How to Handle Departmental Conflicts Within an Organization

Nature of Conflict 

The organization experiencing internal departmental conflict is Hovertec Plc., a big public corporation that specializes in the manufacture of military as well as military helicopters, while it has been in the industry for more than 50 years. The interdepartmental conflict mostly revolves around the human resources department. The conflict emerged when the company hired five girls who were unskilled and lacked experience and knowledge in the electronic and engineering system. Nonetheless, the organization integrated the girls with the loom technicians, who serve as the team leaders. For the girls, they prefer working in a different and comfortable manner, which has led to the breaking down of the organizational systems by failing to follow their managers’ training. Additionally, the girls are closely related with the loom technicians to an extent that they do not wish to work under any other person’s supervision. They lack responsibility for the tasks that they undertake due to the close relationships that they have with the distinct loom technicians. As such, the performance of the organization has deteriorated considerably.

Side of the Conflict 

The major source of the conflict emanated from the process of recruitment when HR department failed to check the information of the applicants carefully, leading to the classification and positioning of the girls in a manner that their relatives controlled them while at the same time supporting and assisting them. Despite the company signing a contract that women would not work together with loom technicians, the managers breached the contract by permitting the five girls to work despite their lack of experience, expertise, and knowledge of the company’s operations. In this vein, the HR department made a mistake by hiring the five girls who only has a high school diploma and lacked training in company operations. The girls also received privilege, such as having the opportunity of selecting their partners, altering color code when bored, or made errors. The girls ended up becoming spoiled, lazy, power dependent, and appreciated themselves. Even while it would have been possible to subject the girls to high pressures to ensure that they emerged hardworking, they desired to work in different and comfortable settings.

For the five young girls, they lacked experience while the loom technicians had tremendous expertise in their areas of operation. In this case, the five girls would conflict with the technicians easily due to the various differences that prevailed concerning the tasks that they performed. The loom technicians failed to cooperate with the inexperienced girls while they argued that they abused power while at the same time accusing the managers of vandalism. These issues resulted to a significant decline in productivity within the organization.

Even despite the young girls lacking specialized experience, they received a salary similar to one of the loom technicians. The managers responsible for payroll failed to treat the other experienced employees fairly while they failed to look on performance while paying the employees. These issues led to emergence of the conflict between the managers and the loom technicians due to the favoritism directed toward the five newly hired girls. Even when the managers permitted the loom technicians to oversee the operations of the young girls, conflicts continued, which led to further decline in productivity and quality output. In this vein, the hiring of the five girls affected the loom technicians negatively since they did most of the work, while they conflicted with the managers who favored the inexperienced girls.

Nature of Solution 

To address the conflict, the initial proposed solution entailed instituting punishment with the goal of punishing the managers for failing to pay attention to the work situation, which led the organization to fail to realize its mission. Additionally, pay by performance needed to serve as an area of consideration particularly because the young females failed to work hard while they received significant amount of pay. In the event that the employees worked hard, the salary that they received would be justified while they would also receive bonuses if they increased their productivity (Roche, Teague, & Colvin, 2014) . For the lazy workers, punishment should serve as the ideal course of action, such as deducting their salary to allow them feel the impact of their actions.

Another way of dealing with the departmental conflict would be to ensure that the two opposing sides confront each other to allow them come up with an agreement rather than being in disagreement all the time. For the loom technicians, for instance, they should consider talking directly with the female employees to allow them to forgive each other while at the same time forgiving each other for the mistakes made. In the event of the loom technicians, they should lay emphasis in assisting the female employees by teaching them, offer guidance, as well as offer them ideal supervision to ensure that they handle the tasks assigned to them in an appropriate manner. This would be ideal as opposed to the case when the two sides remain silent and allow the conflicts to escalate (Davis, 2013) . Additionally, it would be crucial to ensure that the female workers receive punishment to ensure that they rake responsibility with the equipment and the duties assigned to them.

Implementing Solution Successfully 

To deploy the solution successfully, the organization should consider looking at the long-term prospects of the organization. One of the effective means of doing so would be to consider motivating the staff members. As opposed to punishing the girls since they would shift to other lenient supervisors, it would be essential to focus on understanding how the different teams work within the organization and their contribution to the group. The girls need to realize a competitive spirit and the benefits that they would realize by spending more time to improve work situations. The organization can also consider changing it culture in such a manner that it accommodates the different interests of the diverse group. For instance, the organization can organize parties or other activities that can allow the different employees to interact and exchange information, which would assist the organization to grow and become more productive (Duckworth & Kelley, 2012) . These kinds of activities would reveal to the staff that the organization cares for the interests of its employees, thus boosting their motivation to contribute to increased performance of the company.

Hovertec Plc. needs to make sure that it emphasizes on the relationships that prevail between the staff, managers, and supervisors. For the organization’s trade union, it should consider altering the situation. For the men who show unwillingness in working together with females, they should be perceived as a threat to the success of the organization. In this vein, the male technicians should be led to understand and appreciate each employee irrespective of gender. The organization needs to designate an individual who would be responsible for serving as a facilitator to ensure that the loom technicians work together with the young females while avoiding any conflicting incidences (Elgoibar, Euwema, & Munduate, 2016) . This way, they would be able to work together with the young women thereby contributing to the success of the organization. Nonetheless, irrespective of the numerous efforts that Hovertec Plc. Aims to deploy, it would experience hindrances, such as unwillingness of the staff in working together mostly due to the existing organizational culture. Dealing with such issues would ensure that incidences of departmental conflicts decline significantly within the company.

References

Davis, K. `. (2013). Conflict communication. New York: Cognella Academic Publishing.

Duckworth, C., & Kelley, C. D. (2012). Conflict resolution and the scholarship of engagement: partnerships transforming conflict. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Elgoibar, P., Euwema, M., & Munduate, L. (2016). Building trust and constructive conflict management in organizations. Berlin: Springer.

Roche, W. K., Teague, T., & Colvin, A. J. (2014). The Oxford handbook of conflict management in organizations. Oxford: OUP Oxford.