Identify how contextual barriers can lead to conflict. Elaborate on all sources of conflict. By D.K.

Heerah
Organizations are living systems consisting of interacting units performing a task in a mutually dependent manner within a structure of scarce resources (Boulding, 1957:16). Organizations are designed around product lines, regions or technical specialities. These activities are assigned to departments that often have mutually exclusive structured interests and goals and that interact within a framework of scarce resources and task dependence (Dutton and Walton, 1966:2). Complex interactions require contact with different departments. Sometimes these interactions make it hard for workers and employees to assess their own colleagues level of expertise. Such situations constitute contextual barriers leading to conflicts in the organisation. People interact in some way to produce results or achieve goals. Because they differ in many ways, attitude, personality, values, goals, background, experience, etc. the resultant conflict makes the attainment of the goals quite difficult (Dutton and Walton, 1966:4).

Some of the most common barriers are  Physical and Technical barriers Physical barriers consist of border controls, immigrations and customs procedures slowing down the exchange of goods and services between organizations of different countries. Technical barriers consist of national differences in standards, measures, and weights which represent obstacles to international trades as exporters have to incur considerable costs in adapting products from importing countries technical

requirements (Keegan, 1995:26). Physical and Technical barriers are often parallel barriers because of lack of effective tools for locating the right people and collaboration becomes more pronounced when they are far away (Anderson, 1988:278).

 Social or Cultural barriers These are barriers that reduce effectiveness in the organisation. Example, due to such barriers, delays while waiting for approvals from management can slow down productivity as well as limit the sharing of new ideas from the junior team members. Social and cultural norms hinder free sharing of ideas and initiatives also. Nowadays, in almost every field cultures are interacting. Barriers between different cultures cause much frustration and annoyance leading to conflicts that erode efficiency and poison the workplace environment (Rana Sinha, 2008).

 Barriers of Time The lack of time, in certain organisations, is a barrier of much concern to managers. Experienced employees cannot find enough time to disseminate knowledge among teams and newer members. The experienced team members are so overloaded with their own duties and assignments that they have no time to teach, explain and share their lessons learned to other members of their work groups

(www.thestrategyguy.com).

 Contextual Barriers Most of the organisations around the world face the difficulty in raising the productivity of knowledge workers. The organisations struggle to improve the effectiveness of managers, salespeople, scientists, and others whose jobs consist primarily of intersections with other employees, customers and suppliers (Lynch, 2010:287). Contextual barriers arise when knowledge workers and experienced employees are unable to understand and respond to influences and conditions from outside their immediate role and functions. For example, in some organisations employees affected in the production line tend to misunderstand and perhaps even distrust the goals and motives of employees in the commercial roles such as purchasing, finance and marketing. When employees cannot align their own works and goals with the work and

goals of other functions, the overall result for the organisation can be negative (www.thestrategyguy.com).

To overcome contextual barriers organisations should  Rotate employees across teams and divisions so that they get a wider understanding for what in going on outside their own fields, in the different sections of the organisation.  Hold regular forum to share knowledge across disciplines. Example, the NASA organise Masters Forum twice a year, where employees from different part of the agency come to hear other NASA colleagues talk about the tools, methods, and skills they use in extremely complex projects (www.thestrategyguy.com).  Encourage the team to have lunch with colleagues from new area of the organisation, where they can discuss and share knowledge (Greenaway, 1965:64).

Whenever and wherever such barriers are not properly handled by managements, situations of conflicts affect the organisations.

Conflict is a perceived difference between two or more parties resulting in mutual opposition (Robbins, 1974:383). According to Hellriegel, Slocum and Woodman (1998:362), conflict is the process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party. Sometimes conflict can be a positive force within an organisation, while at other times it is a negative force. An example of conflict as a positive force is that the creation and resolution of conflict may lead the company to constructive problem solving. It may also lead people to search for ways of changing how things are done (Hellriegel et al., 1998:364). Conflict may also have serious negative effects on an organisation. For example, conflict may divert

efforts from goal attainment or it may deplete resources particularly time and money (Hellriegel et al., 1998:365).

Sources of conflicts  Goal Incompatibility: Incompatible goals occur when one employees or department personal or work goals seem to interfere with another persons department goals. Conflict can result when co-workers with different goals and different messages from managers and supervisors have to work together on teams, committees, or in work groups. Management agreement on clear and common goals is important for productivity and harmony among employees in work groups, and a clear vision and business goals from top management eliminates causes of conflict. Example: A company manufacturing electric fans on a seasonal demand. Three departments, marketing, production and finance are involved. Since the demand for the product is seasonal, the marketing manager would like to have sufficient stock during the season. The production department has to gear up its capacity during the season but because of a tight labour market finds it difficult to hire labour temporarily and resorts to employ people on a permanent basis. This creates another problem. The finance manager says that as the storage costs are high it is expensive to keep stock build up in the slack season, and maintaining the production line during slack season imposes an additional burden (www.socyberty.com). This example shows that each department develops its own goals, which may conflict with another department's goals and one department may try to achieve its goals at the expense of another.  Insufficient Shared Resources: Any group exists for the purpose of attaining some goals with the help of available resources. These resources may be tangible like men, materials, and money or intangible like power, status or the

manager's time. No organisation is capable of providing all the resources demanded by various units. Resources are limited and different groups have to compete for these scarce resources and many conflicts arise from this source. Limited resources and working facilities appeared to be the most common form of conflict among superior and subordinate in the marketing and sale department. Example: There is only one computer available for usage in the whole department. If a superior and a subordinate both require using the computer at the same time, often a time, priority would usually be given to the superior rather than the subordinate. As a result, the subordinate may not be able to finish his work on time. When he is then reprimanded by his superior for not being able to finish his work, he will definitely feel that an unfair judgement has been passed as it is not entirely his fault that his work was not finished in time
(www.socyberty.com).

Conflict involving scarce resources that is not resolved wastes even more resources as time is spent in the whole process. One of the common examples of resource scarcity in todays organisation involves staffing.  Structural Design: In social environments, people interact with different people that affect them in different ways. No matter whether they like it, sometimes they can't get along with everybody. There are occasions when they might clash with styles or personalities that will make it hard to keep a professional relationship. This occurs when ones work depends on other peoples' activities; the individual might have to face interdependence conflicts at some point. It occurs when an employee can't finish or do his job because somebody else didn't do his part. For example, a worker on the production line works at a slower rate and doesn't care about meeting his quota. This will affect the next worker in the production line, as he won't be able complete his tasks as desired. Conflict between staff members can reduce overall productivity. Contention among workers that is prolonged or volatile can begin to affect the entire staff,

due to the tension and uncomfortable situations the conflict creates (www.eHow.com).  Personal Differences: A work environment can be a stressful place, and it can be made worse when personal differences begin to develop between employees. Of the major causes of workplace conflict, personal relationships can be particularly counterproductive, because problems may be generated both at home and in the office. Some employees bring stress from their home life to work, and this can cause conflicts among co-workers and managers. Personal conflicts arise when employees are unable to accept personal differences, which can involve such things as race, religion or ethnic background

(www.smallbusiness.chron.com). People in organisations play roles, and each role comes with responsibilities, expectations and rights. Often, these roles become too much for one person, and when roles begin to conflict, serious social and psychological problems can result. Role conflict is a type of social conflict caused from an individual being forced to take on separate and incompatible roles (www.eHow.com).

 Role ambiguity: Role ambiguity refers to the lack of specificity and predictability for an employees job or role functions and responsibility (Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek and Rosenthal, 1964:107). Unclear role-related information may lead to role ambiguity. Role ambiguity may be negatively related to self-efficacy. Role ambiguity diminishes the quality of the information available to evaluate correctly an individuals ability to perform a task. Achieving a high level of self-efficacy requires that an individual can visualise an excellent performance in a given situation (Kahn et al., 1964:104)  Role conflict: Role conflict occurs when two roles overlap too much. Two roles might have contradictory expectations, causing strain. For example, when someone is both father and worker, things expected of him at home might have to be put on hold if work is demanding more of his time. This situation creates conflict both at home and in office (Hodson and Sullivan, 2008:110).

 Role overload: Role overload occurs either when there are too many roles at one time for an individual or roles are changing and too many new roles develop at once (Hodson and Sullivan, 2008:110). Example, a young man who is just starting to work must radically change his lifestyle. The role of son and student has ended and now new roles as employee and responsible officer take place.

 Degenerative Climate: A degenerative climate is one which encourages dysfunctional conflict and where win-lose attitudes are prevalent (Cook and Hunsaker, 2001:377). This situation happens when there is a clash between values and expectations of individuals or groups (MANCOSA, 2011:29). Managers may witness such situation after the merging or total acquisition of different groups, where the employees behave differently and are of different cultures.

Conflicts are part of individual relationships and organisational development, and noorganisation can hope to mature to productivity and be successful without being able to resolve conflicts effectively" (Cottringer, 1997:6).

References: 1. K.E. Boulding, K.E., (1957) Organizations and Conflict: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Wiley, New York. 2. Dutton,J.M., and R.E. Walton,R.E.,(1966) Interdepartmental Conflict and Cooperation: Two Contrasting Studies, Human Organization, California. 3. Keegan, W.J. (1995) Global Marketing Strategy, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 4. Anderson, C.R. (1988) Management: Skills, Functions and Organisation Performance. Allyn and Bacon, USA. 5. Rana Sinha (2008) International Business and Trade, New Delhi. 6. www.thestrategyguysite.com, accessed on 15.07.2011 @ 22 40. 7. Lynch,P. (2010) Business Alignment Strategies, 2511 Belmont Avenue Inc, Long Beach, California. 8. Greenaway, D. (1985) Current Issues in International Trade, Macmillan Press, London. 9. Robbins, S.P. (1974) Managing Organisational Conflicts: A Non-traditional Approach, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey. 10. Hellriegel,D., Slocum, J.W. and Woodman, R.W. (1998) Organisational Behaviour (8th Ed), South-Western College Publishing, Cincinnati. 11. www.socyberty.com, accessed on 10.08.2011 @ 22 30. 12. www.eHow.com, accessed on 12.08.2011 @ 22 40. 13. www.smallbusiness.chon.com, accessed on 12.08.2011 @ 22 45. 14. Kahn, R.L., Wolfe, D.M., Quinn, R.P., Snoek, J.D. and Resenthal, R.A. (1964) Organisational Stress: Studies in Role Conflict and Ambiguity Conflict, Wiley, New York. 15. Hadson, R. and Sullivan, T.A. (2008) The Social Organisation of Work, Thomson Learning Inc., London. 16. Cook, C.W. and Hunsaker, P.L. (2001) Management and Organisational Behaviour (3rd Ed), McGraw-Hill, New York. 17. Cottringer, W. (1997) Conflict Management: Executive Excellence Magazine, August 1997, U.K.