What Creates Energy in Organizations? Essay Example

Organizations and Human Behavior: Conflict of Interest

The below paper will focus on the importance of managing conflict and aligning interests within the organization. Reviewing ten different articles looking at organizational conflict and human resources management perspective, the author is looking to reveal the best approaches towards managing conflict and turning it into organizational competitive advantage in the public sector. Conflict improves creativity, innovation, advances ethics, and energizes organizations, as the below essay will confirm. It encourages individual and organizational learning, liberates employees, and makes public organizations more democratic. It motivates people within the organization, increases commitment, and helps cultivating employee citizenship behavior. The below review of related literature will attempt to find the best managerial and leadership approaches to create effective teams that embrace conflict and grow through collaboration.

Positive Conflict Is Constructive Conflict

Tjosvold (20) states that while conflict is present in every workplace, how managers handle it differs. Conflict can be turned into a positive one, and a constructive discussion, which, in turn, creates a positive work atmosphere, and improves democracy within the organization. Avoiding conflict, however, has serious consequences. It makes it harder to align individual visions and values with the ones of the organization. As – according to the author –  conflict-free organizations do not exist, leaders need to find ways of turning them into competitive advantages.

Lubit (118) talks about difficult managers and employees. These people are hard to negotiate with, and easy to get into conflict with. The most nonconstructive manager types that the author identifies are narcissistic, aggressive, rigid, and impaired. The common trait among these groups is that they are not open to discussion, and either refuse or avoid conflict. Employees working for these leaders are either too scared to confront the view of the manager, or see that there is no point doing so, as they would not be listened to.  The author (Lubit, 125) provides a few tips on improving conflict management and the quality of discussions within the organization. The main advice he gives managers is to enhance their emotional intelligence, learn to decode work styles, and focus on the common interest within the group.

Conflict Resolution Approaches

Heierbacher focuses on effective conflict resolution approaches and ways of turning conflicts into dialogues that liberate employees and unlock the full potential of teams and organizations. According to the author (Heierbacher, 103), dialogue “is not about judging, weighing, or making decisions, but about understanding and learning”. In order to resolve conflicts, managers need to introduce the problem, establish common grounds, share personal perspectives, explore the views of others, and decide based on meaningful dialogues. Through these dialogues –  as Baker and Parker confirm – energy is created. The authors (Baker and Parker, 53) talk about two different types of leaders: energizers, and de-energizers. The description of de-energizers clearly resemble Lubit’s nonconstructive manager category’s. Baker and Parker make two important statements that describe how conflicts can be turned into dialogue, and how dialogues can energize teams. The first criteria is a compelling vision, which is the equivalent to Heierbacher’s “common ground”. The second one is meaningful contribution, while the third one is engagement in the interaction. When authoritative, nonconstructive managers hold meetings, they do not encourage employees to actively participate in discussions. Finally, Baker and Parker (56) state that “energizers are able to disagree with an idea while not marginalizing the person who presented it”.

Cannon and Witherspoon focus on a specific method of creating meaningful dialogues: providing actionable feedback. Furthermore, the performance feedback should be based on concrete facts, and be constructive in order to improve individual performance, learning outcomes, and development. The main source of conflict with

Growing Teams

If conflict management improves collaboration and creativity, it can evidently grow teams and improve their performance. Fishman (1) talks about meetings at Whole Foods stores. One important aspect of these gatherings is that there is no drama, as everyone is allowed to contribute, even if they would only like to bring up an issue to solve the problem together, or to tell an interesting story. As Fishman (1) states, they are “an important ritual for promoting group accountability and reinforcing the company’s values”. The author puts the emphasis on the company’s values, and the more they are aligned with individuals’, the better the teams will perform. Baker and Parker, as well as Heierbacher mention the same aspect of organizational behavior and performance. The communication of vision, goals, values, and beliefs, aligning them with employees’ can turn negative conflicts into “positive conflicts” (Tjosvold), improve collaboration, team, and organizational performance.

Towards Self-Managed Teams

Self-managed teams, according to Rousseau are based on commitment and mutuality. This is the reason why authoritative leadership styles, previously discussed, do not encourage teamwork. Rousseau calls mutuality as a gold standard for teamwork. Psychological contracts defined by Rousseau between employers and employees are also a form of shared values and visions. However, they also contain an important element, apart from respect and openness: reciprocity. Psychological contracts should not be viewed as one-way obligatory requirements. Self-managed teams operate based on the unwritten contract between managers and team members.

Surowiecki (180)  states that “one of the real dangers that small groups face is emphasizing consensus over dissent. This statement is relevant to the current issue examined: the impact of constructive debates and conflicts on team performance. The author talks about jurors, and it is important to note that they are selected in a way that they come from different walks of life, and have various preferences, values, and beliefs on an individual level. There is no time to create a “common ground”, and this is not the aim of the jury, either. However, the article highlights the importance of valuing individual opinions, and can be useful for managers trying to bring diverse teams together to discuss issues and brainstorm solutions.

Learning, Employee Engagement, And Performance

Democracy and discipline is defined as the main building block of self-managing, effective teams. In Whole Foods, everyone is in charge of team performance. Hence, all members of the team accept personal responsibility. Another aspect of the issue is brought up by Druskat and Wolff, who state that the three levels of group emotional intelligence. This includes effectively communicating norms. Again, previously discussed articles talked about organizational culture, common grounds, and it is evident that the norms that Druskat and Wolff mention on an individual, organizational, and group level are manifestations of common values. When the authors ask “where do norms come from?”, the answer they suggest seems to be that it is embedded in the organization’s structure; training, learning, interactions, and values. As the authors state: “a team can be influenced by a broader organizational culture” (Druskat and Wolff, 116). This means that culture has a direct correlation with cooperation, teamwork, and organizational performance.

End Result: Employee Commitment and Improved Performance

Bolino and Turnley reviews the management approaches to influence individual employee behavior and citizenship. When listing the factors that improve employee citizenship, the authors – just like previous researchers mentioned before – highlight organizational support and justice originating from transformational leadership. This indicates that leaders who can clearly communicate vision can increase employee commitment and dedication. Further, the authors mention that one of the informal systems that can foster citizenship is to “develop a corporate culture that emphasizes going the extra mile for customers, colleagues, or the organization itself (Bolino and Turnley, 65). If we assume that employee citizenship can only exist in democratic organizations, the connection between different aspects of organizational behavior is clear. The organization’s ability to turn conflict into meaningful discourse fosters democracy within the organization. By effectively communicating common values and reinforcing them, managers can create an open culture that focuses on collaboration. This results in better team performance, and consequently improved organizational performance. Conflict management, therefore, is an important leadership skill, however, it needs to be an integral part of a transformational leadership model: strengthening emotional contracts, values, and empowering employees through training will increase the quality of collaboration and communication among the organization, managers, and team members. Improved communication will create even more meaningful discourses, and – through positive conflict – more innovative solutions for the problems that the public organization faces. Teams can become self-managed, knowledge is easier to share, and individual goals are fulfilled through psychological contracts.

Works Cited

Baker, R. and Parker, A. What Creates Energy in Organizations? Mit Sloan Management Review. Summer 2003. Print.

Bolino, M. and Turnley, W. Going the Extra Mile: Cultivating and Managing Employee Citizenship Behavior. Academy of Management Executive, 2003, Vol. 17. No. 3. 2003. Print.

Cannon, M. and Witherspoon, R. Actionable Feedback: Unlocking the Power of Learning and Performance Improvement. Academy of Management Executive, 2005. Vol. 19, No. 2. 2005. Print.

Druskat, V. and Wolff, S. Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups. 2001. Print.

Fishman, C. Whole Foods is All Teams Fast Company, 2013. Print.

Heierbacher, S. Dialogue and Deliberation In: Change Handbook: The definitive resource on today’s best methods on engaging whole systems. Hollman, P. (ed.). 2007. Print.

Lubit, R. The Tyranny of Toxic Managers: Applying Emotional Intelligence to Deal with Difficult Personalities. In: Organizational Behavior Reader. 2004. Print.

Rousseau, D. Psychological Contracts in the Workplace: Understanding the Ties that Motivate. Academy of Management Executive, 2004. Vol. 18. No. 1. 2004. Print.

Surowiecki, J. Committees, Juries, and Teams: The Columbia Disaster and How Small Groups Can Be Made to Work. In: Surowiecki, J. The Wisdom of Crowds. 2005. Print.

Tjosvold, D. The conflict-positive organization: it depends upon us. Journal of Organizational Behavior 29, 19–28 (2008) 2008. Print.