Workplace Conflicts

A1. Conflicts are indeed unpleasant and unavoidable, particularly in the workplace. They are the product of rivalry for power, leadership or mutual resource insufficiency to name some. Conflicts pose a particular obstacle for managers, as they dissipate and handle about a fourth of their time. Disputes of two kinds are functional and dysfunctional (Sonnentag et al., 2013). Functional conflicts are safe, positive differences between persons or classes. Dysfunctional conflicts are unpleasant differences between groups of people. Conflict management is an intimidating task for many organisations since it involves not only the elimination of conflicts but also their competent control. Dysfunctional conflict may be a disagreement overabundance or a lack of appropriate motivation. In an organisation, chaotic conflicts typically arise out of the ego of opposing workers. The usual results are higher levels of stress and burning by employees. The staff ends up with lower levels of satisfaction and loyalty to the company. It can be classified into five characteristics which are increased tension, high employee turnover, increasing dissatisfaction, distrust, and no focus on the organisational goal (Saundry and Kinsey, 2019). In a study by Arnold (1993) he classifies conflicts into six groups which are external, management process and style, strategic direction, operational, interdepartmental, and value system and all these groups have five stages to it which are individual seeking support, visible conflict, spreading conflict, emotions and hostilities increasing, and conflict threatening the core of the organisation. Everyone in the company has a role to play in conflict resolution as important as human resources usually play to resolve conflicts. In this regard, it is essential that each individual in the organisation, rather than dysfunctional, gets abilities that can encourage functional conflicts. To manage the conflicts there are five possibilities to either mediate, arbitrate, control, accept, or eliminate the conflict which exists in the organisations (De Dreu and Gelfand, 2008). 

The Giant Supermarket store Coles admitted that it owes around $20 million to its managers of supermarkets and liquor division from the past 6 years, the industry-wide audit by SDA revealed the workers were underpaid, this practice began after the revelation of Woolworths unpaid its managers by around $300 million for over 10 years, Coles is not the sole wage theft in this audit, companies like Subway, Commonwealth Bank, Domino’s Qantas, and other major players in the market were found to do the same (The New Daily, 2020). This cause a stir of issues in the company and created a dysfunctional conflict between employees, as the managers here were underpaid led to unproductivity in the store and distrust cause a surge of unproductive staff. In another instance, the recent pandemic had raised awareness with the workers to be provided with better safety in the warehouse which led the workers to go on a strike (O’Connor, 2020). Demands like these that are legitimate from the workers' end caused the management to resolve the conflict and come to the demands of the workers. The wage theft added a learning curve in the industry as many functional conflicts are due to poor communication between the middle management and workers, or upper management and middle management which creates misunderstandings, the conflict management is an integral part of the organisation as it inflicts high engagements, increased loyalty, the collaboration between employees, and innovation (Amason, 1996). 

Organisations need to equip workers with conflict resolution expertise is important to help resolve disputes that arise unexpectedly or even regularly. To achieve this involves developing a respect-based framework of the corporate culture. Further to this framework, the reduction of unresolved disputes within the enterprise requires a systemic approach from direct contact to complaints to arbitration. Training is the most effective method to resolve both functional and dysfunctional conflict (Menon et al., 1996). The workers who are equipped with skills to mediate, arbitrate, control, accept, or eliminate the conflict can be achieved through training. The unavoidability of disputes at a workplace requires the creation of mechanisms that allow workers more effective in handling conflict. There are several combinations of training which are to be given to handling the conflicts in an efficient way the value of diversity and inclusion should be illustrated specifically through preparation the training programs which are essential to ensure that they are effectively delivered, mainly focused on negotiation, communication, leadership, forcing an issue, diversity and inclusion, avoidance, harmonizing, problem-solving and self-awareness (Saundry and Kinsey, 2019).