ASSIGNMENT

Section 2: Explaining the Nature of Industrial Conflict and Its Resolution

Section 2: Explaining the Nature of Industrial Conflict and Its Resolution

Introduction

The main theme of this paper revolves around discussing the concepts and different procedures for improving employee relations and conflict resolution. The chosen organization for this paper is The Walmart store. The issues and procedures of resolving conflicts amongst employees are discussed in the following segments of the paper.

Procedures an Organization Should Follow When Dealing With Different Conflict Situations

There are various types of employee and workplace conflicts. Some examples include, disharmony amongst colleagues caused by miscommunication or some other serious grievance or offense caused by someone's conduct or by the organization itself. Similarly, many of organizational conflicts are caused through miscommunication amongst the managers and their sub-ordinates. In addition, conflict may also arise because of personality clashes between two employees. Along with, certain employees portraying inappropriate behavior in terms of unwanted sexual advances or employee harassment (Dekker and Barling, 1998, p. 7). Grouchy behavior caused through stress and frustration, which in return may be caused because of personal factors or could be due to work load or working environment (Deutsch and Coleman, 2000 pp.10-13).

Discussing an example of conflict resolution, Jane a new employee complaints about another senior employee Mary because of the tone used by her to explain that Jane was not suppose to stand at another colleague's station. Although, this scenario depicts a simple relaying of a message, however, Jane takes offence on the tone used by Mary and reports this incident to their manager. The manager being busy with their work and does not clearly listen to the complaint and simply wraps up the concern by telling Jane that she is being too sensitive (Montana and Charnov, 2000, pp.265). This is an example of intergroup conflict and more specifically vertical conflict between an employee with her senior. (Rahim, 2011, pp. 23-30).

A right manner of tackling this concern would have been if the manager would have followed the following procedures:

Halting their work and giving his full attention to Jane when she had come to share her concern.

Patiently listening and asking questions regarding the scenario to gain a holistic picture.

Individually calling Mary and having the same discussion session with her.

Through, gaining and understanding of both sides the manager would now be able to take an optimal and a fair decision to resolve this conflict.

Possible solutions that could be utilized by the manager would include having a mutual meeting with both Mary and Jane, where they simply share and clarify their dispositions. Furthermore, if the manager had felt that Mary was at fault then he could recommend her certain behavioral and personality development resources and training for her benefit. Another possible solution could also have included the manager having to restructure the duty stations of both Jane and Mary so that they don't come into each other's way (Aram and Salipante, 1981, pp. 197-204).

Furthermore, the manager could have also taken learning from this incidence and initiated their own covert ...