A company must concentrate its strengths on making income in the face of the ever growing competition. As noted by Robinson et al (1997), in his book, Work Place Deviance, sometimes the struggle to match the competitors can be hindered by the internal organizational conflicts. Therefore, for you to make your employees focused to compete favorably with the competitors, you must really realize the possible causes of the conflict in the work place. This will enable an effective management team to appreciate the role of conflict in an organization and at the end get to know how to manage the conflict.
Many a time’s managerial expectations are the major sources of the organizational conflicts especially between sales and operations departments. It is agreeable that every employee have a duty to attain the goals set by his manager. However, if the anticipations are not well understood, conflict is likely to occur. If the sales team fails to meet the expectations of their manager of getting to know what the consumers want, the operation team will also fail to attain the goals of they agreed upon with their manager, since they will not be able to increase the value of the business, and yet this will determine the business return and the amount that the juice company will generate for the amount of revenue it gets.
Breakdown in communication will also lead to the organization conflict between the sales and operations department. Imagine a scenario where operations department needs information from sales department so as to do its work, and then the sales department fails to react to the appeal for the information by the operation team, definitely conflict will result. Therefore these interdepartmental differences can lead to nonresponsive attitudes that can really results to internal conflict. Departments also create conflicts by withholding information and failing to give a clear response but instead hide in the cocoon of circular response where they perpetually refer to the information being requested to be under review.
According to arbitration expert Roy (1999), writing on work relations between supervisor and the group, he has noted that organizational conflicts in sales and operations departments can sometimes occur due to a simple misunderstanding. The whole team or sometimes one person can misunderstand the information and this can results to a series of differences within the company. A recent study has revealed that lack of accountability is also responsible for the internal conflicts in an organization. As noted by Sayles et al (2006), conflicts between these two departments can results from frustration, especially where people are not accountable to one another. Take a scenario where there is a mistake in the operations department but there is no person who is willing to own up to the mistake or take up the consequences of the problem, this inability to take responsibility when something goes wrong can permeate to other departments unless it is solved.
Of importance to a manager who understands the organization conflict is to find solutions to the differences. For instance, managers should take the initiative of clearly communicating their goals and expectations to the employees and if possible to provide them with written copies of these goals. Most importantly, as a manager you should encourage your employees to seek for clarifications about your expectations and their goals, and where necessary hold frequent meetings to discuss the expectations and the best approaches to attaining them. Secondly, when there is breakdown in communication and the employees and departments take long in giving their response to the information requested, or they just purposefully withhold the requested information, an immediate meeting to resolve the conflict with the two departments can assist (Robinson et al, 1997).
Dealing with situations where the information between the departments has been misunderstood may not be that easy, but it is important to let the employee to see the need of admitting to the misunderstanding and work together with the people affected to rectify the situation. For instance when the operations manager fails to realize the product manufacturing expectations, the sales team will not get enough products to take to the market. However, if the operations manager owns up to the mistake, he can easily help in solving the conflict (Roy, 1999).
Ultimately, to solve cases where employees are not accountable to one another, a policy where any employee who comes across a document jot down the date on the document and also put is signature on the same. With this in place, the paper trail can get the root cause of the problem and thereafter be able to address the problem effectively (Sayles et al, 2006).
In conclusion I will say that good communication where every employee understands one another with lots of ease is very key to stopping organization conflicts. At the same time when the organization goals and expectations are not well communicated, in simple and clear manner that is easy to understand, the interdepartmental conflict is likely to occur.
Robinson, S. L. and Bennett, R.J. 1997. ‘Workplace deviance: Its Definition, Its Manifestations, and Its Causes’, in R.J. Lewicki, R.J. Bies and B.H. Sheppard (eds) Research on Negotiation in Organisations. Greenwich, Connecticut: Jai Press.
Roy, D. 1999. ‘Efficiency and the “Fix”: Informal Heterosexual Relations between Supervisors and Workgroups’, in C.D. Bryant (ed) Deviant Behaviour. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Sayles, L. and Smith, C. J. 2006. The Rise of the Rogue Executive: How Good Companies Go Bad. Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
