Essay Sample on Eliminating Institutional Conflicts: Effective Communication Strategies

Introduction

If an institution lacks the paths to successful resolutions, it is hard to escape the conflict between the workers and administration. Institutional conflicts occur in various ways, and its essence is incompatibility, contradiction, and disagreement between groups or individuals, which leads to opposition relations (Carnahan, 2015). Conflicts can lead to reduced productivity, high turnover, stress, and work dissatisfaction. The most significant method of eliminating conflict is effective communication because it enhances resolutions for disagreements, incompatibility, and contradictions. This report aims to identify the causes of conflict, analyze the impact of conflict, and recommend strategies for conflict resolution.

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Causes of Conflict

There are various causes of conflicts in an organization; nevertheless, personal conflict is caused by the uncertainty on the activities provided by the supervisors due to lack of proper definition of the work. More conflict can arise if the management fails to clearly explain the tasks given to people working as a team. Interpersonal conflict occurs when individuals have problems relating to one another, leadership and power differences, and values and interest incompatibility (Abiodun, 2014).

Conflict can also be caused by interdependency if two or more departments are depending on each other to complete the task. Mainly, if there are several phases, one department might finish the work on time while the other unit may delay the results of the job. In this situation, a conflict can arise if the management blames both departments. Conflict commonly increases with a rise in task interdependence level because it is easy to blame someone else when something on the task is wrong. Also, conflict is caused by authority interactions within the institution. The tension between employees and administrators arises because many employees hate being instructed on what to do.

Effects of Conflict

Conflict can either have a negative and positive impact on an organization. There are two types of conflicts in a company, which include functional and dysfunctional conflicts. Functional conflict engages healthy constructive disagreement between individuals or groups. On the other hand, dysfunctional conflict involves unhealthy disparities that occur between individuals or groups. The positive impact of functional conflict includes increased group productivity, improved decision making, the motivation of creativity and innovation, stimulation of interest, and enhanced working conditions for effective problem-solving. On the other hand, the effects of dysfunctional conflict include the establishment of discontent, minimized group efficiency, retarded communication, and low group cohesiveness (Rahim, 2010).

Strategies to Reduce or Resolve Conflicts

A destructive conflict should be resolved as soon as it is identified to avoid further development. The following methods should be used by the management to avoid conflict:

• The supervisors should clearly define the tasks assigned to the employees, and every unit should have their roles and contribution clearly defined.
• The reward system should be designed in a manner that does not encourage conflict and competition within the unit. The employees should be rewarded according to their efforts and should reflect the level of interdependence between groups where needed.
• Trust and effective communication should be enhanced among all members of a company by encouraging honesty and open communication. The groups and units should be motivated to each other, understand their problems, and help them when needed.
• Proper coordination should be ensured by establishing a particular contact office to avoid or minimize conflict.

Five important strategies that reduce the effects of behavioral conflict include:

• Ignoring the conflict- sometimes, it is convenient to avoid certain situations that can incite more disagreement. The individuals involved in the conflict should prevent the conflict, primarily if it affects them emotionally due to frustration.
• Smoothing- people involved in a conflict should try to cover it by choosing unity instead of talking about the problem itself. When a group is disagreeing, the manager can try to understand, support, and encourage them to cooperate. However, smoothing provides a short-term solution because the conflict can explode in the long-run because it was never solved.
• Compromising- compromising a conflict is achieved when each party involved in the conflict gains something and gives up something. Compromising involves bargaining and negotiating to attain a solution for both parties. This strategy is convenient if the two parties have almost equal powers if there is time limitation, and if the problem is complex, and there is limited time to solve the conflict (Bakhtiyari, 2014).
• Forcing- this is the strategy of domination whereby one party has more power over the other and forces the opponent to give up. An example of such an approach is when a company's president fires a manager for being a conflict maker.
• Problem-solving- the method confronts the conflict to find the best resolution for the conflict. The strategy has the assumption that even the well-managed companies have contrasting views that should be resolved through discussions and respecting everyone's opinions. It is useful for solving misunderstandings and intensified disagreements.

An efficient method to resolve dysfunctional conflict is to rebuild trust and use constructive conduct when there is disagreement. The ability to trust one another has a significant influence on achieving organizational objectives, personal goals, and good interactions with family members and workmates. Rebuilding trust is enhanced by avoiding aggressiveness, developing supportive behaviors, and respecting everyone for who they are (Solaja, 2018). On the other hand, a conflict resolution strategy for functional conflict is competition. It is useful for people to win. It mostly works in war or sports, and it is characterized by the assumption that one side will win and the rest will lose.

References

Abiodun, A. R. (2014). Organizational conflicts: Causes, effects, and remedies. International Journal of Academic Research in Economics and Management Sciences, 3(6), 118. DOI: 10.6007/IJAREMS/v3-i6/1351

Bakhtiyari, M. (2014). Organizational conflict management Authorea. doi: 10.22541/au.156425984.44418551

Carnahan, P. J. (2015). Organizational structure, work values, and conflict. doi: 10.31274/rtd-180815-5227

Rahim, A. (2010). Functional and Dysfunctional Strategies for Managing Conflict. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi: 10.1037/e673512012-090

Solaja, O. M. (2018). Organizational Trust as a Conflict Management Tool in Contemporary Work Organizations. Organizational Conflict. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.73092