Conflict Identification and Resolution - Essay Example

The clinic has been sold to a new owner who decided to improve business efficiency and to increase sales. The newly appointed CEO has set the sales targets for the company and informed about these targets two categories of employees: sales and marketing department and doctors. Both sales department and doctors were expected to achieve the new sales targets, while doctors had to sell themselves, and marketers had to sell the clinic’s products and visits to doctors. The crux of the conflict was in an increasing confrontation between the sales department and doctors.

On the one hand, doctors were blaming sales and marketing (S&M) department that they do not cope with their work as their work is to sell. On the other hand, marketing and sales department believed that doctors should be actively involved in sales process, as they were people who had direct access to the patients and the power of word of mouth was a good practice in healthcare sector. On the weekly meetings held by the CEO and devoted to discussions and analysis of the sales progress the conflict between two parties (doctors and S&M) has been growing in result of mutual accusations and insults.

It is also important to take into consideration the specific tough character of majority of doctors who often are tough people in result of the nature of their work. Doctors are special category of employees as they are used to make serious decisions quickly in order to save human live. Therefore, they don’t like when management or other employees do not make efficient decisions. The conflict described above is the intergroup conflict between S&M department and clinical department (doctors) (Deutsch & Coleman 2000).

The major source of the conflict is obvious – lack of proper communication between different departments. Effective communication is especially critical during quite a challenging time of changes (new owner and newly appointed CEO) in