All employees have a fiduciary duty to put the interests of the employers and the business over their personal interests. All employees must take it as a personal and professional responsibility to avoid putting personal interests over professional interests. Business conflicts can emanate between the business and its employees whenever there is a conflict of interests. The employer has the right to sue any employee who fails to fulfill that fiduciary duty for the sake of their personal gain (Eunson 1). Court resolution is one of the mechanisms available to employers to resolves the conflict they have with employees. In this light, one of the recent business conflicts comes into the light. The case of San Gabriel Cemetery against one of its officials comes into play. In the case, San Gabriel filed four cases against one of its officials named Nicholas Conway. The organization accused conflict of interests where he failed to fulfill his fiduciary duties towards the organization. The county of Los Angeles filed the case on behalf of the organization.
The organization feels that an officer, Conway, was not acting in line with the interests of the organization. The conflict began in the middle of May 2011 after the tribune for the San Gabriel Cemetery obtained a copy of the organization’s audit completed by the Caltrans. The audit asserted that the management misappropriated nearly 245130 dollars of a grant by the Gold line Transportation. It was the second time that Caltrans audited the books of account of the organizations and accused it of similar crimes of mismanaging funds. In this light, the management of the cemetery decided to make a follow up on the allegations. It analyzed the activities of the Council of Governments (COG), which was under the leadership Nick Conway, who was the executive director. The management analyzed the statements and accused Conway of poor bookkeeping, overlapping times in times of billing, over-payments, and deviated statements from the contracts. However, the result of the case was the dismissal of the charges leveled against Conway. The judge held that Conway did not commit any wrong against the organization. The allegations of self-interest lacked material evidence to outweigh the evidence presented by the defense. The judge concurred with the argument of the defense that any time the defendant received grants on behalf of the organization; he acted in line with the requirements of the governing board of the organization. He did not violate the penal code as proposed by the plaintiff. The judge suggested that the organization made Mr. Conway, a scapegoat of the weaknesses within the structures of the organization (Scauzillo 2). After the ruling, the organization paid damages to Conway.
The cost of conflict is the intangible or tangible price paid by an entity for the misunderstanding that ensues among different parties. There are many costs of conflict including directs costs, continuity costs, productivity, and emotional costs (Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 2). Direct costs emanate from the need to hire other parties to intervene and ensure the functionality of the organization, which is in jeopardy because of the conflicts. Productivity costs result from the loss of organizational time because of the conflicts. Continuity costs results from the breakdown of relationships within the organization. Lastly, emotional costs stem from the pain of concentrating on the emotional burden borne by the parties involved in the conflict.
The costs of this specific conflict are within the four perspectives mentioned earlier. First, there is direct costs for all the parties involved in the conflict. Given that they are in conflict, they cannot communicate effectively hence they require the intervention of neutral parties to try to resolve the case. They hire the services of legal attorneys to mediate on their behalf. Paying the professional fees to the attorneys forms the direct costs incurred by the parties in an attempt to mediate. It requires the application of financial resources by the conflicting parties. Secondly, the parties also suffer the productivity costs of conflicts through the time they lose by attending the sessions in court rather than attending the normal affairs of the business. Court procedures are often long, as they require the analysis and evaluation of the credibility of the evidence presented in court. Here, the parties involved would be incurring an opportunity cost in the context of the organization because they are spending time in court at the expense of production. In addition, there is also continuity costs incurred by the parties involved in the conflict because of the deterred relationships they will experience (Eunson 3). In an organization, relationships exist at various levels. Whenever conflicts ensue, they damage the relationships established among people because they are not in a position to understand and compromise with one another. In this case, the rest of the management felt that Conway was benefiting at the expense of the relationships.
Such a perception leads to the conclusion that Conway is selfish and that it is right for the organization to cease the good relationship it has with him and institute legal proceedings against him. It breaks the good relationships at the inset of the conflict. Broken relationships have a cost implication on the organization and the other parties because they have to invest resources to manage and resolve the conflict. The organization will have to implement new strategies to reinstate the organization in the same position it was in terms of interpersonal relations (Eunson 4). For instance, if the rest of the management cannot trust Conway to manage the affairs of the company well, it may have to repair the damaged relationship by appointing another executive officer. The process of interviewing candidates and selecting the appropriate person requires monetary input by the organization. In the end, the chain reaction still results in certain costs for the organization and Conway because he might also lose his job because of the allegations. Lastly, there is emotional costs suffered by Conaway because of the possibility of losing the case and his job in the end. Such costs may be implicit on the individual through stress, which may also require money to manage if it goes out of hand.
In this case, the parties managed to resolve the conflict. The strategy used was arbitration, which can happen in numerous ways. Court intervention is a form of arbitration that uses a set of universally acceptable rules and standards to resolve the conflict. For instance, it uses the law enshrined within the constitution to determine the party at fault and the party suffering the grievances. The judges and the attorneys in the case act as the neutral parties deliberating on the issues of the case on behalf of those engaged in the conflict. In most cases, courts are fair because the law applies a standard measure of arbitration.
Works Cited
Eunson, Baden. Conflict Management. Milton: Wiley, 2007. Print.
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research. Oxford: Blackwell Pub, 2008. Print
Scauzillo, Steve. San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments agrees to $250,000 settlement with Nicholas Conway. San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Legal Settlements. Available at:
http://www.sgvtribune.com/general-news/20140919/san-gabriel-valley-council-of-governments-agrees-to-250000-settlement-with-nicholas-conway
