Impact of Industrial Conflict Management on Employees Performance
Chapter One
Research Objectives
General objective
The main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of industrial conflict on organisational performance in Abuja town.
The Specific Objectives
- To determine the effects of industrial conflict types on organisational
- To establish the effects of outcomes of industrial conflict on organisational
- To examine the effect of strategies adopted for managing industrial conflict on organisational performance.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
This chapter discussed various aspects of literature reviewed on the nature of industrial conflict, cost of industrial conflict and approaches to resolving industrial conflict. Specifically, it looked at the types, sources and evolution of industrial conflict, behavioural responses to industrial conflict, industrial conflict styles, a description of visible and hidden financial and human costs and their measurability and an analysis of how those costs are measured.
Concept of Employees Performance
Employees Performance comprises the actual output or results of an organization as measured against its intended outputs (or goals and objectives).According to Richard et al. (2009) Employees Performance should be related to factors such as profitability, improved service delivery, customer satisfaction, market share growth, and improved productivity and sales. Organization performance is therefore affected by a multiplicity of individuals, group, task, technological, structural, managerial and environmental factors.
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool – a semi- standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. It is perhaps the best known of several such frameworks (it is the most widely adopted performance management framework reported in the annual survey of management tools undertaken by Bain & Company, and has been widely adopted in English-speaking western countries and Scandinavia in the early 2010s).
Design of a balanced scorecard ultimately is about the identification of a small number of financial and non-financial measures and attaching targets to them, so that when they are reviewed it is possible to determine whether current performance ‘meets expectations’. The idea behind this is that by alerting managers to areas where performance deviates from expectations, they can be encouraged to focus their attention on these areas, and hopefully as a result trigger improved performance within the part of the organization they lead.
The 1st generation design method proposed by Kaplan and Norton (2016) was based on the use of three non-financial topic areas as prompts to aid the identification of non- financial measures in addition to one looking at financial.
Four “perspectives” were proposed. Financial perspective encourages the identification of a few relevant high-level financial measures. In particular, designers were encouraged to choose measures that helped inform the answer to the question “How do we look to shareholders?”.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Overview
This chapter discussed the study area and research methodology that was used in carrying out this study. Research methods were discussed and the test results presented.
Research design
Research design is the arrangement of conditions for collection and analysis of data in a manner that aims to combine relevance to the research purpose with economy as procedure (Kothari, 2008). According to Mugenda (2019), research design is the plan, structure and strategy of investigation conceived so as to obtain answers to research questions. Based on the research problem and the research questions formulated for the study, the research design used was the descriptive survey design and explanatory research design. Descriptive survey design sought to collect data without manipulating the research variables or the respondents in an attempt to uncover the existing status of industrial conflicts in hotels and to find out its effects on the performance of hotels. The respondents were also required to provide information on their perceptions of industrial conflict in hotels. The researcher chose descriptive survey research design since it enabled finding out the ‘real’ situation of the effects of industrial conflict as it is through investigation that does not allow manipulation of the study variables (Patton, 2000). Descriptive studies generally take raw data and summarize it in a useable form. Specifically, questionnaires were the tools utilized in data collection. ` Further, the researcher chose an explanatory research design. This enabled the establishment of the relationship between industrial conflict and organisational performance. The design also allowed in depth acquisition of knowledge and insight into the study population and the variables under study. Additionally, the design allows use of inferential statistics to establish the significant relationships between the dependent and the independent variables (Hair et al., 2007).
Target population
According to Mugenda (2019), target population is a population to which a researcher would like to generalize the results of a study.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENTATION AND INTERPRETATION
Introduction
This chapter presents an analysis of the data collected from the field on the effects of industrial conflict on organisational performance in Abuja. The research aimed at fulfilling the following objectives: to determine the effects of industrial conflict types on organisational performance, to establish the effects of outcomes of industrial conflict on organisational performance and to examine the effect of strategies adopted for managing industrial conflict on organisational performance. It is subdivided into two sections; the first section presents results of descriptive analysis and the second section presents results on inferential statistics.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Overview
The chapter presents discussions, conclusions, recommendations and Areas for further research for the study.
Discussions
Types of Industrial conflict and Employees Performance.
According to the research findings, there exist friction, personality clashes, grudges (emotional conflict) and tension among members in their department. This finding concur with the literature’s definition of relationship conflict as a conflict that is focused on interpersonal incompatibilities among group members and may include personality differences as well as differences of opinion and preferences regarding non- task issues (Jehn, 2015). In addition, relationship conflict could also be thought of as an awareness of personality clashes, interpersonal tension, or conflict characterized by anger, frustration, and uneasiness. As such, relationship conflict is defined as “interpersonal incompatibilities among group members which typically includes tension, animosity, and annoyance among members within a group” (Jehn & Mannix, 2001).
All the indicators of relationship conflict attained a low standard deviation indicating that the values were close to the mean thus falling within the range of expected values. According to Ulrich (2005) the means of a group of items can be related to the anchor on the Likert scale, this could therefore imply that relationship conflict is experienced in the hotel and could affect Employees Performance. Additionally, Results from the regression model shows that there exist a negative relationship between Employees Performance and relationship conflict. These study findings are consistent with propositions by Jehn, (2015) who opined that relationship conflict is uniformly considered to negatively relate to performance, and has a more adverse effect than task conflict. This was based on the rationale that in the presence of relationship conflict, arousal and cognitive load increases, which in turn affects cognitive flexibility and creative thinking and decreases performance. Further, De Dreu & Weingart, (2003) believe that employees who experience relationship conflict often spend most of their time and effort resolving interpersonal problems. As such, they mobilize less energy and fewer resources to deal with task-related issues, which lead to process losses. Additionally, there is a rare unanimity about the consequences of relationship conflict. In virtually every instance examined empirically, the emergence of relationship conflict has been shown to be detrimental to performance (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). The harm induced by relationship conflict appears at both the individual and group level (Jehn & Bendersky, 2003) and includes reduced productivity (Wall & Nolan, 2016), reduced creativity (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron, 2016), and reduced satisfaction within the members of a group or a department (Jehn et al., 2019). Together, these studies show that the presence of relationship conflict should provide highly diagnostic information about its ability to perform well and its effect on Employees Performance.
In the study relationship conflict was found to be a significant determinant of Employees Performance hence the rejection of the hypothesis: relationship conflict has no effect on Employees Performance of hotels in Abuja town.
Based on the study findings, it can be deduced that there are conflicts about ideas in the departments, people in their department disagree about opinions and on who should do what. Members of the department disagreed about the way to complete a group task and that there is conflict about delegation of tasks within the department. These findings are in conformity to Jehn and Bendersky (2003) definition of task conflict, which states that task conflict is focused on the substantive issues associated with the group’s task and can involve differences in viewpoints, ideas, or opinions. Task conflict may also involve the discussion or awareness of different preferences or approaches to a task. More formally, task conflict is defined as “disagreements among group members about the content of tasks being performed, including differences in viewpoints, ideas, and opinions” (Jehn, 2015). These findings on task conflict are further supported by the research findings on the causes of industrial conflict, which showed that that there is no clarity of roles and responsibilities in the hotels and that there is heavy workloads in the organizations.
Moreover, results from the regression model show that there exist a negative relationship between Employees Performance and task conflict. This implies that task conflict is experienced in the hotels and it affects Employees Performance. These findings are consistent with researchers (Amason, 2016; Nemeth, 2016; Tjosvold, 2011; Triandis, Marin, Lisansky, & Betancourt, 2014) who conform to the more traditional view of task conflict, who contend that task conflict may be detrimental to performance. This is based on the rationale that the tension and antagonism that can result from task conflict, may further distract from the task. However, it differs with the more contemporary position in the industrial conflict literature that has emerged within the last ten years or so. These recent conflict researchers (Jehn, Northcraft, &Neale, 2019) believe that task conflicts have the potential to create value by stimulating creative thinking and divergent thought processes. Task conflict may help employees confront task-related issues, learn to take different perspectives, and address task-related inefficiencies. Conceptually, they suggested that task conflict is positively related to performance.
In the study task conflict was found to be a significant determinant of Employees Performance hence the rejection of the hypothesis: task conflict has no effect on Employees Performance of hotels in Abuja town.
It can thus be deduced from the study findings that both task and relationship conflicts occur in the hotels. This could be attributed to the interdependent nature of hotels and interpersonal incompatibilities among hotel staff, including personality differences as well as differences of opinion and preferences regarding non-task and task issues. Task and relationship conflict can also share some conceptual overlap, as each type of conflict may affect the other. Task conflict may turn into relationship conflict if perceived as a personal disagreement.
On the levels of industrial conflict experienced in the hotels, the study findings indicated that horizontal industrial conflict is experienced more in the hotels as compared to vertical industrial conflict. These findings on levels of industrial conflict are further supported by the study findings on the causes of industrial conflict, which showed that the main cause of industrial conflict in the organizations was due to interdependence with other departments, this is consistent with Hornsey (2016) who suggested that the prevalence of interdepartmental conflict in hotels seems to be one of the distinctive features of their operation. The level of interdependence between departments in many situations is necessarily high if the customer is to receive a satisfactory service. A number of studies by Slaikeu and Hasson (2018) have indicated that where there are high perceived levels of interdependence between departments then interdepartmental industrial conflict tends to increase and it affects Employees Performance. Interdependence in hospitality situations is caused by the nature of work flows; the product or service that the customer receives is the outcome of close and often immediate cooperation between two or more departments. Coupled with this, the time requirements for coordination are very short compared with other industries. In fact, they can often be measured in minutes or seconds.
Furthermore, the study findings indicated that industrial conflict between co- workers was experienced; this could be because of scarce resources that were also cited as another cause of industrial conflict. This reiterates earlier findings of Henry (2009), which stated that employees compete in organization because of limited resources. This competition can take the form of financial, promotion, manpower equipment, etc. According to Rajinder (2002) goal differentiation between the parties, environment, rewards and Status and stigma are other cause of industrial conflict in hotels.
It can be inferred from the research findings that there is low vertical industrial conflict being experienced in the hotels. This could be due to the fact that poor leadership by their managers was not cited as a major cause of industrial conflict. This point is further illustrated by Brewer N, Mitchell P, and Weber N, (2002), who posit that in vertical conflict; apparently individuals in lower organizational level seek to avoid conflicts with higher hierarchical levels.
Pondy (2012) observed that it is expected that the top management peers perceive more conflict internally between their groups than those of lower position. This happens because of various reasons: Firstly, people in higher hierarchical level, rather than the lower ones, are engaged in non-routine activities and development of politics, where orientation for the actions are less clear and chances for disagreement, bigger and; secondly, people in higher hierarchical level, rather than the lower ones, are probably less flexible in their points of view. Hence conflict resolution is more difficult, as a result negatively affecting Employees Performance.
Outcomes of Industrial conflict and Employees Performance.
On the objective of investigating how outcomes of conflict affects Employees Performance of hotels, the findings from the study indicated that all the listed outcomes of Industrial conflict such as reduced understanding of others at work, poor solutions to problems and challenges, poor working relationships are experienced, low performance in teams, bad ideas are produced, increase in employee turnover, people are forced to search for new approaches to managing conflicts, distance between people increases, there is no clarification of individual views and long-standing problems are not brought to the surface to be resolved, negatively affected Employees Performance .These findings also conform to the arguments of McClure, (2000) who opined that unmanaged or badly managed industrial conflict is detrimental not only to the working relationship, but also to those with whom they work, as energy is used in fuelling the industrial conflict rather than in furthering the performance of the individuals or of the team. Moreover, reduced motivation of staff can lead to lower quality products or services or mistakes that can threaten clients’ lives.
However findings from the regression analysis indicated that outcomes of industrial conflict negatively affect Employees Performance of hotels but by only a small decline. Consequently the hypothesis was accepted that outcomes of conflict have no effect on Employees Performance of hotels in Abuja town. These findings are consistence with Taylor, 2008; Watson, & Hoffman, (2016) who suggested that industrial conflicts can either be constructive or destructive in nature. Disagreement occurs even in the best working relationship and challenging another’s ideas can strengthen an outcome. The right kind of friction and constructive confrontation and arguments over ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect can help any organization and has the potential to drive greater performance and creativity and help produce major improvement in productivity.
Strategies for Managing Industrial conflict and Employees Performance.
On the objective of establishing the effects of the strategies used to manage industrial conflict on Employees Performance, the research findings pointed out that one strategy is not sufficient for managing industrial conflict as different industrial conflict cases need to be managed differently for positive improvement in performance to be seen. Accordingly, based on the research findings, avoidance was the most frequently used strategy to manage industrial conflict and improve the hotels performance. This could be because avoidance is a natural response of many people to industrial conflict. The prospect of dealing with the complexity of industrial conflict is often overwhelming and leads to the natural response to do nothing. While doing nothing or at least initially delaying a reaction can be helpful, avoidance, though often built on legitimate feelings such as fear, intimidation or anger carries great potential to aggravate the industrial conflict (Kellner, 2000). As a result, those who deny industrial conflict and its reasons risk indirectly contributing to industrial conflict escalation which consequently affects the hotels performance negatively. These findings also conform to the arguments of McClure, (2000) who opined that conflict should not be avoided, hoping it will go away. The participants should be asked to describe specific actions they would like the other party to take. It would also be beneficial to have a third party (meaning a non-direct superior with access to the situation) involved. This could be an individual member or a board dedicated to resolving and preventing issues.
Compromising as a strategy is an inherent part of any industrial conflict resolution if the Employees Performance is to be improved. While compromise often reflects personal perceptions it can also be objective, such as dividing money in half. This style is often chosen by those who wish to avoid the emotional aspects of industrial conflict management. Relying on this approach however results in both parties’ needs not being fully met, thus affecting the performance of the organization. According to Rahim (2002) compromising involves give-and-take whereby both parties give up something to make a mutually acceptable decision. However this strategy is only appropriate when both parties involved in the conflict are powerful and when the problem is not complex. This point is further illustrated by Brewer N, Mitchell P, and Weber N, (2002), who suggested that an Integration strategy be used in complex situations and when one party is weak as it involves openness, exchanging information, looking for alternatives, and examining differences so as to solve the problem in a manner that is acceptable to both parties.
Competitive strategy was ranked third. This could be attributed to the fact that goal differentiation between the departments makes the environment competitive as each department has its own goals to achieve, for instance the chef’s concern is primarily with quality of food prepared and that of service staff primarily with speed. These finding are illustrated by Weinstein (2001) who contends that competitive strategy is about achieving one’s goal. He argues that while a competitive style is indeed about
winning and losing, competitive people are not necessarily aggressive or adversarial, often view competition as a sport and does not necessarily have the intention to harm others. However, for others who do not share this perception, competitive people can be quite threatening. A competitive style can be a valid strategy when what is under discussion is too important to risk such as customer satisfaction which subsequently can affect Employees Performance. However this findings did not conform to the arguments of Renner (2007) who opined that in a hospitality establishment a competitive strategy should not be encouraged as both parties have to work together for the satisfaction of the guest and when personal conflict leads to frustration and loss of efficiency, counselling may prove to be a helpful antidote.
Accommodating and Collaborative strategies were ranked last as the least favourite strategies used. This could be because collaborative strategy employs and requires teamwork and cooperation to attain a mutually acceptable goal. While this style may be the most efficient one in achieving win-win solutions, it takes longer and requires that people put their individual needs aside for a common good, which is very difficult to achieve when parties are emotionally engrained in an industrial conflict situation. In the same vein, Accommodating strategy consists of capitulating in order to gain or maintain something else of value such as relationships. According to Thomas and Kilmann (2008) while accommodation can be a necessary step in resolving industrial conflicts, there is a risk that accommodation masks the problematic issues with a short-lived feel-good agreement. Consequently, most of the respondents do not prefer using these strategies as it negatively affects Employees Performance.
The findings of this study signify a positive relationship between Strategies adopted for managing industrial conflict and Employees Performance, hence a rejection of the hypothesis: Strategies adopted for managing industrial conflict do not significantly affect Employees Performance.
Conclusion
From the research findings, conclusions can be drawn based on the independent variables; types of industrial conflict, outcomes of conflict and strategies used to manage industrial conflict and their effects on the dependent variable Employees Performance. An improvement in the management of industrial conflict through the use of the right strategies would likely result into improved Employees Performance. First, types of industrial conflict affect Employees Performance. This conclusion is drawn from the fact that the findings from the study pointed out that relationship and task conflict negatively affected the performance of the hotels. It was noted that relationship conflict has a more adverse effect on performance than task conflict. Further, the research findings indicated that horizontal industrial conflict is frequently experienced in the hotels when compared to vertical industrial conflict.
Secondly, outcomes of industrial conflict do not affect Employees Performance. This conclusion is drawn from the fact that although the research findings showed that outcomes from unmanaged or badly managed industrial conflict were detrimental to the performance of the hotels, the extent to which the Employees Performance was affected was insignificant. In addition, the regression results indicated that outcomes of industrial conflict negatively affect Employees Performance of hotels but by only a small decline.
Finally, strategies for managing industrial conflict effect Employees Performance. This conclusion is drawn from the fact that the research findings pointed out that one strategy is not sufficient for managing industrial conflict as different industrial conflict cases need to be managed differently for positive improvement in performance to be seen. Furthermore, the regression results indicated a positive relationship between Strategies adopted for managing industrial conflict and Employees Performance.
Recommendations
Based on the findings from this study, the researcher recommends the following:
- Efforts should be made by the managers to occasionally stimulate constructive task conflict by encouraging divergent views and rewarding staff and department for outstanding performance while relationship conflict should be completely prevented.
- Outcomes of industrial conflict should not be overlooked by managers and accounted for as part of the normal outcomes of doing business but should be minimized by clarifying to staff at large where to go for advice in case of conflict and build peer-support structure of conflict advisors.
- Managers should develop diverse but appropriate strategies to resolve and manage conflicts as they arise before escalating to unmanageable level.
- Propercommunication procedures should be put in place to resolve For instance, when any disagreements arise among the employees, it should be reported to the management and then management should get statements from the parties involved, brainstorm the issue and make recommendation on how to resolve the conflict.
- Efforts should be made by the management to organize in house training/ seminars/workshops on organizational conflict management from time to time for the employees .This will enable employees learn about conflict and how it can be effectively managed for individual and organization effectiveness.
- Lastly managers should review existing rules and procedures for their impact on the hotel’s conflict culture, i.e. do they sanction and suppress conflict or do they invite dealing with conflict in a constructive way.
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