Power and Conflict at work

Conflict:

Conflict, i believe, in my own word, would when be an issue arises within two members or more within an organisation or anywhere else, where different members would have different views of the issue; and as a result of this there would be clashes which could end up bad if not in a controlled environment.

Conflict at work:

I worked for BP, and during my time there, the manager had asked one of the night shift employee to do an extra work that he is not meant to do. nightshift employees run the store at night where one would be on the shopfloor filling up and the other one would be on the till serving customers aswell as athorising pumps. night shifts are extremely busy! My manager has asked the staff to start baking the cafe product and have them ready by six in the morning. The company policy was that no one apart from the cafe workers could bake those products and work there. The manager probably did that as he wanted to reduce costs, otherwise he would have to employ another staff to bake them. the employee tried to challenge the manager but as the employee have no knowledge of his rights, which applies to most of the employees working at BP managers use that as an advantage to exploit them. most of the employees employed by BP are people from another country who do not know about unions and do not know they' re rights. this conflict ended up by the manager telling the employee to do the extra task or he may leave.

Different sources of power:

There are five different types of power, these are:

• coercive power



• Reward power



• Expert power



• Legitimate power



• Referent power

Coercive power:

This type of power uses fear to control, it punishes the ones who don't do things accordingly and therefore, employees will be motivated to do their work properly due to the fear of being punished. (businessdictionarry (2009) coercive power). An example of this could be a manager that gives mostly disciplinaries, or suspend their staff when they do something wrong. due to the fear of having a disciplinary or being suspended which will give the employee a bad record, this will motivate them to do better.

Reward power:

Reward power is when management gives out rewards for achieving goals, and therefore this will motivate employees to achieve goals or objectives expecting a reward.example of this type of management could be companies that give bonuses or when managers give rewards such as wine or chocolate to the employees for hard work.

Expert power:

Expert power is when employees look up to the management as a person who can guide them and direct them and therefore they are more likely to listen to a person who they think is an expert in a sector rather than a person who doesn't really know their sector. (mindtools (2009) Winning expert power). Example of this type of power could be in the army, where new recruits follow the lead of an expert and learn from him or her.

Legitimate power:

legitimate power is when a management or even an employee has a greater level of responsibility in an organisation compared to the other. Colleagues will be aware of these responsibilities, and this will automatically give power to the employee or manager that has a greater level of responsibility. However as the level of responsibility decreases, the level of power also decreases as the employee or managers will be regarded as equal to the others. (tpub (2009) Legitimate power). This type of power arises when an employee or management has more responsibilities than the others. superiors will only give extra or hard responsibilities to the best and therefore by getting those responsibilities, the level of authority that that person has would have risen slightly untilthose responsibilities are gone.

Referent power:

This power is already there from the status of the employee. For example a manager will have power as he is the manager. the better the image they have the more power they will have however the more negative their image is is the less power they will have. (tpub (2009) Referent power). Example of this power mainly applies to leaders, where they have to have a good image in order to have the full belief oh their followers. presidents, prime ministers, religious leaders are all examples of this type of power.

Reference:

(businessdictionarry (2009) coercive power [online] available at : http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/coercive-power.html [ accessed: 15/12/09])

(mindtools (2009) Winning expert power [online] available at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_04.htm [accessed: 28/12/09])

(tpub (2009) legitimate power [online] available at: http://www.tpub.com/content/advancement/14144/css/14144_68.htm [accessed: 28/12/09])

(tpub (2009) Referent power [online] available at: http://www.tpub.com/content/advancement/14144/css/14144_68.htm [accessed : 28/12/09])

conflict at workplace:

one day at work when i turned up for my shift, my other colleague was getting a diciplinary. when i asked why he got one he told me that he was meant to bake 20 croissants which is 10 more than the normal baking per night shif. but he didn't know. What had happened was that the manager has told anemployee doing the shift before his one to tell him. But that employee finishes his shift at 10pm and left, and therefore did not tell him. The manager told him that it was his fault for not finding out if there was anything extra to do and therefore gave him a disciplinary. That employee wasn't willing to take the blame as in his point of view it wasn't his fault and therefore had a big argument with the management. If the manager simply phoned up the employee and told him about the extra work then none of this would have happen. One way to reduce conflict between management and staff is definatly the improvement in communication. management do not communicate with staff and staff communicate with management sometimes.

Conclusion:

In my point of view different people have different views and will do whatever to perove that their views are right and that is where conflict comes in. In an organisation people may have different views to the management and when expressing those views, conflict may arise, and it is the managements as well as the staffs responsibility to find a mutual solution. in conclusion conflict is inevitable, but should be avoided as much as possible.