in reality there is an infinite number of ways that individuals may manage them. Research has shown that at high tension levels, people are less likely to process and evaluate information (Beersma, Carsten & De Dreu, 2005). Given this data, while it is not feasible for the organization to embark on a mission to educate employees in the theory of conflict management or try to alter each individual's response to conflict, this is an issue that managers and leaders of the team should be aware of and able to competently handle. Once again, there is a myriad of basic training material and tools available at easy disposal of the Human Resource Department. In addition, the majority of the training materials used for employees regarding communication and
Conflict and dispute are normal phenomenon in society and human relationships. When using different resolution techniques, conflicting parties could get both constructive and destructive outcomes. Good decisions from negotiation can bring a 'win-win ' prospect to interested parties. This essay firstly proves the inevitability of conflict and dispute on commercial projects, reviewing some basic definitions and theories. Then, some useful and effective dispute resolution techniques in standard forms of commercial projects are discussed and compared. Lastly, four methods and the potential use of principled negotiation is evaluated for Chinese construction industry in
“To live anyhow is better than not at all” (Chekhov 1) , the short story, The Bet commenced with the conflict when the person had no choice but to choose between the death penalty or life in prison. The Bet was originally written by Anton Chekhov, a profound Russian short-story writer who concentrated a lot on human values and the reflection of the extravagantly selfish Russian nobility. And through The Bet he was able to express all those ideas in two sides, the banker and the lawyer with the conflict along the story line.
Having the skills to resolve internal and external conflicts effectively is one of the biggest challenges faced by organizations in today’s business world. In most cases, mediators are needed to attain success in conflict issues. They are vital to success as they act as they act as neutral parties to analyze a conflict by listening to both parties and coming up with a solution. The mediator is completely impartial (neutral) person(s) who probably doesn’t know either party, but will act as a middle person that listens to both sides of the situation from the two and see if any middle ground opportunities for some kind of arrangement, acceptable to both sides, which will in part or fully help to resolve the situation. By so doing, a mediator functions as an intermediary. A mediator talks to parties in separate rooms and never allows shouting or interruption from disputants facing each other. In fact, it is needless allowing disputants to be in the same room at all. The role of the mediator is to “shuttle” or go between the parties.
Before beginning to outline the theoretical approach, it may be useful to outline the key aspects of the field of conflict and conflict resolution studies. Firstly, comparing to other fields of social science studies, the study of conflict and conflict resolution is relatively new "it is only in the twentieth century that the systematic study of conflict has become a field in its own right. In fact, the overwhelming majority of work in this field is a product of the last half of the twentieth century" . Thus, the study of conflict and conflict resolution has long remained within a variety of disciplinary, “theory and research are drawn not only from political science but also from social psychology, sociology, economics, and law" .