08 Oct Communications and Conflict Resolution

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Communications and Conflict Resolution

Why do we still make the wrong decisions for our organizations despite having teams and organizations full of professional, experienced, and talented people? How is possible that senior leaders become so disconnected from the people they lead, or so out of touch with what is happening in the organization, that monumentally poor and costly decisions even occur? Surely if others in the organization have the answers, their problems would be solved? Engaging employees in critical upward communication becomes more challenging the further removed leaders become from their people and processes for several reasons.

Your organization has decided to invest in new technology to improve processes and streamline communication. The technology company said that its new software could do all that the company needed and more. But you and other employees who use the current systems and understand them also know that they did not provide enough information about the new system to make the investment. Employees at various levels disagree with the investment. Some even created other options for review by the leadership team but were dismissed. Desperate to fix the problems that the organization is having, little consideration was paid to the concerns of the employees about the system and the four-million-dollar investment. The leadership is accusing people of standing in the way out of fear of change and trepidations about job loss. Some leadership team members are even referring to these people as, “the resistance.” ?

Employees have stopped sharing critical upward feedback because they do not want to be at odds with leadership. They are designed to go with the flow and comply, regardless of the issues they know exist.

Now that the investment has been made and the change is being rolled out, it is apparent that the new technology is not suitable for meeting the organization’s needs. Time and money have been wasted.

Tourish (2005) explains two critical theories in the article Critical Upward Communication: Ten Commandments for Improving Strategy and Decision Making: The Automatic Vigilance Effect and the Ingratiation Effect.

Initial Post

The current status of this investment and the subsequent fall-out with employees is the main part of your conversation in your weekly meeting with your supervisor. You are eager to explain what went wrong by using the Automatic Vigilance Effect and Ingratiation Effect theories (Tourish, 2005).

In this discussion, you will contribute an analysis of the situation for your supervisor. For the purpose of this discussion, ‘your’ organization is the organization described in the discussion prompt.

Explain the Automatic Vigilance Effect and the Ingratiation Effect through the lens of how they have been manifested in your organization.

Identify reasons for the behaviors that are afflicting your organization.

Reply Post

To apply all that you have learned from your peers’ posts, Chapter 5 in your Soomo text, and the Tourish article, step in as the supervisor on the receiving end of the analyses that have been posted and improve them by drafting replies offering them the following:

Brief description of practices that can be put in place to ensure leaders do not resort to maladaptive communication failures in the future.

Map the behaviors and consequences described in your peers’ posts to your proposed solutions. Compare and contrast the outcomes that have disrupted the organization with the potential outcomes stemming from your interventions.

Ensure the utility of your replies by:

Limiting your replies to 300 – 400 words maximum.

Linking details provided by your peers directly to your advice.

Citing evidence to strengthen your recommendations.