Four Solutions for Structural Conflict
How Top Managers can Lower Stress Levels in Their Organizations
Oct 20, 2009
Conflict management in general has become an integral part of a manager's tasks. They are not required to suppress or resolve conflict, but to manage it. The importance of this responsibility is demonstrated by the fact that conflict puts some people under stress that may affect their productivity.
Although some are most likely to think of conflict as negative, it can also result in positive outcomes. It can bring about necessary changes, and when conflict serves as a signal that a problem exists, it can stimulate a creative response.
On the flip side of this point is the cultural-related issue that people in many non-Western cultures believe it is best to avoid conflicts. This dynamic is quickly being discovered in some of the newer global organizations being formed today. This in itself can cause structural conflicts to be smoothed over to the extent they may not even be visible.
How Top Managers can Lower Stress Levels in Their Organizations
Structural conflict is not a signal there is a problem to be solved but rather a sign that the organizational structure needs to be redesigned. Some of this could be structural conflict that is resulting from the way the organization is structured. This may arise between line and staff personnel, or between departments such as production and marketing.
The costs of this structural conflict may be minimized at that level if managers proceed cautiously and diplomatically in conflict areas. Awareness of this type of conflict can help prevent these managers from taking the issues personally.
Because managers at the lower levels of the organization do not decide on the organization’s structure, they are rarely able to reduce the amount of this structural conflict. This makes it imperative for top executives to face this problem head on.
Types of Structural Conflict
There are two types of structural conflict and they are horizontal.
- Horizontal conflict occurs between groups at the same level of the organization such as the aforementioned line and staff personnel, or between departments such as production and marketing.
- Vertical conflict occurs between different hierarchical levels of the organization. Conflicts here can arise over differences of opinion on control or wage issues for example.
Four Solutions for Structural Conflict
- Adopt newer and flatter organizational structures.
- Reward people for being smart in a total organizational perspective, not just for achieving goals that might be in conflict with other parts of the organization.
- Model cooperation rather than competition from the top management on down and make fairness the standard operating principle. Eliminate the practice of only members of a few departments getting a bonus. From now on it’s all or none.
- Institute a continuing study of the structural laws that govern all organizations.
 |
