A Head on approach to Conflict Resolution
The clash of interest in society is typical amongst individuals during the day to day interactions. Such conflicts may be influenced by race, class, caste, international or political disputes. Various conflict resolution techniques have been developed to curb such inevitable situations and help analyze and categorize methods in which individuals can amicably resolve conflicts. Most individuals prefer facing the conflict head-on before it accrues into a much bigger situation, claiming that when we flee during a conflict instead of dealing with it, then the dispute will most probably reemerge. Jo Owen argues that “we need to turn the “FEAR” of the conflict into the “EAR” of consensus (Owen, 2017).” However, this method of approach has been known to cause more of a fightback, and such scenarios most probably end up in retaliation rather than resolving the conflict at hand.
Better ways of approaching conflict resolutions should be adopted to resolve disputes within an organization without necessarily paralyzing a business. Take, for instance, the Market Basket dispute that occurred in 2014, leading to a halt in sales within the company’s 71 stores (Connors, 2018). The difference being a disagreement amongst workers on who would be their CEO. With workers having no better method of resolving the situation, a head-on approach was initiated that saw workers boycott their workstation and even in-store personnel converting parking lots into platforms of protest.
This lead to a decline in the business productivity with consumers also boycotting the stores to get the CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, who was fired back in. Although this was achieved, a more amicable method of resolving the dispute could have been implemented to avoid the loss realized by the business and also avoid protests by the workers. Even though a head-on approach to resolving conflicts tends to yield quick results, the stakes are ordinarily high, with relationships being jeopardized and trust among individuals being lost due to the confrontation involved in this approach.
On the other hand, negotiation and bargaining have proved to be a better way of resolving disputes (Sullivan, 2012), with each affected party having better channels of addressing their issues. In this approach, each party has the opportunity to discuss their individual position regarding a specific topic and attempts to reach a beneficial solution for both individuals is discussed. This is a better approach in resolving conflicts since both parties’ concerns are addressed, compared to the head-on approach whereby one party is victimized.
References
Connors, D. (2018). Market Basket: The Study Of A Company’s Conflict And Resolution.
Owen, J. (2017). The leadership skills handbook: 90 essential skills you need to be a leader. Kogan Page Publishers.
Sullivan, T. J. (2012). Resolving development disputes through negotiations. Springer Science & Business Media.