Conflict Management Synopsis

PAREXEL International (hereafter referred to as PXL) is a multi-national organization of American origin, specializing in clinical studies by means of testing medications for larger pharmaceutical companies. Our focus is on PXLs subordinate office in Frankfurt, which consists of two major departments, namely clinical operations and project management. All major decision making procedures are conducted in the US in a rights based manner, according to rules and regulations. The year 2007 marked the incorporation of LEAN organizational processes, through dismissing or reorganizing several middle management positions and making procedures more precise and routine. The employees in Frankfurt were disregarded during this implementation. They were informed at larger staff meetings that this program would be initiated, but no further information was given, except that it was “going to be great”. The implementation of this “great” plan started with the re-organization of the company through new job descriptions and removing levels in the hierarchy, which was very stressful to the employees who were not included in this decision making process. The organizational structure has always been hierarchical, but prior to 2007 people was more focused on collaboration between their different project teams. At that time they were working as a guided missile culture with the highest focus being on project success. After the organization changed, focus was much more on hierarchy and the specific job descriptions.

This transition marked the change from a guided missile to a more Eiffel tower oriented corporate culture. This was evident in the highly structured nature of the changes that outlined precise, detailed and routine tasks. Moreover, job descriptions were shortened and made far more concise. As a result, management roles evolved to enforce these new procedures. These changes created a lot of tension, giving rise to an organizational conflict that caused frustration between the employees, which in turn led to an interpersonal conflict. After 4 years which witnessed many further organizational changes to implement LEAN, over 60% of the employees had resigned. New employees were hired but the company is still suffering from a lack of resources. This serves as a source of latent conflict, whereby the lack of personnel to take care of organizational tasks could lead to conflict behavior where people are very stressed and hereby become inefficient.

Between the assistants in the project management department a sub culture existed that took on the form of a family atmosphere, whereby the eldest assistant had the most knowledge and was commonly approached by others for her advice. This led in no way however to negative tensions. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the sub-cultural tensions that were present between the two functioning departments. Each of the departments had a subculture built on the guided missile approach, but the