Institutional conflicts are inevitable. They can only be managed. Conflicts normally arise in organizations for various reasons. The first reason is jurisdictional ambiguities. When the lines and areas of authority of the employees are not clearly defined in the healthcare organization, there are bound to be conflicts as a result of people over-stepping their mandates. Moreover, many employees in healthcare organizations normally have the habit of passing unwanted responsibilities to others, particularly when roles of each employee are not clearly assigned and defined. With the presence of the jurisdictional ambiguity, the formal and informal rules that govern the operations of the organization normally break down significantly (Tjosvold et al., 2014). In most cases, the jurisdictional ambiguity arises when new roles and responsibilities are introduced in to the healthcare organization. Superiors and their subordinates start engaging in conflicts when new programs are introduced in the organization.
Job result expectations in organizations usually lead to conflicts, particularly when the outcomes are far below the expected level. A lot of health care organizations have expectations from every employee in terms job output. When the expected output of the employees is not achieved, blames start as people are penalized and this leads to conflicts.
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Another reason for institutional conflicts is the use of common resources. Sharing of common resources is the common cause of conflicts in organizations since employees start scrambling for the scarce materials available. Every person uses their might and influence to ensure they get the scarce resource. Those who miss the chance of accessing the scarce resource feel undermined in the organization. The feeling of beings undermined causes conflicts.
Individuals usually bring various differences to the organizations where they work. These differences are always in terms of temperament, values and cultural beliefs. Moreover, the individuals have significant differences in terms of the way they perceive issues in life. These individuals in organizations also have different levels of expertise, work experience and qualifications. These features can cause conflicts in organizations. The differences in temperament imply some employees get irritated and angry quite fast and at trivial issues. In this case, they are easily offended and cause conflicts quite often. Differences in understanding and perceiving issues within the organization may lead to conflicts because of misunderstandings (Wallensteen, 2015). The different values of individuals can lead to disagreements on the type of decisions to be made in an organization. Moreover, individuals who believe in values of honesty and faithfulness may not co-exist with the ones who practice dishonesty and unfaithfulness. When such sharply different employees met in the organization, the likely outcome is conflicts between them. The difference in cultural beliefs also may lead to conflicts in the organization, particularly when a given worker’s culture believes that a specific action right while other cultural beliefs hold it as wrong.
Functional conflicts are healthy, progressive and positive disagreements between individuals in an organization. The functional conflict may arise from positive criticism in an organization. Functional conflict plays the role of bringing about institutional change by helping in pointing out the problem that exists for purposes finding solutions (Moore, 2014). Through functional conflicts, organizations are able to correct mistakes committed by the management and implement the needed change for better performance. Functional conflict ensures that matters do not go wrong in the operations of the company since systems are changes to ensure everything is right.
Dysfunctional conflicts in organizations are negative disagreements among people. The role of dysfunctional conflict in institutional change is simply causing adverse results for the company. Dysfunctional conflict in the organization may lead to the downfall of the entire organization. It may also lead to war where people fight and even destroy organization properties. Therefore, with dysfunctional conflict, things in the organization change for the worst bringing about poor performance.
There are various strategies of handling functional conflicts, which organizational leaders can adopt. It is vital to understand that functional conflicts are simply positive and constructive disagreements that arise from issues such as good criticism. Therefore, with the functional conflict, the organizational leadership may employ the integration resolution strategy. The integrating conflict resolution strategy, which is about the high concern for self as well as others, is normally associated with finding problem solutions. The organizational leadership must understand the fact that the use of this conflict resolution strategy entails openness, exchanging of information, finding alternatives and assessment of the existing differences in order to reach a solution that is acceptable to all parties involved in the disagreement. The integrating strategy leads to a win-win settlement of the functional conflict. It leads to functional outcomes after the settlement of the conflict.
The organizational leadership should consider using the avoidance resolution strategy for the dysfunctional conflict. Avoidance implies low concern for self and others. This conflict resolution strategy involves withdrawal and side-stepping the existing situations. In this case, the organizational leadership should avoid participating in the conflict as a way making it end. A conflict may get charged even more when the organizational leadership is also engaged in responding to the other party. However, if the organizational leadership chooses to stay quiet and avoid any confrontation, there are very high chances of such a dysfunctional disagreement ending gradually. It is vital to note that an avoiding party fails to satisfy his or her concerns as well as those of the other party. Therefore, the avoidance strategy of conflict resolution leads to a lose-lose outcome. It is highly associated with a dysfunctional result.
References
Moore, C. W. (2014). The mediation process: Practical strategies for resolving conflict . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Tjosvold, D., Wong, A. S., & Feng Chen, N. Y. (2014). Constructively managing conflicts in organizations. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav. , 1 (1), 545-568.
Wallensteen, P. (2015). Understanding conflict resolution . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
