Case Study On Team Conflicts Within One Organization

Tamarack Industries manufactures motorboats used for water skiing. In the summer months students are hired to cover for the permanent employees that are on vacation. However, conflicts grew when the staff began to complain about the work ethic of the students, many were slow, inexperienced and overall arrogant. During the summer the company reorganized all the permanent employees into three separate production team. The main issue in the Tamarack industry was the conflict between the two groups that is the Greek team versus the older workers team conflict. It is said that in the beginning of the work, the older workers and the Greek team had different ideas on how things should be done between them in the company, which led to more conflict. In addition, the older workers began to despise the Greek team because they were arrogant and slow. These were just but source of conflict among the two groups.

However, these two teams were working on the different lines in the company and the experienced workers never dislike their line of work. The experienced workers hated their work because they had to perform all the shorter production runs and began to revenge with sabotage. The problem among the two groups persist when the Greek team finishes their duties earlier than the older workers team and pass some demeaning comments against the older workers in their line. The action of the Greek workers clearing their duties earlier and attacking the old workers with demeaning comments led to another problem creation between them. That is, the old workers use to sneak during breaks to the Greek team line of work and hide tools, dent materials, install something crooked, and do something that could slow the production of the Greek team. Therefore, there was need for their strategy of work to be changed if peace had to prevail between the Greek team and the old workers team. The best decision criteria to be employed here is the strategy that ensures proper punishment for any level of conflict among the workers. The signs and symptoms of conflict in this case were divided in two. The older works signs of conflict were; sabotage of the Greek team’s work, complaining that the kids were slow and arrogant, and the fact that the older workers had resented working with the college students in the past. On the other hand, on part of the Greek team signs of conflict were; demeaning remarks about the older workers, Greek team finishing their duties early and then show off their performance in front of the old workers team, and also sabotaging the other teams work.

On using the conflict model in the identification of the conflict in the Tamarack industries case, one could find that the conflict was rotating from differentiation to ambiguous rules that led to poor communication causing conflict. That is on differentiation, the two groups were from different backgrounds, the younger and older employees have different needs, and the different goals between the older workers and the Greek team. On the ambiguous rules one can say that there were no clear rules behavioral norms including respectful behavior, again there were no clear rules to execute wrongdoing of sabotage. Additionally, on poor communication, older workers lack the motivation to communicate with college workers because they still think that there are arrogant. In the contrary, college workers also lack the ability to communicate in a diplomatic manner. Thus, the conflict escalation in this case was based on the verbal taunts by the Greek team and the complaints by the older workers. The conflict was also escalated on the sabotage of the company product.

Finally, Dan Jensen should come up with actions that minimize conflict. That is by setting the behavioral norms and rules that every employee must follow and introduce a punishment of any sabotage action. However, on the general analysis of the employee conflict of the Tamarack, one can best analyze the case using the model conflict process. This will look at the alternative approach to the conflict case in the industry. The first approach method is problem solving where the manager tries to find a mutual beneficial solution to the disagreement among the two teams.

The second method is forcing where the manager tries to win the conflict at other parties’ expense. The next method is avoiding where the manager tries to smooth over the conflict situation. Another alternative is yielding where the manager may tend to give in completely to one side wishes. For example, the manager may tend to favor the older employees wishes. The last alternative is compromising that is involving the manager looking for a position in which he/she may make concessions to some extent. However, the best alternative is the problem-solving method that will lead to a beneficial among all the employees.

Conclusion

The main sources of conflict in this case were; incompatible goals of the workers, differentiation among the employees, interdependence, scarce resources, and poor communication between the teams. However, Dan strategy to shuffle the job assignments might work if the level of differentiation is low, but in this case the level of differentiation was quite high and these may result in some members resigning from their duties. Conflict handling styles such as forcing might be appropriate for students because in this case the manager knew that they were not correct. In the contrary, yielding may be appropriate for older workers, because they clearly have more power than the college team in the company. Finally, the manager needs to come up with a solution problem that benefits all and that is problem solving method. With problem solving and decision-making techniques the employees’ conflict will come to an end.