Organizational Conflict and Conflict Resolution at John Lewis Waitrose - Assignment Example

? School: Topic: Organizational Conflict and Conflict Resolution at John Lewis Waitrose Lecturer: Organizational Conflict and Conflict Resolution at John Lewis Waitrose The directions that companies take in terms of growth and development approach has been found to be very much dependent on the nature of leadership and management styles and philosophies used by these organizations (Butler, 2012). It is against this background that organizational conflict and conflict resolution as a leadership and management issue at John Lewis Waitrose has been outlined in the current paper. Generally, Waitrose is identified as the supermarket division of the larger chain of companies operated under the brand of John Lewis Partnership. With an employee base of over 85,500 in almost 230 branches, it is common that issues of inter-personal conflicts will arise in the conduct of the daily tasks of employees. Through a comprehensive secondary data collection that was conducted on the company, it was realised that like most other organisations where employee-to-employee communication is part of the key chain of processes to get pieces of tasks executed, issues and reports of conflicts are very common. Some key words that emanate from the case study are organisational conflict, conflict resolution, conflict prevention, productivity, inter-personal, and maturity Waitrose is a supermarket component of the larger John Lewis Partnership. Waitrose is thus responsible for the food retail division of John Lewis Partnership, which has been identified as Britain’s largest employee-owned retailer (John Lewis Partnership, 2013). The company was actually the brain work of Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor who started the company as a small grocery store in West London. As of the beginning of 2013, the company employed a total of 85,500 workers who worked in different departments of the 230 branches of the company (John Lewis Partnership, 2013). On an average therefore, a branch of Waitrose houses close to 371 workers. Where such quantum of people lives and interacts with each other, a major challenge that Antonioni (1998) identifies to be common with leadership and management is organizational conflict. The reason for this assertion is that in such situations, there are often differentiations with people’s needs, values and interests. Meanwhile in a situation where there exists such differences, perceived and actual oppositions set in, bringing about organizational conflicts (Canary, Coach & Serape, 2001). This situation has however not been a major cause to deter the company from a rapid annual growth, for which reason the company currently boasts of revenue of ?5400.4 million, backed by an operating income of ?173.5 million and net income of ?123.3 million (Gardener, 2013). This feat has been achieved while operating under the mission and vision to be a dedicated, energized and team spirited company that brings excellent food retail services to customers. Cases of Organizational Conflict A case of organisational conflict was found in literature through secondary research in Ting-Toomey, Oetzel & Yee-Jung (2001). It was realised that one employee, Staff X (name withdrawn for ethical purposes) had a communication confrontation with another employee, Staff Y (name withdrawn). Staff X was the employee responsible for giving customised service and assistance to a prestige customer of the company. One day as the prestige member comes to the premises of the store, he first approaches Staff Y and asks if Staff X was around to deliver serve as usual. Meanwhile, Staff X had noticed Staff Y that she was going on a lunch break and that Staff Y should cover her back. Because of this, Staff Y accepted to take the role of Staff X and give the prestige member the needed service he always had from Staff X. It turned out that the prestige customer became very satisfied with the services of Staff Y and personally requested from management to assign Staff Y to him from henceforth. Once Staff X was notified about the changes, she did not take the report lightly and became highly provoked. She treated it as a betrayal from Staff Y and confronted the latter with harsh language. This situated brought about heightened tension between the two employees and made role conflicts very common among them. With time, it was realised that most prestige members who served under the department where the two employees were started withdrawing their services. Even though cases of organisational conflicts are not something that anyone really welcomes or plans to have within an organisation, it is seemingly becoming clear that as long as there is constant interaction between people within the organisation, conflicts will be recorded at one point in time or the other. What this brings to mind is the need to have a very proactive conflict management mechanism that addresses the cases of conflicts right at the point where they show up. In a related case, Ting-Toomey, Oetzel & Yee-Jung (2011) reported of another case of organizational conflict at Waitrose that involves top executives of the organization. In this instance, a number of departmental heads were accused of shielding executive decisions made during executive round tables and feeding their departmental members with new information that was right only in their own eyes. This is because after executive meetings, these accused executives reported to their subordinates decisions that they suggested at the meeting, even if those decisions were rejected by majority vote. Even though this form of conflict did not create any physical confrontational encounters, it created conflicts of goals and directions for the company. This is to say that instead of the entire company following a single pact or set of organizational focus, there were divided focuses that were being followed. Findings The data collection method led to the identification of three major theoretical topics under which data were collected. The first of the theoretical topic touched on forms of reported cases of organizational conflicts. In this aspect, it was realized that Waitrose is faced with three major forms of organizational conflict. These are inter-group conflict, role conflict, and interpersonal conflict (Feigenbaum, 2013). The second theme touched on approaches to conflict resolution at Waitrose. For this it was established that the company relies on the maturity and immaturity theory of conflict management to resolve most of the cases of organizational conflicts that it is faced. As part of this theory, it is believed that when employees are matured at their roles and position, and well vest with excellent interpersonal and inter-group skills, they will be able to handle the issues of conflicts they face more easily (Butler, 2013). To this end, there is a conflict management department under the general human resource management of the company that sits on all cases of employee conflicts and offer professional guidance and counseling to employees involved. The third and final theoretical topic touched on outcomes of conflict resolution at the organization. Under this theme, it was actually realized that issues of organizations conflict that receive effective and thorough management in their resolution brings an outcome of well learned and mature employees who gain better ideas on ways to improve their communication and human relations at work (Ting-Toomey, Oetzel & Yee-Jung, 2001). References Antonioni, D. 1998. Relationship between the big five personality factors and conflict management styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 9,336-355. Butler S. 2012. John Lewis and Waitrose staff in line for ?40m after holiday pay blunder. The Guardian [Online] [Accesed 14 November 2013] Butler S. 2013. John Lewis Partnership profits fall nearly 40%.The Guardian [Online] [Accessed 13 November 2013] Canary, D. J., Coach, W. R., & Serape, R. T. 2001. A competence-based approach to examining interpersonal conflict. Communication Research, 28, 79-104. Feigenbaum E. 2013. Organisational Conflict Theory. [Online] [Accessed 13 November 2013] Gardener R. 2013. Did Waitrose deal kill Alan Titchmarshs Chelsea Flower Show Job? Daily Mail. [Online] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2504404/Did-Waitrose-deal-kill-Alan-Titchmarshs-Chelsea-Flower-Show-job.html [Accessed 13 November 2013] John Lewis Partnership 2013. Waitrose is the Nation’s Favourite Supermarket. [Online] [Accessed 14 November 2013] Ting-Toomey, S., Oetzel, J. G., & Yee-Jung, K. 2001. Self-construal types and conflict management styles. Communication Reports, 14, 87-104. Read More