Communication and conflict management

In every organization there are many factors that may determine whether it will be successful or not, these factors may be internal or external issues. Issues are referred to as the events that do not occur within an organisation, but in one way or another may affect the organizations strategic direction, core business and therefore lead to the management of the organization to take corrective measures to overcome those problems. The internal issues are the issues that are solved within an organization by the employees that have been employed. External issues refer to the issues that can be solved by the persons who are outside the organization so that they can give direction on what should be done to solve the issues.

Issue management refers to the strategy that is applied by the organizations to help it in anticipating, assessing, responding and managing a series of complex issues that arise arranging from litigation, recall on products and the environmental issues.Other issues that the company needs to deal with include labor issues, bankruptcy, restricting, sexual and discrimination issues, company products boycotts and the trademark disputes and patent infringements. It involves the process of conducting a risk assessment whereby the company tries to identify and to prioritize on the areas of that are highly venerable to risks. A study is carried out on the public perception, emerging trends and also emerging practices with the potential to affect the firm.Fom here the management develops a plan of development and communication to anticipate the issues that are likely to arise by optimizing on management actions they come up on messages and materials. They also engage in third party alliances, conduct media trainings and simulations and put monitory systems to keep in tract an emerging issue (Loch, Wirt, 2004)

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            For issues to be effectively managed and resolved, proper and effective communication is very important .When issues are solved amicably they generate a lot of controversy that creates a hostile climatic environment for organization which in turn makes the organization lose its focus from its turn eventually making the managers also lose focus when trying to deal with the problems that have arisen. It must be a well planned and analyzed approach that involves building networks that will deliver information, understanding where the problem is arising and take corrective measures.

China is the largest producer of the agricultural products. It produces products such as milk and milk products such as yorgurt, milk powder. Sanlu Dairy Company `is a company that supplied the Chinese market with 18% of milk products. It was reported that the company produced over 6,800 tons of milk a day and it bought milk from the suppliers that were more than 60,000 farming households. On 12 September 2008 it was reported that the milk from Sanlu Dairy Company from China was contaminated with chemicals that were referred to melamine. The food poisoning led to increased deaths of the infants and over 53,000 people were admitted to hospital due to illnesses that were related to the food poisoning. The government of China sent inspectors to check the content of the milk products that led to the deaths. Some of the countries that banned the sale of the countries milk products to their country were: Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

            Sanlu Dairy Company had in the last six months received complaints from the customers that its products were contaminated .The biggest problem was that they did not inform the government about it, so that corrective measures would be taken to avoid the increased death toll and health complication of infants. The reasons why the management of the company added melamine chemical into the milk products, was also to increase the sales volume of its product as it had failed to pass through the standards quality test of the health practitioners that resulted to heavy losses of the company since it could not sell its products to the local and the international markets. The suppliers of milk added some water into the milk in order to increase the quantity of milk that would be sold to the Sanlu Company. In this case the issue that was to be addressed was that both the suppliers of milk and producers of milk were dishonest when they were carrying out their businesses, since each one of them wanted to increase their sales volume and be in a position to remain competitive in the market at the expense of compromising on the implications of producing poor quality products for the consumer.

            It was reported that more than 1500 children had been taken to the hospital to seek for treatment and over 40,000 children  had mild symptoms as they continued to receive treatment and went home with some medicines so that they could cure the disease.Melanine was used to make plastic products and fertilizers. It was once found in the cartons of milk and dairy export products although no cases of the contamination were reported at that time. The effects of having melamine in food products were that it caused serious kidney stones that would crystallize and then block the tiny tubes in the kidneys.

The health practitioners stated that as they examined the patients they found melamine in the urine and kidney stones of the sick children. The babies had the following symptoms; they looked worn out, had fever as they arrived at the hospital, other children did not produce any urine for more than two days while others were in very severe conditions. A certain parent from China complained that she had continuously taken her daughter to the doctor due to illnesses that were not properly treated on July 2008 until September2008 when the announcement of the scandal was made public that led to high death rates.

The management of the company together with the Chinese government was ignorant about the issues that were happening in the country. In the previous years there were cases of production of poor quality goods that were not addressed properly so that the perpetrators of the act would be punished, so as to prevent the bad practices from happening. For instance in the year 2004 there were more than 200 Chinese infants who suffered from malnutrition and 12 of the children died as  a result of been fed with phony formula that had no nutrients.

There were other cases of food and product poisoning that was reported these included toothpaste, drugs, and pet food and toys products as melamine had been used on these products to increase the sales volume of the company’s products. The government of China had noted in the previous years that there were product safety scandals that involved corruption, influence-peddling and lumbering, feuding bureaucracies and cost-cutting producers. These factors did affect the reputation of the company such that most of its milk products were banned from entering some of the foreign countries.

Chinas food quality watchdog stated that there were melamine components in over 10% milk and yogurt samples from three different dairy companies that included: Mengmium Dairy Company, Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group and the Bright group. The importance of the nitrogen melamine products was to ensure that the quality of the milk product was of high quality nitrogen levels as these would ensure that the right quantity of protein was in the required level.

            The greatest problem that was made by the official of the Saula Company knew about the existence of the problem, but they did not take any corrective measures as informing the public about its existence so as to avoid purchasing the milk products s it would have had bad implications on them. Some of the parents and children that had consumed the product became traumatized hence the government promised to offer free services to its customers although the consumers of the product would incur heavy medical bills and would have long-term complications in the future due to the food poisoning.

            According to the Chinese Minister of Agriculture he stated that most of the farmers abandoned their milk business and they began killing their cattle since the milk suppliers stopped to purchasing their products due to the contamination of the milk products. Due to this problem government stated that it would give its farmers some subsidies so that they could stop that act of killing their cattle as the problem would have been solved in the future (Roger, 2004).

            The owners of Sanlu company Mr. Geng and Shin were later on arrested due to their act .After were arrested they stated that they knew about the existence of the chemical, did not know about the adverse effects of the product to the consumers in general as their intention was to increase their products sales volume yet their family members did not take the drinks.    After the scandal was discovered, the Minister of Agriculture officials were sent to dairy farms so that they could encourage the farmers to continue with their businesses .They made sure they met dairy farmers, fodder producers, people that ran milk collection centers and supermarkets so as to assess the extent of the damage that had happened so that corrective measures would be taken. The Minister of Agriculture stated that they would protect the farmers and promote stable development of the dairy industry so that the action would not occur again in the future. (Hogan, 2002)

In order for the Ministry of Agriculture and the management  of dairy companies they should have implemented the following strategies within their organization these are, classifying information that was based on the organization priorities that of increasing sales so that it could remain profitable and could continue with its operations in the future. It should have also reviewed and evaluated the list of previous issues that had been happening in the country, for instance the production of poor quality goods and services that led to banning of Chinese products to the foreign countries and health complication to those that consumed the harmful products. It was reported that certain issues had arisen in the country for example the production of phony infant products that led to the malnutrition of the children that consumed it (Roger, 2004).

The Chinese government should have also classified and ranked the issues that were occurring within the organization so that they would not occur again in the future, since the production had been happening so some several years within the country yet no action had been taken to deal with the perpetrators of the act that led to lose of lives for those consumed the poor quality products.

            In order to prevent the production of poor and harmful products from been produced within a country the Chinese government should have implemented a law that stipulated the kind of punishment that should be imposed on those people that break the law, so as to avoid, prevent the repetitions of those adulterous acts that had been affecting the reputation the Chinese government and leading to lose of lives due to negligence of some citizens within a country.

References

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