Conflict Management

Conflict occurs in every aspect of our life and in all social levels, it is nearly impossible to find a relationship without a conflict. Each person has his own interests and beliefs that might differ from others, and the conflict begins when those interests contradicts with others interests and beliefs. There is a need to manage those conflicts or consequences would be huge, this because conflict ignorance doesn’t fix the problem in hand, on the contrary, ignorance or avoidance will results in frustration and creates more tension.

To be able to resolve or minimize the impact of any conflict, we should dig for the root cause of that conflict, otherwise it will get bigger and bigger, and that what happened with the conflict I will talk about. This conflict affected and still affecting millions of lives. This conflict started in 1917 with Balfour Declaration, which promised Jews a homeland in Palestine (TPV, 2008). I keep asking myself this question “who gives the right to Britain to promise someone with something it doesn’t own?” It would have sounded more logical if they promised them with “Wimbledon” or “London”, because it’s their own land, and you can only give what you have. This promise initiated a conflict that is not solved till now, as millions of Palestinians were forced to leave their land by Jewish settlers to save their lives, they had to live in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. Palestinians who stayed in Palestine started resisting the invasion, they used stones to fight against the Jewish settlers and the British army; it was not a fair fight. Since that conflict started till 1948 the year in which Israel has been declared as a state over a part of the Land of Palestine, the conflict was ignored, and the ignorance elevated after that. Palestinians now are scattered all over the world, some of them without passports, others without minimal human rights. Great portion of them are unemployed because the country were they live as refugee forbid them from working in 70 different jobs, they cannot be doctors, lawyers or work in the public sector (Allers, 2009).

In this conflict, I don’t blame Jewish settlers for coming into the Palestinian land, as they came to that land with a believe that they are going to live in a land without people, that’s how they have been educated as stated by illan Pappe an Israeli historian in Haifa university. However, I blame them for the killing and Massacres they did and still doing to the Palestinian people. Elders, kids and women are being killed everyday since then. This conflict affected Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Israelis and the United Nations. In addition to that, all Arabs and Muslims around the world, along with all Jews around the world, and this what turned the conflict into multiple wars.

All affected parties would be interested in returning Palestinians back to their homeland, as this is the basic human right and justice should be applied. As well as stopping the killing as this affects the humanity, the UN should guarantee this. Palestinians are not only Muslims; there are a lot of Palestinian Christians who suffer being killed by the same machinery. This makes it clear that the solution should be in establishing a state were all Palestinians regardless of their religion can live in, the way it used to be before 1917, a Homeland for Christian Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians and Jewish Palestinians.

Conflict resolution as defined by Buchanan & Huczynski is “a process which has as its objective the ending of the conflict between the disagreeing parties”, the methods they were used in the case I talked about, were mainly competing, avoiding, compromising and accommodating, but never with collaborating. Each conflict has a different method to resolve it, as what you can compromise like bargaining a price of a shirt, won’t be a good resolution for a conflict were lives and lands are affected, the best solution for major conflicts should be by collaborating because this is the only method which will make all parties believe that they were treated fairly and will be satisfied.

Reference:

Allers, J., (2009), ‘“Turntablism” comes to the camps’, [Online], Available from:

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=125028

(Accessed 4 June 2011)

Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall.

Conspiracy Reality TV, (n.d.), ‘Occupation 101’, [Online], Available from:

http://conspiracyrealitytv.com/us-funds-zionist-israeli-control-of-palestinians-occupation-101/

(Accessed 4 June 2011)

TPV, (2008), ‘THE ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICT (Part I)

, Jews For Justice in the Middle East / If Americans Knew’, [Online], Available from: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2008/11/28/title-11

(Accessed 4 June 2011)

Team Synergy

Individual’s attitude and behavior changes in the presence of other individual or group of people, this change in behavior could be better or worse, this is called social influence. Some individuals gain benefits from group work, as they perform better, or the presence of others motivates them to do their best to introduce effective results, simply they get excited by teamwork. For other individuals, group or teamwork can lead to less productivity; this might be caused by their reliance on other team members, or because of his ego, he prefers to be recognized and get all the credit for himself. While working with my previous employer, a colleague of mine prefers working alone, even in big projects that obviously needed teamwork, and management used to mitigate this by engaging another team member to work with him by force, and this used to affect his productivity. The outcome of teamwork is noticeably better than individuals work, team to me means harmony, shared goal, and trust. Team members trust each other and are welling to replace each other in case of their absence; every one of them knows what is expected from him and contributes to their maximum.

I appreciated teamwork and its effectiveness over individual work when we faced a problem in our organization that we couldn’t overcome without the teamwork. The Main Data center caught fire, data center temperature reached 60 degrees Celsius and all systems went off automatically. The operator informed the team members; unfortunately one of the team members was outside the country, the rest of the team came immediately to the office to see the mass of the damage and plan for the recovery plan. The team members consisted of in-house team, outsourced team and remote support, although most of team members were specialized technical individuals, but this incident made each of the team members to propose solution within and outside his area of specialty. We managed to lower data center temperature to reach a stage were we can power on the servers again, then we started the systems based on our plan and their priority, and succeeded in carrying on operations in a very short time compared to the size of the damage. Without the harmony between team members this could never be achieved, as well no single team member regardless of his experience, knowledge and capability would have succeeded without the teamwork.

To generalize this experience, and to enhance team capability I would suggest the following:

1)                 Selecting team members: the first and most important aspect in teamwork is selecting team members, team members should have soft skills in addition to their technical knowledge, they should be able to make decisions, think outside the box and be good listeners.

2)                 Communication: using all available approaches whether face-to-face or technology based communication. Sharing ideas and concerns make the problem in hand easier to tackle.

3)                 Smooth flow of information: individuals should share information among other team members; this eases the recovery of team member absence.

4)                 Readiness to offer and ask for help: team members should offer help where ever they believe they can add value, and ask for help distributes the load of work with others.

5)                 Building trust: trust should exist between team members.

6)            Clear accountability, each team member should know his roles.

There is no simple procedure to enhance a team, however communication, information sharing and trust between team members will create the harmony.

Reference:

Buchanan, D., & Huczynski, A., (2010). ‘Organizational Behaviour’. Prentice Hall.

Gregroy D., Brenda S., (2000), ‘Building teams, synergy, and your resources’

Association of Operating Room Nurses. AORN Journal; Sep 2000; 72, 3; pg. 372-374, ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source, [Online].

(Accessed 27 May 2011)

Hoegl, M, & Gemuenden, H., (2001), 'Teamwork Quality and the Success of Innovative Projects: A Theoretical Concept and Empirical Evidence', Organization Science, 12, 4, pp. 435-449, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, [Online].  (Accessed 27 May 2011)

Communication

Using organization’s devices and network for private communication is neither appropriate nor ethical if the organization have clear rules to prevent it. On the other hand, even if it is allowed by the organization, it increases potential risk for viruses and leakage or loss of organization’s information. Each of the three situations described differ in terms of ethicality and the level risk it exposes to the organization’s network. In most organizations the use of its network in personal communication is not allowed and they have rules to penalize in case of their occurrence.

In the first situation, in my opinion is the more critical than the second but less than the third, this because using organization’s network during office hours adds the risk of less productivity because instead of concentrating and dedicating his time and efforts to serve the company, he is spending his time in non-work related stuff, which is affecting the outcome of their work and will lead to lower productivity. In addition to that he exposes the corporate network to perform less effectively, he is consuming the corporate bandwidth with non-work related traffic, regardless of how minimal the traffic could be, still the network bandwidth will be affected. For example, in our organization we have a network link, which connects other branches, DR site, ATM machines and a lot more. As well the same link is used for the main office Internet access, if employees consume the bandwidth in non-work related tasks, it will eat up the bandwidth and it will affect the organization financially.

Another risk could be exposed by the first situation, which is shared with other two situations, is the risk of exposing organization’s network to viruses, Trojans, malwares and so on. This could lead to information leak, and compromising sensitive data, or the virus might be destructive to the PC itself, his could lead to re installing of the PC and that could lead to not producing for a full day, which most probably will affect the entire network and not only that employee’s device.

The second situation exposes less risk when compared to the first, the risk can be in exposing the organization’s network to viruses and Trojans, which might lead to loss of sensitive information, well it overloads the network with unnecessary bandwidth than could affect the organization’s services, such as official website, internet banking services, connection with remote branches as so forth.  Both situations can be controlled by the organization using spam filters, corporate antivirus systems, and security devices to monitor and block unnecessary traffic.

The third situation is different from the two above, and its added risk relies in the lack of control from the employer, the potential of having viruses, Trojans and malware increases. Most probably the employee will have access to install unsupported applications, and peer-to-peer clients, which increase the risk of being affected by viruses. In this case, like other two situations, risk of overloading companies network with unnecessary traffic and risk of exposing organization’s information is high as well. Although, the technology since a couple of years back, forces the teleworker to update his anti virus system and operating system patches before he is authenticated, but this is not used by most of the organizations.

Reference:

Adams, J., (2006), 'Personal Email Use at Work Creates Big Security Risks', Bank Technology News, 19, 12, p. 21, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, [Online].

(Accessed 27 May 2011)

Ball, K., (2001), ‘ Situating workplace surveillance: Ethics and computer based performance monitoring’, Ethics and Information Technology, Computer Science , V2, I3, pp. 209-221, ISSN 1388-1957, doi: 10.1023/A:1012291900363, Url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1012291900363 ,Springer Netherlands, [Online]. (Accessed 27 May 2011)

Mason, S., (2005), ‘Email and compliance’, Computer Fraud & Security, Volume 2005, Issue 12, December 2005, Pages 8-11, ISSN 1361-3723, DOI: 10.1016/S1361-3723(05)70284-0, ScienceDirect, [Online].

(Accessed 27 May 2011)

A Slovak proverb could be translated as

Being a top performer increases the chance for promotion, usually new managers who are promoted from technical or administrative positions fail in their new role, and it’s not easy for them to shift their mindset from “Me” or “I” to “We”.  Top performers got used to be in the spotlight, and believe that their individual work should be admired, they fail to realize that their performance will be measured based on their teams performance and the outcome of the team work, not only their work.

When someone gets promoted to a managerial position for the first time, they think that the authority comes with the title, for them their opinion should be listened to, they will not accept any negotiation or second opinion, however, they will be shocked by reality when they ask their subordinates to do some tasks and they refuse to do, or propose another opinion. I believe that this attitude is not limited to an organization, or country, it is about individuals expectation, behaviors and their mindset, however, when comparing Arab’s management style, with western’s, we see a huge difference, that because of cultural and social influences, for example the majority of Organizations “are owned and managed by families. This factor personalized superior/subordinates relationship at organizations” (El-Farra, n.d). In addition to that the educational system in the Arab world does not encourage creativity or teach “future orientation” (El-Farra, n.d.). While in the western countries, roles, authorities and responsibilities are clear, and it’s easier for an individual to adapt with the new role, but still this attitude can be found in any country and any organization.

I used to believe that this attitude only exists in my culture as we suffer from such behaviors from newly assigned managers, once they get promoted to the management position, their attitude changes and assume that subordinates have to obey without questioning. When I used to work for my previous employer, which is a multinational support company, they recruited a technical guru from a western culture to manage a team in local office, he used to work as a senior in a technical position and were never exposed to management positions, he did a couple of mistakes that forced the management to demote, first he couldn’t shift from the Me to We mindset and he focused on promoting his achievements, rather than building a team environment, second he tried to control his subordinates rather than gaining their trust and commitment, because he used to give orders and never listen to others opinions, finally he focused on maintaining the smooth run for operations, rather than promoting new ideas to enhance the environment or performance of his team.

If I used to manage this new manager, I would have tackled the problem differently, demoting him was not the perfect action by the management, as it led to loosing interest in work and it was not easy to motivate him again, he felt that he failed and they lost his technical skills. Dealing with such situation should be by coaching and training the new employees to fit for the new position, they should understand the responsibility that was assigned to them, and should be trained how to manage, lead and encourage their subordinates to perform, this can be done by conducting trainings or leader workshops to help him shift his mindset from the Me to We.

References:

Buchanan, D. & Huczynski, A. (2010), Organizational Behaviour (7th ed.) Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall

El-Farra, M., (n.d.), ‘Management Characteristics in Gaza’s Manufacturing Establishments: A Comparative Study’, [Online], Available from:

http://www.iugaza.edu.ps/ar/periodical/articles/volume12%20-%20Issue%202%20Human12.pdf

(Accessed 21 May 2011)

Hsieh, N., (2006), ‘Managers, Workers, and Authority’, Journal of Business Ethics (2007) V71, I 4, pp347–357, DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9145-y, Springer[Online]. (Accessed 21 May 2011)

Ambiguity

Creativity is the capability to construct work that is original and improved to the constraints of the situation (Lubart, 1994; Lubart, Mouchiroud, Tordjman & Zenasni, 2004, Sternberg & Lubart, 1995, cited in Zenasni et al., 2008). Lubart & Sternberg proposed that creativity depends on multiple different factors, which are knowledge, motivation, personality traits, cognitive style, intellectual abilities and environment, the interaction between those factors allows the rise of the creativity. Tolerance/intolerance for ambiguity is a personality trait that is thought about as how an individual recognize and deal with ambiguous situations and stimulus (Furnham, 1994; Furnham & Avison, 1997; Furnham & Ribchester, 1995; Stoycheva, 1998, 2003, cited in Zenasni et al., 2008). Individuals who are tolerant of ambiguity are usually not satisfied with imperfect solution for problems. The hypothesis, which suggests that individual’s tolerance for ambiguity is related to creative thinking, is based on the idea that situations that require creative thinking regularly include ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity allows individuals to stay open for options and keep searching for other optimal alternatives when dealing with complex problems.

Creative and talented individuals are innovative; they care for intrinsic satisfaction and they need to feel that their work is appreciated, they need to stay happy to be able to innovate, and managing those individuals are not as managing regular individuals. Those individuals need to feel that they are independent and somehow they are their own managers, they dislike routine work and adore challenging situations, in addition to that criticizing them or their work must be well thought about, it has to come in a sort of encouraging feedback, as it will have negative impact on them and their innovative work, “Criticism and imparting feelings of failure will destroy creativity--avoiding them are the keys to fostering creativity" (Amabile cited in Warner, n.d.).

I believe giving them a free hand is a wise management decision, some people can perform better when they are well monitored and given specific orders and tasks, others like creative individuals perform better when they are let free. A company like apple would have never achieved their current reputation and profits if they haven’t started with innovative ideas like Apple I and Apple II, and without offering Wozniak, the inventor of those computers a free hand. However, each organization has its own strategy and agenda, leading people is about making the organization’s strategy adopted by its employees and its their own strategy, the problem with talented people relies in how they tend to drift from the main project if it becomes

Creativity is influenced by factors other than the individual himself, the field he works in and the society (culture) has a great impact on creativity and innovation, Shane mentioned factors that influence inventiveness, first is the level “to which a society stresses social hierarchy” (Shane, 2006), as bureaucratic societies reduces inventions because of lack for communication which is a crucial aspect for invention as it requires input from others, and because innovation needs “decentralized authority“(Shane, 2006). In addition to that inventions bring change to society, and usually hierarchal societies tent to minimize the change because it will redistribute the power in the society (Shane, 2006). Individualistic societies that value freedom are more creative and inventive, as innovative individuals need freedom to innovate, unlike collectivistic societies. Individualist cultures value the self, and by this people can express themselves more than other cultures, which have a positive relation to motivation and creative thinking. For example, lots of Arab scientists have left their countries due to lack of motivation and lack of appreciation for their work, they migrated to Europe and North America, where their work were more appreciated, as well individuals in developing and underdeveloped countries are less innovative than developed countries, and that is related to the level of education they get at early stages and motivation. Mari’s study on students from American School and a school in “Arab rural occupied territories” (Palestine), to examine the effects of cultural and sex differences in creative thinking abilities, Mari used verbal B and figural B from TTCT, the study showed that Arab female lagged behind Arab male students, while in the American sample, no sex difference were found, and the performance of American students was greater than students from the occupied Arab country.  In non-individualist cultures, individuality is punished while in individualist cultures, its stimulated and essential, although the study doesn’t mention the stressful circumstances that students suffer in the occupied territories, however, it clearly impact the improvement in creativity (Al-Sulaiman, n.d.).

References:

Al-Sulaiman, N., (n.d.), ‘Cross Cultural Studies And Creative Thinking Abilities’, [Online], Available from: http://repository.ksu.edu.sa/jspui/bitstream/123456789/4611/3/Cross-%20cultural%20studies%20and%20creative%20thinking%20abilities.pdf

(Accessed 20 May 2011)

Shane, S., (1992), ‘Why do some societies invent more than others?’ , Journal of Business Venturing, Volume 7, Issue 1, January 1992, Pages 29-46, ISSN 0883-9026, DOI: 10.1016/0883-9026(92)90033-N, SciVerse [Online].  (Accessed 20 May 2011)

Warner, C., (n.d.), ‘How To Manage Creative People’, [Online], Available from: http://www.charleswarner.us/mgtcreat.html

(Accessed 20 May 2011)

Zenasni, F., Besançon, M. & Lubart, T., (2008), ‘Creativity and Tolerance of Ambiguity: An Empirical Study’ , The Journal of Creative Behavior, V42, Number1, 2008,pp 61-73 Creative Education Foundation, [Online].

(Accessed 20 May 2011)

Lessons Learned

Learning is one of the most essential mental functions, we learn from our experience; in school usually we learn then we test our knowledge with exams, in life it’s different, we learn from situations and sometimes from our own mistakes. We acquire diverse types of knowledge, which lead to the development of new capabilities and improvement of current ones, change in behavior, values or understanding.

When I joined my current employer, I used to work day and night; I used to wear multiple hats, it helped me to learn how to work under pressure in addition to the technical knowledge that I have acquired. Like every organization, at the end of each year w do performance appraisal, to evaluate the deliverables against objectives, unfortunately I was evaluated as “I did my job”, although for me I knew I did a lot more than only my job and I believed that the management didn’t appreciate my work, I decided to work less (stick to working hours) and do what I am supposed to do based on my job description. After a couple of days doing so, a college of mine called me to his office and explained to me that the decision was done, and my attitude will not fix it but it will make it worse, he said a sentences that I will never forget, “You were evaluated by the head of the department that you did your job only for one of two reasons, either you really did your job and your self evaluation is not accurate, or your manager didn’t notice your extra efforts and you should work on that as this is also your fault”. The feedback I got from this colleague made me change the way I think till this day, and that loosing a battle doesn’t mean that the war is over, my reaction changed, I continued working in the same rhyme (hard working, dedication, wearing multiple hats, and so forth) and in addition to that I started to market my work, I learned that I have to improve my communication skills to grow, and technical knowledge only is not the key for success. After that, for two consecutive years my management gave me the highest evaluation in the department, and it was only me who got it in the entire department.

To develop a training method, individuals should be open to feedback from others, “we cannot learn without feedback” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2010). Feedback from colleagues or managers will enlighten the individual to reassess his behavior. “Both behaviorists ad cognitive psychologists agree that experience affects behavior” (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2010). Our first reaction should be well thought about and consider the consequences of our behaviors on the long run. Never give up, losing a battle doesn’t mean that we lost the war, on the contrary, it should motivate us to work harder and improve our behavior.

Reference:

Adrian Carr, (1997) "The learning organization: New lessons/thinking for the management of change and management development?", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 16 Iss: 4, pp.224 - 231, [Online], Available from: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/journals.htm?articleid=880266&show=abstract

(Accessed on 14 May 2011)

Buchanan, David A., & Huczynski, Andrzeg A. (2010). Organizational Behaviour. Prentice Hall.

Paul Lyons, (2008) "Training for template creation: a performance improvement method", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 32 Iss: 6, pp.472 – 489, [Online], Available from: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/journals.htm?articleid=1736706&show=abstract

(Accessed on 14 May 2011)

Decision Making - Risk Taking

The decision making process depends and gets affected by multiple factors, those factors could be time pressure, risk taking, complexity, expertise, external context, technology, motivation and so forth. Usually if we are under pressure, our ability to make decisions is examined, we might not make the same decision if we are relaxed or have enough time to analyze the options. As well the surrounding environment affects the decision-making process, interaction with people and technology have a big effect on it, level of experience and age both influence the level of knowledge and confidence which affects decision making as well. People personality, our propensity to assume of avoid risk has a big impact of the decision making process.

The key difference between being a risk taker (seeker) or risk averse relies on the personality of the person, who is willing to tradeoff return for risk or vise versa. Some people love risk (risk seekers), others are risk averse (prefer situation with less risk), studies showed that most people are risk averse, in the meaning of, if we have to choose between two options were both have the same outcome but varies in risk level, we tend to go for the option with less risk (March & Shapira, 1987). Risk averse decision makers favor low risks and are likely to to sacrifice certain predictable return in order to reduce the variation in possible outcomes (March & Shapira, 1987). So, from the definition, we see that when considering risk factor only, what really affects the decision making process is the expected return. Attitude toward risk is an unchanging feature of the personality of an individual, but factors like mood, feeling and the way the problems are fit, affects the risk preference.

Because information and communication technology allows faster information collection, decision-making process for managers will be faster, but it won’t affect the personality of the manager being risk averse or risk taker. In other words, instead of consuming a lot f time fetching for information to comfort decision making process, the information technology will make the required information available in shorter period of time, based on that the decision making process will be faster, still this speed in which the information became available will not change his decision nor his risk preference.

For example, if an investment manager in an organization, wants to invest in a listed company in the stock market, he will be able to gather all required information about the company from the company’s website, stock market website and financial news online, in addition to that he doesn’t need to do the financial analysis manually, The technology will make the information gathering process faster and much easier, and the tools will give him and accurate analysis faster, and therefore the decision making process will be faster. However, the technology, didn’t change his personality nor his decision.

Reference:

Heath A. Demaree, Michael A. DeDonno, Kevin J. Burns, D. Erik Everhart, You bet: How personality differences affect risk-taking preferences, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 44, Issue 7, May 2008, Pages 1484-1494, ISSN 0191-8869, DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.01.005. [Online], Available from:

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-4S0B2CX-1&_user=822084&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2008&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000044499&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=822084&md5=e5de462cf89f84bc7637efeb9c1b0dd7&searchtype=a

(Accessed 13 May 2011)

March, J. & Shapira, Z., (1987), ‘Managerial Perspectives on Risk and Risk Taking’, Management Science, Vol. 33, No. 11 (Nov., 1987), pp. 1404-1418, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2631920, [Online], Available from: https://hec.unil.ch/docs/files/83/655/march_shapira_1987_managerial_perspectives_on_risk_and_risk_taking.pdf

(Accessed 13 May 2011)

Nicholson, N. el al., (n.d), ‘Risk Propensity and Personality’, [Online], Available from:

http://www.london.edu/facultyandresearch/research/docs/risk.ps.pdf?q=propensity

(Accessed 13 May 2011)

Steve Williams, Mohamed Zainuba, Robert Jackson, (2003) "Affective influences on risk perceptions and risk intention", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 18 Iss: 2, pp.126 – 137, [Online], Available from:

http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy.liv.ac.uk/journals.htm?articleid=881539&show=abstract

(Accessed 13 May 2011)