- Title
- The management of conflict between employees: a case study of an information technology company in Johannesburg
- Creator
- Monakali, Robin
- Subject
- Conflict management -- South Africa -- Johannesburg
- Subject
- Conflict management -- Case studies Interpersonal relations Personnel management -- Psychological aspects Management
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- MA
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/41997
- Identifier
- vital:36616
- Description
- The global working environment has transformed significantly over the last two decades, with rapid advancements in technology and information as well as the levels of diversity in the workplace. This process of adaptation, the failure to adapt or weaknesses in adaptation can be an underlying cause of conflict within organizations. For an organization to be successful, there must be effective conflict management techniques in place in order to resolve or keep the conflict at a minimum. The aim of this exploratory case study was to therefore explore the management of conflict between employees in an Information Technology company in Johannesburg. The human needs theory, which states that the deprivation of human needs is a major source of conflict, was used as the theoretical framework guiding this study. A mixed methods approach, also known as methodological triangulation, was used, which involved combining qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to achieve triangulation of data. The qualitative research method that was used comprised individual semi-structured interviews with two Human Resources managers and the quantitative research method involved the completion of self-administered questionnaires by 94 employees of the IT company. The researcher used a purposive sampling design for the interviews and simple random sampling for the questionnaires. Ethics permission for this research was received from Nelson Mandela University’s Research Ethics Committee and the study was conducted in accordance with the university’s Policy on Research Ethics. The findings of this study have revealed that the type of conflict mainly experienced in this organization was employee conflict, due to interpersonal clashes relating to personality differences. The employees were unanimous that conflict can have both a positive and negative effect. The interviews confirmed that the IT company makes use of negotiation and mediation to resolve workplace conflict, with the literature review providing evidence that negotiation and mediation are useful means of managing conflict between employees. However, the results from the completed questionnaires revealed that employees attempt to manage conflict by avoiding the conflict, which could be due to employees having limited awareness of the organization’s procedures to address conflict. This study can therefore potentially be beneficial to organizations and assist the latter in developing conflict management skills and practices, which can enhance organizational performance, productivity and employee retention.
- Format
- xi, 136 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Arts
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | ROBIN MONAKALI.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |