Conflict Resolution Management Approaches & Human Behaviors

Conflict Resolution The organization is Fort Belvoir Community Hospital, which is a new hospital. FBCH is a joint military hospital replacing the old Dewitt Hospital in the same location. The hospital is part of the military health system in Washington, DC, an area also served by a wealth of civilian hospitals and complementary medical services. With a focus on innovation and the military market, FBCH plays an important role for the military community in the region, as a provider of health care.

The Hospital is relatively new, and one of the challenges that it faces is to build the organization from the ground up. This means setting out policies for just about everything, building new systems from scratch, and also it means building a new organizational culture. Many staff members have prior experience either at Dewitt or at other military hospital facilities, though some are new staff members or have come in from civilian hospitals.

This means that there is a wide mix of people working at FBCH, including those who have as part of their way of doing things the old ways from Dewitt, and some people who are less familiar with the military hospital working environment, and its uniquenesses. For the human resources department, the initial focus was on getting a full complement of staff members and ensuring that they are fully trained. But this meant that other tasks, such as developing conflict resolution mechanisms, were not developed fully.

As such, there are a number of different conflict resolution mindsets that exist within the ranks of the organization. There are traditional conflicts such as those between different health care staff groups (physicians, nurses, administrators, for example), and then there are the different organizational cultures at work as well. Further, the Washington DC area is very diverse, and this means that there are staff members from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds on staff.

So there are many potential areas for conflict, many different perspectives about organizational conflict, and not necessarily the means to address this. Part II. There are different types of conflict that can exist within an organization, ranging from simmering, long-run cold conflicts to open, antagonistic hot conflicts. The former type may well be emerging at FBCH already. In brief, this conflict can be characterized as a friction between different groups with respect to the shaping of the organizational culture.

There are many fairly conservative people on staff who believe in a strict hierarchical power structure, including military people and older workers who were raised with such managerial power structures. Other employees, including newer workers, younger staff members and those who are not from a military background, value more modern managerial approaches where there is greater empowerment of different employee groups to provide input into the work environment. The conflict at present will sometimes flare up into open conflict, if briefly, before settling back into a simmering state.

The current state of the conflict, it appears, is one that many people are avoiding. We have learned that avoiding conflict is a lose-lose situation. The "old guard," if they can be called that, has more power within the organization and leverages this formal authority. The other workers seem to prefer to avoid too much open conflict and are waiting for the old guard to retire, highlighting that to some extent this conflict is a generational issue (Lyons & Kuron, 2014).

As the old guard does not appreciate too much feedback, there is a sense that wanting to provide feedback -- which is something highly valued as part of a respectful working environment by many of the newer workers -- is simply going to escalate the conflict, resulting in worsening working conditions. This is unfortunate, because the status quo is troubling to many, but they fear acting. Part III. There needs to be more face-to-face communication.

One of the issues with avoidance of conflict is that the underlying issues are never resolved. The organizational culture going forward will need to change and modernize regardless of what happens, especially if this facility is to main the ability to compete with civilian hospitals for staff going forward. At some point, the issues of organizational culture that are festering need to be addressed, by both sides, for the benefit of both, because many seem to feel that FBCH is going in the wrong direction with its organizational culture.

The case highlights that employees are key stakeholders within the organization, and that conflict arises when the needs of stakeholders are not met. Such conflicts need to be brought to resolution in order to avoid damaging consequences for the organization (George, Miroga & Omweri, 2013). Conflict is also something that should be viewed as healthy, because if handled correctly it can help an organization to improve its operations, and to generate superior ideas to move the organization forward (Amason et al., 1995).

Thus, my solution would have been to coalesce the younger group that wanted to have more influence.