The importance of conflict management in the workplace

In the ideal society, the norm of the workplace environment is harmony. In fact, organizations face regular disagreement and dispute that is why conflicts threaten the organizational performance and its well-being. They devote their efforts to prevent conflicts in the workplace. Conflicts could harm not only the organizational performance but the organizational growth and cost (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016).

Business transformation is the opportunity to achieve a great ambition that is attainable beyond the incremental change. It involves rethinking the current business activities and the operating models in order to create business value. Strategic decisions are essential to deciding the organizational way of operations and the required areas of improvements (de Waal & Heijtel, 2016; Austin & Seitanidi, 2012),

Overview of Hell Pizza

Hell Pizza has 66 stores across New Zealand, it uses diverse marketing tools. The marketing department is responsible for the marketing activities. It depends on the lean management and hires few employees.  The small team can quickly respond to the customer needs (Hell Pizza, 2016).

Hell Pizza marketing campaigns have attracted the attention of many entities over the last years because of its marketing campaigns that broke the rules of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) many times. Although, the company fixed many problems and apologized when necessary. The company depends on surprising ideas to attract the attention of the customers. It uses exceptional marketing campaigns. In 2006, the company made a marketing campaign for meat lovers, it involved sending promotional condoms. This campaign did not only break the ASA rules but also resulted in an adverse reaction from the public who were very angry from the idea and wrote many complaints. Following this campaign, the company decided to introduce more clever ideas that satisfy the public. For example, it made a promotional campaign where the children in New Zealand libraries were given 333 free healthy pizzas as a reward for reading 7 books (Hell Pizza, 2016).

Another problem occurred because of the expansion strategy of Hell Pizza. The company sold the upset franchise before buying it back. This action affected the business reputation. But Hell could settle the problem out of court through compensations (NZ Herald, 2011).

Moreover, the Hell communication strategy is against the public interest because of the use of coloring in its promotional materials (red and black). Although, the company admits that its communication strategy is beneficial in strengthening the brand equity (Lastauskaite, 2011). Moreover, the Church was upset about the Facebook confession campaign (Hoffmann, 2014).

The discourses of the university, the consultant, the manager and the subversive will be used to analyze the system of ideas and practices of Hell Pizza.

From university discourse, a neutral and impersonal analysis will be provides because it aims to maintain continuous knowledge. Value is promoted on behalf of the master and regardless of its effect on the social reality (Samuels, 2018). According to Spector (1978), as cited in Reade & Lee (2016), organizations produce frustration as part of their nature. Frustration could take the form of the situational factors associated with the constraints of the workplace.

Case study of Hell Pizza

There are two additional theoretical perspectives on conflict management. They are represented in the contingency perspective of Ginsberg and Venkatraman (1985) and cooperation and competition theory of Tjosvold et al. (2008) as cited in Guo & Cionea (2017). The contingency perspective considers the role of situations in conflicts that occur in the workplace. They argue that there exist influential considerations; the organizational structure, situational constraints and environmental factors. The theory of cooperation and competition argues that the organizational conflict is goal-orientated. The passive styles result in negative outcomes in individual relationships. The cultural values maintain the harmony of the relationships in the workplace despite the differences between the Western and the Eastern culture.

Accordingly, Hell Pizza should formulate a strategy-informed ambition. Organizations that initiate business transformation usually have a clear strategy, but their leaders are not always well prepared for implementing the strategic decisions. Leaders should be capable of shaping the transformation process that creates value through the process of resource allocation, making investment decisions and performance expectations. Knowledge should take place at the core of the organization transformation ambition Anderson et al. (2016). Creating value to Hell Pizza requires following the best fit theoretical approaches that proved to be successful in cases similar to Hell case.

The consultant discourse promotes the shift in mindsets in order to address the change dynamics instead of the traditional interest in relationships and rewards. The organizational transformation process starts with the leadership and expands throughout the organization (Marshak & Grant, 2008). 

Researchers as Blake and Mouton (1964), Rahim (1983) and Ting-Toomey (2005), as cited in Guo & Cionea (2017), explored in their theories the effects of cultural differences, relevant organizational outcomes and various conflict styles in problem-solving. Studies tend to consider the conceptualization of conflict styles by depending on Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimensions. These approaches to organizational conflict neglect the changing mentalities of the organizational members. This means that they do not consider the role of the organizational culture and socialization.

The attribution theory was initiated by Heider (1958) as cited in Ayoko (2016), it assumes that attributions are the final outputs of the cognitive processes. People decide the cause and effect that enable them in resolving problems and maintain effectiveness in their relationships. This theory discusses the way people attribute to events and spontaneously explain the failure. The way people perceive the situation impacts their reactive behavior. Other researchers considered the personality traits in their theories. Among them is the big five personality trait theory. According to Digman (1989), as cited in, the five traits include  Openness to experience, conscientiousness or achievement orientation, agreeableness or friendliness, extraversion or stimulation-seeking and neuroticism (Ayub et al., 2017).

In order to drive Hell Pizza to value, leaders involved in the transformational process must articulate the value they expect to achieve. They are required to monitor and measure the value through their transformation. Value represents the link between the business strategy and the transformation process. The failure to define the expected value causes problems. Then, a backtracking is necessary to be done to address the causes of failure Anderson et al. (2016).

Different theories and approaches to conflict management

Applying a consultant discourse in the case of Hall Pizza requires transformational change. Hell marketing is mainly operated by the business founders. The change should start by changing their mindset away from the offensive marketing campaigns. Also, it is beneficial to focus more on the charitable and cultural campaigns. Regarding ‘David’s Diary’ case, we can illustrate that the transformation process starts with the leadership, then thinking about the customer service model and changing the staff attitude

The managerial discourse is a persuasive and effective tool for the communication of information and marketing decisions. It aims to maintain effective communication regardless of its ethical implications (Bruce et al., 2011).

Traditionally, conflict management is the responsibility of the human resources management (HRM), but it tends to delegate this responsibility to the line managers. Solving conflicts swiftly by line managers who want to manage their activities smoothly might not work easily. Conflict management involves tradeoffs between being a flexible manager and applying the formal processes. Being flexible in conflict management is risky in practice, but the line managers tend to avoid the formal response because it can result in negative impact on the employees’ morale, their working relationships and their productivity or leads talented employees to quit their jobs.

Hell Pizza should apply agility and flexibility because the business environment continuously evolves and technology develops rapidly. Embedding agility, a disruptive mindset and innovation are necessary for the transformation initiative. The agile approach enables a quick delivery of the desired value of transformation. Combining the agile approach with an agile solution provides benefits that foster the transformation execution Anderson et al. (2016). 

 Hell Pizza management is smart, it seeks to continue franchising its brand across different countries. Also, it wants to engage its customers that is why it uses exceptional marketing campaigns and channels. The business leaders are smart enough to transform their marketing strategy by using more relevant and suitable communication of information with its customers.

The subversive discourse acts against the laws and the general security of the governments (Gray, 2010). Conflict is a social interaction that could be observed in the organizational behavior. It could be observed in the interpersonal relationships because of incompatibility in relationships. Conflict should be recognized and resolved to limit its negative impact. Although, it reflects the competitive behavior of people that could be encouraged, especially in the Western society that encourages the independent behavior, direct expression and self-affirmation. On the contrary, the Eastern society encourages harmony in relationships and manages conflicts through negotiations (Chen, Hou, & Wu, 2016). Although, some conflicts require using the formal method. Adding a formal process to flexible processes could provide the solution to the conflict in the workplace. For example, the line manager can discuss the conflicting issues with the employees to be able to identify the problems and concerns that lead to a healthy communication (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016).

Conflicts might lead the organizations and employees to go to court to judge between them. The alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in theory is a tool of fudging the costly and time-consuming nature of conventional litigation. ADR represents the third party that can dispute the resolution (Lewin, 2016). Most of the employees are not capable of affording payment to hire attorneys, while most organizations can. Moreover, if an employee could afford the required payment, the employer enjoys a better position for being more skilled and experienced in selecting their legal counsel (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016).

Business transformation and its significance

Hell Pizza should lead with capabilities, the organizational capabilities required to implement the transformation process should be identified by the leaders. This process assists in defining the organizational core competencies that lead to competitive advantage. It is important for organizations to know where to start to create value through the transformation process Anderson et al. (2016). Hell Pizza weird marketing campaigns have resulted in public resistance for its business and the way the company promotes for its brand. If Hell leadership decided to ignore the public opinion and keep communicating the offensive content in its marketing campaigns in order to gain their attention, the results might be disappointing. People might boycott the company products, it will lose its market share in New Zealand and the other countries and it might shut down the business. Regarding the case of ‘Blood on the gatepost; managerial conflict down on the farm’, the managerial conflicts and the insistence on the same management strategy led the farm to lose its two owners. Unmanageable conflicts lead to a disastrous end to the farm business.

According to KPMG (2016), Adams (2017), Vlerick Business School (2013), Hell Pizza is recommended to follow the following business strategies:

• Focus on the customer: Hell Pizza should relate the customer behaviors, demographics and expectations to its marketing campaigns and the business transformation strategy. It should pull customers in value co-creation scenarios. It will need to depend on the digital technologies to revisit its business model.
• Embed continual innovation into the business: Embedding innovation into Hell Pizza culture and structure increases its ability to build a competitive advantage. It is important to have insights on the current and future customer true value. The company should follow the technology approach to “business value first” that enables Hell to work smarter, easier and faster.
• Learn to thrive on change:Hell should manage its business through flexibility and agility to achieve success. They are expected to enable Hell to align their business according to the environmental changes. This alignment requires leadership and culture that facilitates change.

In conclusion, there are different factors that should be involved in the process of value creation through transformation that Hell Pizza is advised to follow in order to overcome its conflicts and succeed. It is important to introduce new ways of thinking such as the integrated thinking that allows practical development to be shared and discussed, it should start with transforming the leadership then use the customer driven model and to implement the organizational changes. Continuous innovation, flexibility and agility should be involved in the business processes

References

Samuels, R. (2018). From the discourse of the university to the discourse of analysis. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 23(1), 68–76.

Adams, C. (2017). Conceptualising the contemporary corporate value creation process. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 30(4), 906-931.

Anderson, C., Bowman, K., Kinzler, D., Kovacevich, T., & Pocharski, M. (2016). Thinking big with business transformation. New York: Deloitte.

Austin, J., & Seitanidi, M. (2012). Collaborative value creation: A review of partnering between nonprofits and businesses: Part I. value creation spectrum and ollaboration stages. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(5), 726–758.

Ayoko, O. (2016). Workplace conflict and willingness to cooperate: The importance of apology and forgiveness. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(2), 172-198.

Ayub, N., AlQurashi, S., Al-Yafi, W., & Jehn, K. (2017). Personality traits and conflict management styles in predicting job performance and conflict. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(5), 671-694.

Bruce, B., Connell, J., Higgins, C., & Mahoney, J. (2011). The discourse of management and the management of discourse. Int. J. Strategic Change Management, 3(1/2), 141-154.

Chen, A., Hou, Y., & Wu, I. (2016). Handling conflict at work – the impact of active and agreeable conflict styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(1), 50-61.

de Waal, A., & Heijtel, I. (2016). Searching for effective change interventions for the transformation into a high performance organization. Management Research Review, 39(9), 1080-1104.

Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (2016). Introduction: new research on managing and resolving workplace conflict: Setting the stage. In D. Lipsky, A. Avgar, & J. Lamare (Eds.), Managing and Resolving Workplace Conflict (pp. ix-xxxi). UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (2016). Managing workplace conflict: Formal and informal approaches. Human Resource Management International Digest, 24(1), 16-18.

Gray, J. (2010). Vows, Oaths, and the Propagation of a Subversive Discourse. The Sixteenth Century Journal, 41(3), 731-756.

Guo, Y., & Cionea, I. (2017). “Do it this way, not that way”: An exploration of Chinese workplace conflicts. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(2), 202-221.

Hell Pizza. (2016, April 12). Hell Pizza: The good, the bad and the controversy. Retrieved from Business Day: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/78789789/hell-pizza-the-good-the-bad-and-the-controversy

Hoffmann, S. (2014). Regulation of food advertising to children in New Zealand. Dunedin: University of Otago.

KPMG. (2016). Succeeding in disruptive times. Netherlands: KPMG.

Lastauskaite, I. (2011). Strengthening brand equity through guerrilla marketing: a multimodal analysis of persuasive functions in Hell Pizza restaurant billboards. Denmark: Aarhus School of Business.

Lewin, D. (2016). Managing and resolving workplace conflict. In Resolving workplace conflicts through litigation: evidence, analysis, and implications (pp. 31-67). UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Marshak, R., & Grant, D. (2008). Organizational discourse and new organization development practices. British Journal of Management, 19, 7-19.

NZ Herald. (2011, January 22). Troubling times in Hell. Retrieved from NZ Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10701441

Reade, C., & Lee, H. (2016). Does ethnic conflict impede or enable employee innovation behavior?: The alchemic role of collaborative conflict management. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(2), 199-224.

Vlerick Business School. (2013). Transforming through process: Leading voices on process, people and technology. belgium: Vlerick Business School.