Conflict Case Study

Conflict would occur when “disagreement exists” within an organisation over different issues (French, 2011). These issues can be associated with power; “the potential ability to influence behaviour” (Pfeffer, 1992 p. 713: cited in Martin, 2005).

In Welton NHS trust, there has been an issue regarding missing records and during investigation it was disclosed that the record files were withheld by the doctors or the consultants. This might have been due to use of authority power, as the doctors or consultants are higher than the other staff in terms of authority and expertise. Also, the doctors could use expert power to show that they have the expert knowledge and the staff should follow them. Kipinis et al, 1984 stated that there are a range

(ACAS 2009)

In the medical records department in Welton NHS trust, there is pluralist perspective of conflict because even though there are different groups at different level in the department, but they will view conflict from the same viewpoint; which is as something that is inevitable.

The pre-conflict and post conflict impact on the individuals and the organisation includes; before conflict individuals might feel unhappy resulting a fall in motivation as only few employees will out input in team meetings or briefings, people can make offensive remarks about each other so fewer social events will be organised resulting in a fall in employee engagement. Other impacts are that if employees are not cooperating, more queries and complaints will be made so productivity level will fall hence impact the operation of Welton NHS trust. People will react to conflict in three different ways; fight, flight and freeze. During the fight response, individuals will react in a challenging way by shouting or losing temper, during the flight response individuals will ignore what is going on and hope the problem will go away and during the freeze response, the individual is not sure about how to react but the individual will try to deal with the

For example, if an issue arises, it can make sure that both sides of the issues are fully debated and a strong individual might approach for the leadership position. It often gets necessary to manage employee relation, and to do this, workplace negotiation can be used as an approach. To manage individual conflict, the individuals involved can try to have a quiet word and discuss informally what the cause is. Then the next step is to make the process more formal by following the internal procedures of the organisation through