Leading and Managing in Organizations - Essay Example

Leading and Managing in Organizations Place Is conflict always dysfunctional in the workplace? While each individual is different, thesurrounding is perceived in a different way, thus in personal or professional life it is possible that such difference may cause conflict, which indeed is a normal part of any healthy relationship.  It usually arises as a result of disagreement between the involvement sides such as individuals, groups, departments, organizations and even countries. The conflict occurs when an actions made by one side is perceived as interfering other’s goals, needs and activities. The common definitions of conflict tend to associate it with something negative that brings ineffectiveness of the working or living conditions or the situation that promote inefficiency within the organization. However, conflict is not always a bad thing, in particular when it appears within organizations. Some types of conflict instead encourage new visions and solutions and increases creativity within the working team (Sims, 2002). Mullins (2007) proposes alternative philosophies of conflict. One of such concepts is a unitarist perspective, which is more traditional and views harmony and cooperation as natural state of human interactions. That is why it views conflict as negative effect of different misunderstandings and unwillingness to follow the common rules. While in the organizations the unitarist perspective is followed, it assumes that all organizational member should be in the same side, should be united by the leader and pursue the same goals. Whether some fail to follow the rest, they create conflict situation. The most vivid example of unitarist concept is the creation of team, a group of people that would follow certain rules and be led by the other person for the sake of reaching the same target. The pluralist perspective does not see conflict as an evil for the effectiveness of organization. Instead, it sees conflict as natural concept, however pluralists stay for handling conflict and set up certain policies and rules how to manage conflict. The radical perspective is derived from the Marxist idea about the constant struggle between owners and those who should work for owners. In organizations, a conflict is viewed as struggle between capital and labor, where managers are seen as the agents of owners and should not have their interest other than owners. Conflicts arise if managers fail to recognize these facts. The interactionist perspective views conflict as neither bad nor good thing, however, it is the integral part of each organization. However, the absence of conflict bears no ideas and new challenges. There are many strategies that can be used to manage conflict situations. Thus, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument evaluates each individual’s behavior in a conflict situation describing the extent to which one wants to satisfy own concerns and the extent to which individual is ready to satisfy needs of others (Thomas & Kilmann, 2010). Besides there are also such conflict management strategies as effective communication, by which every party of conflict will obtain clear and open climate of trust, awareness of rules and procedures along with the training will enable individuals to cope with the problem and manage conflict. In personal relationships, such long-term success of depends on the level of understanding about differing needs and distance, arguments and break-ups can damage the relationships. However, in the workplace, conflicts arise due to absence of understanding of differing needs, which can provoke bitter disputes, sometimes resulting in broken contracts and thus fewer profits and lost jobs in both organizations. Utleg (2012) illustrates functional view of conflict within the organization as that which sees conflict as a productive power, because it is able to stimulate employees in order to enhance their knowledge and skills. By functional concept conflict is something that gives individual and organization in general to improve and shift their views of conflict. Dysfunctional conflict at workplace is always an unhealthy and destructive disagreement that causes inability to resolve conflict due to the distant attitude to it. It does not support goals of organization and is characterized by the lack of trust and communication within the working environment and negative stereotypes that avoid good organizational performance (Spaho, 2013). Despite the nature of its occurrence, dysfunctional conflict always negatively impacts the organizational performance. Moreover, if the workplace is getting too dysfunctional, the best employees are leaving the company, because the conflict starts to impede their performance. Instead, when managed effectively, conflicts have many beneficial properties and change relationships between people and organizations into better one. Too many conflicts, whether they are functional or dysfunctional, speak about the groups or teams inability to cope with problems, because all members are too engaged and the atmosphere is more likely chaotic and disruptive. It can be dysfunctional and lead to negative consequences such as hostility, lack of cooperation, destroyed relationships between people, departments, organizations and lead to company failure in general. By their nature, it is normal that people have different views on one and the same problem and only with the optimal level of conflict within organization, it is possible for the team to be productive, cooperate with others, achieve set goals and seek and find solutions to the common problems. Organizational change invariably prompts an emotional response. How might organizations use the OD model to ensure more positive outcomes? People usually resist changes due to different reasons. These are fear for the future because of the possible instable situation and possibility to lose a job. Change of routines is not always understandable as well as work in the new area and with the new manager. With the poor communication about the purpose of change, it becomes difficult for people to realize why the company strives to change anything. Besides, employees will resist to the change if they consider it will bring decrease of their autonomy and type of feedback. In terms of positive consequences, change can offer more opportunities for personal and professional growth and development, which is accompanied with the improvements in salary, benefits and working conditions and thus enhances employment security (Amos, Ristom et al, 2009). Following change, employees are prompted to evaluate its meaning and understand that positive consequences will enable to reach the organizational goal, while among the negative consequences are the interference of that change into the stable and routine professional life, which people got used to. In order to expand knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change, a practice of Organizational Development as a field of research allows to conduct the diagnosis, action planning and implementation of the plans for reaching goals of transferring knowledge and skills (Organizational Development Theory, n.d.). The common approach of the Organizational Development is to help organizations to implement change using such steps as diagnosis, action planning, intervention and evaluation. During the diagnosis, the organization identifies problems that interfere with its effectiveness and help to assess the underlying causes. These can be problems with mission, goals, policies etc (Denison, 2000). By action planning organization is able to assess the feasibility of implementing different change strategies. After that it is able to specify the change steps and further evaluate the planned change efforts by tracking progress within organization. While changes touch the workforce where people are involved, there is no better department that can help employees to manage and handle with changes is the Human Resources department. Once knowing the goals and strategy to change, HR specialists should carry out the Organizational Development diagnostic in order to find where the firm is in the current moment. Depending on the nature of scope of change, this diagnostic can result in different actions where HR specialists should start and what goals and culture are critical for the organizational effectiveness. Human resources should be able to understand why organization needs change and how it affects the way organization performs its activities. HR should also be aware of the factors that are involved in the change process and different approaches that help manage changes (Leatherbarrow, Fletcher & Currie, 2010). In addition, only specialists from Human Resources are able to identify any skills gaps, training needs and new working practices in helping organization to manage change. Such approaches of organizational development ensure more positive outcomes from the changes implemented within a company. If to speak about the activities that contribute to the effective change management, companies should create readiness for change and overcome resistance to change. Description of the core ideology and creating of envisioned future are the parts of development of strategies directed for change implementation (Cummings & Worley, 2009). The major stage in bringing about change is planning the management of resistance. The organization should create the awareness of the need in change and educate employees about that change. For this purpose Force Field Analysis, a general tool helps to manage a change process regarding overcoming resistance to change. It is aimed to identify factors that should be addressed and monitored if change is to be successful. For successful change, organization should clarify the driving and restraining forces that influence it and then reduce and maintain the restraining for using driving to the advantage of disrupting the current situation and achieving desired change. While using the Force Field Analysis, there are few steps that each organization should follow to manage change. They include the identifying the problem with its present situation, its strengths and weaknesses and the situation which organization wants to achieve. The next stage helps to identify forces for and against the situation. They are rated on whether they are strong or weak and the drawn diagram allows seeing on which forces are indicated. While there are forces that are weak, they need certain improvement. That is why the Force Field Analysis allows identifying those forces that should be improved according to the action plan. There is also another model of change that allows recognizing the new behavior to be adopted and old one to be positively rejected. The Kurt Lewin Change Management Model (N.d.) is referred to unfreeze, change and freeze or refreeze. The first stage, the unfreezing is the most important one in understanding how the world is changing today. It is about getting ready to change. The main point here is to understand whether the change is needed and how to get ready to move from one’s comfort zone. However, the situation during this stage is not clear to the end, as there is uncertainty about the picture of the future and the insecurity is emphasized during this period. Unfreezing stage involves individuals to become more motivated for the change and be able to weight all pros and cons. The other stage, the Change or transition, involves people who are unfrozen and ready to move forward. However, this stage is the most complicated, because the organization can convince all the involved about the benefits from changes, however, these benefits may never come up. Nevertheless, it can also bring much. Without proper support, people will not be able to fully understand the need in change. Different training and coaching sessions prepare people to expecting mistakes as they are the part of the process, but be able to manage them. While the changes are implemented, people should realize the new change levers, such as performance, commitment etc. This is the refreezing period, during which organization should understand that old ways of working would not be introduced. For this purpose, new strategies, policies should prevent the old ways of working from reappearing. It is defined that organizational culture surround all the times and is constantly enacted and created by the human interactions with others. The practical way to define organizational culture is the environment in which people work (Lewis, 1994). The environment consists of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, skills and habits. According to Schein, there are three levels of culture that consist of behavior patterns and manifestations of culture. He also identified mechanisms that leaders can use as major tools for their organizations ability to perceive, think, feel and behave. These mechanisms are focused on what leaders pay attention to, measure, and control on a regular basis; how they react to critical incidents and organizational crises; how leaders allocate recourses, rewards and status; deliberate role modeling, teaching and coaching and how leaders recruit, select, promote. The organizational culture contains those components that are important for good performance and is good to earn competitive advantage (Madu, 2012). References Amos, T., Ristom, A., et al. 2009, Human resource management, Juta and Company Cummings,T. & Worley, C. 2009, Organization Development and Change,Cengage Learning Denison, D. R. 2000, Organizational culture: Can it be a key lever for driving organizational change, London: John Wiley & Sons. Leatherbarrow, C. Fletcher, J & Currie, D. 2010, Introduction to Human Resources: A Guide to HR in Practice, 2 ed., London: CIPD Lewis, D. S. 1994, Organizational Change: Relationship Between Reactions Behavior and Organizational Performance, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 7(5) Madu, B. 2012, Organization culture as driver of competitive advantage, Journal of Academic and Business Ethics Mullins, L. 2007, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Harlow: FT Prentice-Hall Organizational Development Theory, n.d., Available from http://www.med.upenn.edu/hbhe4/part4-ch15-organizational-development-theory.shtml [Assessed on 21 January, 2015]. Sims, R. 2002, Managing Organizational Behavior, Greenwood Publishing Group Spaho, K. 2013, Organizational communication and conflict management, Management, Vol. 18 The Kurt Lewin Change Management Model, n.d., Available from http://www.change-management-coach.com/kurt_lewin.html [Assessed on 21 January, 2015]. Thomas, K. & Kilmann, R. 2010, Thomas-Kilmann conflict model instrument, Profile and interpretive report, Available from https://www.cpp.com/Pdfs/smp248248.pdf [Assessed on 21 January, 2015]. Utleg, F. 2012, Functional and Dysfunctional Conflict: An Organizational Life, Asian Educational Research Association, Volume - III, Issue - 1 Read More