Fundamentals of Organizational Communication

2. Fundamentals of Organizational Communication Organizational Conflict: Communicating for Effectiveness Chapter Nine

3. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict - process that occurs when individuals, small groups, or organizations perceive or experience frustration in attaining goals and concerns. • Regardless of the reasons, for all conflict participants the process includes perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and outcomes.

4. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict context • Any organizational setting where there are two or more competing responses to a single event or circumstance. • The conflict context influences the conflict symptoms, behaviors, and outcomes.

5. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict contexts • Intrapersonal • Interpersonal • Small group • Inter-group • Organization-wide • Between organization and environment

6. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • include scarce resources, deception, change, incivility, aggression, stress, burnout, emotional labor, relationships of all types, preferences, past experiences, and a host of other factors.

7. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Workplace civility has generally been conceptualized as courteous treatment of coworkers and other contacts. It includes treating others with dignity, regarding others’ feelings, and using social norms of mutual respect.

8. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Incivility is characterized by intents to harm either specific individuals or the organization. Incivility manifests itself in behaviors that demean the dignity of others and violate broad social norms of mutual respect.

9. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Deception • Information distortion • Strategic ambiguity • Complete distortion or lying

10. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Emotional labor • Work of those involved in a high degree of personal contact and who are expected to produce an emotional state, such as pleasure, gratitude, or self-esteem in the people with whom they deal.

11. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Emotional labor • An increasing percentage of the work force will engage in some degree of emotional labor. • These jobs require a separation of “true self” feelings from those that are expected to be expressed when in contact with the public.

12. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Conflict episodes • Descriptions of the complex interactions of both individual and group perceptions, emotions, behaviors, and outcomes during conflict.

13. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict causes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Latent conflict • Perceived conflict • Felt conflict • Manifest conflict • Conflict aftermath

14. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Latent conflict • underlying conditions in organizations and individual relationships that have the potential for conflict

15. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Perceived conflict • Awareness of individuals or groups that differences exist. • It is important to recognize that overt conflict has not occurred, only the perception of significant frustrating differences.

16. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Felt conflict • Emotional impact the perception of conflict has on potential conflict participants • The emotional impact of the problem is linked to the value we place on the specific relationship.

17. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Manifest conflict • Actual conflict behaviors – manifest conflict – are influential in determining the productivity of the conflict and the way conflict participants will interact in the future.

18. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict episodes-5 Stages • Conflict aftermath (outcomes) • result of the complex interactions of latent conditions, perceived conflict, felt conflict, and manifest conflict. • It is the stage in which we evaluate the conflict as productive or counterproductive.

19. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • Conflict permits individuals and organizations to develop new ideas and approaches and to become actively involved in necessary change.

20. Defining and Describing Conflict Processes • When applied to organizations, conflict is an essential process for continued operation. Without conflict, organizations stagnate and die.

21. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • The various predispositions, skills, and abilities of individuals in organizations influence how organizational conflict occurs. • Sensitivity to these differences is central to becoming a competent communicator within a complex environment.

22. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Sensitivity to our own preferences and behaviors helps us develop sensitivity to differences among people. • Figure 9.1 “Personal Profile” • Pp. 320-321 - Questionnaire • Pp. 348-349 – Scoring & Interpretation

23. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Behavioral preferences for handling conflict; frequently described as avoidance, competition, compromise, accommodation, and collaboration.

25. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Avoidance • Style of individuals who, as a result of their preferences, are unlikely to pursue their own goals and needs or to support relationships and the goals and needs of others during conflict.

26. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Competition • Preference for emphasizing personal goals and needs without considering the opinions or needs of others in the conflict.

27. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Compromise • Preferences during conflict for balancing people concerns with task issues and exhibiting give-and-take or negotiation behaviors.

28. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Accommodation • Preference for conflict associated with the sacrifice of personal goals in order to maintain relationships.

29. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Orientations/Predispositions/Styles • Collaboration • Preference for ideally balancing people and task concerns during conflict.

30. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Strategic Objectives • These are determined by matching general preferences for particular conflict styles with assessments of the risks involved in a particular situation.

31. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Strategic Objectives • A strategic choice is a “planned method of conducting operations” so as to structure the conflict in one of four strategic directions: • Escalation • Reduction • Maintenance • Avoidance

32. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Communication Tactics in Conflict • Conflict tactics can be described as communication behaviors that attempt to move the conflict toward escalation, reduction, maintenance at the present level, or avoidance.

33. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Communication Tactics in Conflict • Cautions: • We are likely to view our efforts more positively than those with whom we are in conflict. • Most of the research has been with majority groups in the US and Great Britain.

34. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Communication Tactics in Conflict • Cautions: • We know much less about preferences and orientations in cultures that are more group oriented than individualistic.

35. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Emotion During Conflict • Conflict is emotionally defined, that is, events that cause conflict are by definition events that elicit emotion. • Anger • Emotional Labor

36. The Individual in Organizational Conflict • Emotion During Conflict • Bounded emotionality encourages the expression of a wider range of emotions than is usually condoned in traditional organizations while stressing the importance of maintaining interpersonally sensitive, variable boundaries between what is felt and what is expressed.

37. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Most of us have been in groups in which tensions and conflict made us uncomfortable or blocked problem solving. It is hoped that most of us also belonged to groups in which conflict contributed to new and better ways of doing things, actually strengthening the group’s ability to work together.

38. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Members in Conflict • It is easy to understand why self-centered roles and inappropriate balances of task and maintenance roles are a possible source of group conflict. • Although most organizations talk about the importance of teamwork, rewards usually recognize individual versus group efforts.

39. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Members in Conflict • Kuhn & Poole (2000) • Avoidance Styles – minimizes addressing the conflict • Distributive Style- a confrontational approach • Integrative Approach – cooperative and collaborative behaviors

40. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Members in Conflict • Kuhn & Poole (2000) • They concluded that groups that developed integrative conflict management styles made more effective decisions than groups that used confrontation and avoidance. Groups that did not develop a stable conflict style were also less effective.

41. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Procedural Conflict • Most organizational groups conflict over procedures or ways of doing things. • Organization of group • Decision making process • Responsibility for doing or not doing tasks

42. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Interpersonal Issues • One of the most common types of group conflict emerges when all members do not fairly or equally perform their responsibilities or make contributions to the group. • The necessity to “carry” a member of the team raises tension and disrupts group cohesiveness.

43. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Substantive Issues • The very reason for forming groups in organizations can contribute to group conflict. • Organizations should encourage conflicts of ideas that contribute to excellence.

44. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Groupthink • Tendency of groups to suspend critical thinking and too quickly adopt proposed solutions. • Surface harmony, or the absence of productive conflict, can block group effectiveness when critical thinking is absent, resulting in ill-conceived courses of action.

45. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Conflict Management Processes • Negotiation • Bargaining • Mediation • Arbitration

46. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Conflict Management Processes • Negotiation • Broad conflict management process involving discussions between and among individuals who are interdependent and need to come together for a decision or course of action; frequently associated with the need to compromise effectively.

47. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Conflict Management Processes • Bargaining • structured form of negotiations usually involving the presentation of fairly specific proposals for the purpose of achieving a working agreement on particular issues.

48. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Conflict Management Processes • Mediation • use of a designated individual for guiding the negotiations or bargaining efforts of groups in conflict.

49. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Group Conflict Management Processes • Arbitration • conflict management process involving an outside negotiator who resolves differences based on formally established procedures.

50. Groups in Organizational Conflict • Power and Organizational Conflict • Perceptions of power and its uses continually influence all aspects of organizational conflict. The organizational chart defines the formal power structure. • Power plays can be described as tactics which make explicit how power should be viewed in particular circumstance in order to preserve the position of the person or persons making the “play.”