Organizational Behaviour

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ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the existence of conflicts and the impact of different kinds of conflicts on employee and organizational performance. Given how organizations have evolved with time and the entered the current era of intense competition, employees too have become increasingly competitive and are striving for success in quicker periods of time. This directly and indirectly has led to increasing conflicts among various stake- holders in organizations. This paper addresses the existence, causes and implications of conflicts on organizations and identifies tools to resolve these conflicts. This paper has drawn references from peer-reviewed scholarly articles in making its analyses and reaching its conclusions.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Organizations always strive harder for efficiency and effectiveness. They set high performance levels for employees which inevitably gives rise to various kinds of conflicts. Conflicts are inevitable part of organizational life since the goals of different stakeholders such as managers and staff are often incompatible. Conflict will occur as long as people compete for jobs, resources, power, recognition and security. Conflicts occur within functions, between management and board of directors and among employees.

Conflicts have varying levels of impact on organizations. Friction between employees, among functions, and confrontation among organizations can threaten the development of enterprises (Wall and Callister, 2009; Jehn, 2009). Conflicts can lead to compromised job satisfaction, reduced motivation, and lack of engagement; and thus lower employees’ performance.

Subordinates are more satisfied with their superiors’ supervision when they used certain conflict management behaviors and exercised integrating, compromising, and obliging styles (Lee, 2009). Subordinates who perceived their superiors as primarily utilizing dominating and avoiding styles viewed them as incompetent in supervision thus lowering their level of job satisfaction. Conflict arises in groups because of the scarcity of freedom, position, and resources.

Unmanaged conflict may result in withdrawal of individuals and unwillingness on their part to participate in other groups or assist with various group action programs in the organization.

A case in point for observing conflict and conflict management issues is at Cognizant Technology Solutions for whom I worked for three years in India. Cognizant is an American multinational corporation that provides custom information technology, consulting and business process outsourcing services. Being part of a large team, I often saw conflicts arise among employees and employees and managers over various issues. For example, a colleague of mine was miffed over on-site opportunities given to fresh recruits ahead of him even though he was part of the organization for more than two years. In another case, a legitimate promotion was denied to another colleague of mine due to perceived bias of the project manager. A common cause of conflict was the quality of work given to the employees. People with relevant and directly transferrable skillsets were not given opportunities to work on marque engagements and    this resulted in heightened levels of dissatisfaction among them. Promises for incentives were often not kept by project managers on successful completion of engagements, resulting in conflicts, reduced motivation and increased dissatisfaction for employees.