Assignment

What is an organizational conflict?

Organizational conflict is disagreement by individuals or groups within the organization, which can center on factors ranging from resource allocation and divisions of responsibility to the overall direction of the organization. (E. Dontigney 2016).

Why does it occur?

Because of the diverse individuals within many of the organizations' conflicts occur because of differing values, Opposing Interests, Personality Conflicts, Poor Communication and Personal Problems. An example of each as follows

• Differing values in the workplace consists of individuals whom all have their own perspective of the world.

• Opposing interest occurs when an employee decides to pursue her own career goals, without regard to the organizational goals and its well-being, it results in strife among her coworkers.

• Personality conflicts are simply put as two people are never exactly alike. Therefore, personality clashes in the workplace are unavoidable.

• Poor communication leads to misunderstanding and strife among employees.

• Personal problems occur If the employee has problems outside of the workplace, such as marital or parental issues, he or she may take them to work with them and project it onto their coworkers creating conflict.

What are some methods of conflict resolution?

Some methods of solving conflict are accommodating, avoiding, collaborating, compromising, and competing. An example of each as follows

• Accommodating strategy essentially entails giving the opposing side what it wants. The use of accommodation often occurs when one of the parties wishes to keep the peace or perceives the issue as minor.

• Avoiding strategy seeks to put off conflict indefinitely. By delaying or ignoring the conflict, the avoider hopes the problem resolves itself without a confrontation.

• Collaborating strategy works by integrating ideas set out by multiple people. The object is to find a creative solution acceptable to everyone.

• Compromising strategy typically calls for both sides of a conflict to give up elements of their position to establish an acceptable, if not agreeable, solution. This strategy prevails most often in conflicts where the parties hold approximately equivalent power.

• Competing strategy operates as a zero-sum game, in which one side wins and other loses. Highly assertive personalities often fall back on competition as a conflict management strategy. The competitive strategy works best in a limited number of conflicts, such as emergency situations.

An example of a workplace conflict and what was done to solve it I will use a discrimination issue. Discrimination can be a source of heated conflict, potentially ending in legal trouble for a company or its owners. Discriminatory conflicts can arise from personal prejudices on the part of employees or perceptions of mistreatment of employees. As an example of a discrimination-related conflict, imagine a minority employee in a team setting who feels that he or she is consistently assigned the most menial work tasks in the group. This employee may begin to harbor resentment against team members and managers, eventually lashing out through decreased productivity or outright verbal conflict. To resolve this issue, a manager could sit down with the whole team and discuss the way in which job tasks are assigned, making changes as necessary to ensure that tasks are divided equally. (Writer, L. G. (2011, June 10).

References

Nelson, D. L., & Quick, J. (2013). Organizational Behavior science, the real world, and you. Ason, OH, USA: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Writer, L. G. (2011, June 10). Examples of Conflicts & Resolutions in the Workplace.