The Minimization of Tension at Workplace - Essay Example

However, this paper illustrates how tension occurs in the workplace and how the company and the personnel involved deal with the dilemma of minimizing the tension in the daily business operation by adopting various mechanisms to minimize it such as keeping the organizational structure relatively flat, adding a female to its managerial level, and employing emotion management and humor at the workplace. These mechanisms are applicable to corporations that are experiencing similar problems because the above methods are proven effective in reducing the likelihood and degree of tension at the workplace.

  The industry moves very fast and the market could change at any time. To cope with this situation and the very large amount of work, it is already a common practice for people to stop eating lunch out at the workplace. Instead, they take their lunch to work and eat it while staring at the computer screens. One time, in a break of this monotony, James, a vice president in our division was nice enough to invite all of us summer analysts for lunch at the cafeteria downstairs. During lunch, we talked about many aspects of the business practice in our division as well as the recent bad performance of the stock market.

In the conversation the ensued, the vice president mentioned, “when two stocks are perfectly correlated if one stock goes down by 25%, the other one will also decrease by 25%.” Jonathan, a summer analyst from my team blurted out:” I don’t think that’s right, James.” In front of all the other five interns, James paused, and then said in a distinct voice: “I am right.” Jonathan looked at the other interns and said: “Well, I guess I am wrong, sir.

” At this moment, Annie, another intern quickly raised another question and the conversation between the group continued. On the way back to our desk, I whispered to Jonathan: “Hey, what you were saying is correct!” He shrugged his shoulders: “Yea, so what.” (Field notes, August 7) In this case, we could see that Jonathan first raised his opinion when disagreement occurred but when faced with the objection from the vice president, he quickly abandoned his argument.

What were the reasons behind those actions?