Informative Essay on Conflict management

Organizations exist to accomplish sine set goals and objectives. NAMP’s main goals is to offer support to the US navy especially in terms of maintenance to fleet and other navy equipment in various settings including combat missions. In the process of execution of its goals an organization is bound to experience conflict, for NAMP these conflicts are real considering the fact that, the organization is comprised of staff from the diverse US culture and the fact that, operations in NAMP calls for team work as opposed to individual efforts.

Therefore, conflicts emerge and how such conflicts are managed determines whether NAMP functions effectively. To ensure that, conflicts are resolved to the advantage of the organization, NAMP should use the following conflict resolution strategies. Such strategies include avoidance, accommodating, forcing, compromise as well as problem solving (win-win) strategy.

Introduction

Organizations exist to achieve some set goals and objective. Organizational goals and objectives guides any given organization into the achievement of the specific goals and objectives a set out in the organizational policies and procedures.  To achieve organizational objectives and goals, any given organization engages several resources such as man, money, machine, technology and raw materials and knowledge.  Whenever teams are formed, conflicts emerge. Conflicts if managed well through utilization of conflict resolution strategies can benefit the organization a lot. Unless conflicts in teams are well managed, job performance goes down, as well as employee morale and motivation.

Background Information

Management of an organization is responsible for ensuring that all the resources of an organization are utilized so well so as to ensure that the organization achieves its mission.  Where human beings are involved conflicts always come up.  Navy, like any other given organization, conflicts arise and when they do, there is a need for conflict resolution by applying conflict management principles such as avoidance, accommodating, forcing, compromise as well as problem solving (win-win) strategy (Valley, 2006.231-245).  Conflicts are important to an organization in that if well managed they result into the birth of new ideas.  The Navy relies on teamwork so as to execute its functions well.

Where teams exist there is a need for a spirit of cooperation so as to achieve that synergetic function as teams as opposed to operating like individuals.  The Navy recruits officers from all cultural backgrounds in the US and therefore it naturally occurs that the people who end up joining teams in the Navy are comprised of diverse cultural backgrounds.  This can be a leading source of conflict in the Navy and it calls for careful management, which is non-partisan and geared towards achieving a common good for all.  NAMP is responsible for offering logistical support through aircraft maintenance.

By the virtue of maintaining Navy aircraft, NAMP constitutes an integral part of naval operations and therefore any conflicts, which interrupts morale of workers in this department affects the whole Navy force (Bohrer, 2002.24-65).  The staff of NAMP is divided into 3 levels which include the organizational level also referred to as the O-Level, performs maintenance for aircraft as well as aeronautical equipment services, preventive maintenance, inspections as well as corrective maintenance (Bohrer, 2002.48-66).

The other levels, which MAMP is organized around, are the intermediate level responsible for combat maintenance and support also referred to as I-Level. The other level of NAMP is the Depot level involved in overhauling obsolete fleet (Bohrer, 2002.55-68).  The fact that NAMP constitutes of officers in several levels such as O-Level, I-Level, D-Level as well as OMD officers implies that officers at NAMP have to constantly function in support to each other, subsequently conflicts are always bound to happen.  The following are some practical conflict resolution, which are applied at NAMP to ensure that conflicts do not disintegrate teams but on the contrary to make sure that conflicts are resolved to the advantage of the organization.

Body

Conflict resolution is only effective whereby; all efforts bear in mind the sources of conflicts in teams such as, unresolved conflicts, frustration in team members, which all reduce the effectiveness of teams (Schermerhon, Hunt, & Osborn, 2005.35-79). In terms of value, it is important to align team members’ values so that they are in agreements with organizational values. This ensures that employee behavior is in conformity with organizational galls and objectives. This is important and where individual goals are in conflict with organizational goals the latter should take precedence.

Collaboration and problem solving is an effective way of handling conflicts in teams. Collaboration calls for the team members to brainstorm the source of conflicts so as to come up with effective solutions to the emerging problems. Members are allowed the freedom to decide on the best solution to the problem which is task oriented (Cranny, Smith, & Stone, 1992.46-66). Collaboration calls for a give and take attitude in which team members can compromise their opinions and ideas for the success of the team.

Collaboration allows room for all teams to work together in harmony with resolutions to conflict being suitable and in line with team’s interests. Collaboration as a conflict resolution strategy is ideal for teams in that, it leads to the participation of all team members in the decision making process (Schermerhon, Hunt, & Osborn, 2005.37-78).

Avoidance is another conflict resolution strategy, which is very central and important to teams. Avoidance as a strategy is based on the belief that some conflicts arise out of petty and minor differences which are to easy to resolve as long as employees are willing to sit down and act as groups for the common benefit of the organization (Tajfeh, & Turner, 1979.64-81). Avoidance as a conflict resolution strategy is based on the understanding that, human beings are different and therefore differences are inevitable. Where conflicts are solved well, teams regain and strengthen trust in each other as well as trust in the organization .

Avoidance strategy therefore advocates for forgiveness in order to achieve slow healing of differences. Avoidance requires conflicting members of a team to engage in less physical contact in order to allow individual differences to heal (Spector, Fox & Van Katwyk, 1999.12-32). Therefore, avoidance of the source of conflict is an effective means of strengthening interpersonal relations in teams.

Authoritative command has been found to be an effective conflict resolution strategy. Authoritative command assumes that, team leaders can effectively solve the differences between employees or team members. This is an easy and faster way of resolving conflicts given the fact that, this conflict resolution strategy is the very fast and does not involve a lot of deliberations which may be time consuming. Given the fact that leaders have authority, arbitrating becomes easy hence speeding up the conflict resolution process. Unlike the collaboration approach, authoritative command does not leave room for brainstorming of issues and decisions are left to the discretion of the team leader (Tajfeh, & Turner, 1979.74-81).

The other common conflict resolution strategy is accommodation method. Accommodation is especially useful in resolving conflicts resulting from individual differences. It involves team members giving up the possible gains in a conflict situation to accommodate opinions of other team members (Fox, & Spector, 1999.109-126). This method is useful in building effective teams based on mutual understanding. Finally, comprise is also a conflict resolution commonly used by teams to resolve conflicts.

Compromise as a conflict resolution strategy calls for the team members to settle for less, for the sake of the team and the organization. In a compromise situation a team member may accept to suffer in order arrive at solutions to challenges and for the sake of the survival of the team (Cranny, Smith, & Stone, 1992.47-65). Compromise is useful in situations, which threaten the very survival of an organization.

Conclusion
Team building takes a lot of organization resources and conflicts should not be left to bring down the team spirit. To ensure the survival of teams in organization calls for a good understanding of the nature, types, causes and resolution strategies. Whereby conflicts are resolved well, teams move from strength to strength and the organization achieves goals and objectives.

Recommendations

It is recommendable for NAMP to utilize; avoidance, accommodating, forcing, compromise as well as problem solving (win-win) strategy wherever challenges emerge in the process to running the day to day activities of the organization. Conflict resolution can not be well management unless managers’ are well trained. There is a need for NAMP to train its managers in skills related to conflict resolution so as to make sure that, the organization continues to offer its services uninterrupted, and to maintain high staff morale as well as prevent staff turnover which often results if conflicts are not well managed.

References

Bohrer, D. 2002.24-65. America’s Special Forces.  Minnesota. Zenith press.

Cranny, C, Smith, P. and Stone, E.1992.46-66. Job satisfaction. New York: Lexington.

Fox, S and Spector, P. 1999.102-142. A model of work frustration-aggression. Journal of organization at Behavior. 20.

Spector, P., Fox, S., and Van Katwyk, P. 1999.12-32. The role of negative affectivity in employee reactions to jobs characteristics: Bias effect or substantive effect. Journal of occupational and organizational Psychology, 72.

Schermerhon, S., Hunt, J., and Osborn, R. 2005.35-79. Organizational behavior. 9ed. John Wiley $ Sons Inc.

Tajfeh, H., and Turner, J. 1979.64-81. An intergroup conflict in W.G.Austin & S. Worchel (Eds). The social psychology of intergroup relation. Monterey, CA; Brooks/Cole.

Valley, P.H. 2006.231-245. Theory and application of managerial communications. United States: McGraw-Hill / Irwin.