Recommendations for Conflict Management at Coles Supermarkets

This report analyzes conflict management and cultural diversity within Coles Supermarkets, addressing issues related to effective communication and workplace tension. It draws upon peer-reviewed journal articles to examine conflict dimensions, intergroup conflict components, and models of conflict, as well as strategies for managing cultural diversity, including Hofstede's dimensions. The report relates these theories to Coles, highlighting issues such as underpaid workers, attrition rates, and work-life balance concerns. It identifies challenges stemming from task, relationship, and process conflicts, and the impact of cultural diversity on communication and professional etiquette. Recommendations include implementing strategies for handling conflict, promoting equitable treatment, and fostering a flexible, inclusive work environment to enhance employee retention and organizational growth. Desklib provides access to similar reports and study tools.

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Human Resource Development

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Executive summary
The role of the conflict management within the organization keeps significant value because it
provides the way to handle conflict in an adequate manner. Managing diverse workforce plays a
pivotal role in getting growth in the competitive market. Conflict management and cultural
diversity are reflected in this paper in order to highlight their importance in attaining growth.
Two peer reviewed journal articles have been taken in order to elaborate the concept and theories
for both topic. One is related to dimensions of conflict, components of intergroup conflict and
model of conflict. On the other hand, another article has researched on cultural diversity, in
which the depth detail regarding how to handle cultural diversity at workplace elaborated.
The theory and concept of conflict management is mentioned in this paper in order to define the
main component of this theory. On the other hand, the theory and concept of cultural diversity
depicts Hofstede’s dimensions in order to demonstrate the role of them on the cultural diversity.
After that, the relation with these theories with Coles is defined so that the application of these
theories on the Coles Company can be understood.

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Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Method.............................................................................................................................................4
Theory and concept of conflict management...................................................................................4
Theory and concept of cultural diversity.........................................................................................5
Relation with Cole’s organization................................................................................................5
Analysis about the issues.................................................................................................................6
Conclusion and Recommendations..................................................................................................6

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Introduction
This paper will highlight the issues relating to conflict management and effective communication
within the company workplace. Coles Group Supermarket Company will be chosen for this
assignment in order to define the role of conflict management and effective communication. For
the support, two peer-reviewed journal articles will be selected on the same topic, in order to
increase a better understanding behind proposing this paper.
About Coles Company
Coles is the retail chain of the supermarket of Australia and a subsidiary of Wesfarmers. The
company was founded in 1914 in Melbourne. The culture of the company is excellent due to the
adoption of external culture and has diversified the product ranges. The culture of the company is
specialized and customized (Coles, n.d). The company has tapped the culture of Australian and
have centered over three capabilities:
 Brand reputation
 Highly effective top management
 Effective supply chain
Method
Two peer-reviewed journal articles are being selected on the topic of conflict management at the
organization and cultural diversity. I have used Google Scholar to get these articles. The reason
behind the selection of these two articles is an entailment of conflict management and cultural
diversity in an effective manner. The article of Chaudhry and Asif is suitable for this paper as it
entails dimensions of conflict, components of intergroup conflict and model of conflict. On the

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other hand, another article has researched on cultural diversity, in which the depth detail
regarding how to handle cultural diversity at workplace elaborated. The main focus of this article
is on the opportunities and challenges of diversity by elaborating the impact on individuals and
groups. These articles are focused on different research articles in order to complete the research
in an adequate manner.
Theory and concept of conflict management
There are two theories of conflict management that are traditional theory and modern theory.
Traditional theory refers to involvement of people in a conflict situation as trouble makers. On
the other hand, the role of the modern theory is huge in the inevitable and natural outcome of
human interaction. There are some concepts of conflict management that need to be considered
by the company in case of having any conflicts within the company. These are defeating,
accommodating, avoiding, collaborating and compromising.
Theory and concept of cultural diversity
Hofstede’s six dimensions facilitate organization to understand the cultural diversity. The
involvement of these six dimensions in the theory of cultural diversity is mentioned below:
 Power distance – “the recognition of unevenly dispersed power by the less influential”
 Individualism vs. collectivism – “the degree of addition into groups”
 Uncertainty avoidance – “a society’s broad-mindedness for doubt and vagueness”
 Masculinity vs. femininity – “the sharing of expressive roles between genders”
 Long-term vs. short-term orientation – “the time prospect of a culture”

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 Indulgence vs. self-restraint – “the level of immediate enjoyment”
Relation with Cole’s organization
In the context of Coles, it has been found that the company has effective conflict management to
handle conflicts within the company but, there are some issues that have become a major reason
of conflict within the company. Coles knew that half of their workers are underpaid as a
component of a controversial workplace deal and saving around $70 million a year. The attrition
rate of the company is increased due to underpaid issue and adaption of the latest technology
without giving training to the employee. For the purpose of handling the conflict, the company
considers strategies to deal with conflicts such as accommodating, collaborating, compromising
and competitive. The conflict management process of Coles Company is aware of how to deal
with issues and for this; they apply process for the same that is mentioned below:
 Understand the situation
 Acknowledge the problem
 Be patient and take time
 Focus on the problem
 Open communication
 Act decisively
With respect to the cultural diversity, it has been found from employee reviews for Coles
Company that the work-life balance is not preferable at there and they are paid less salary. The
company is facing issues in the context of providing a good environment of working to their
employees.

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Source: https://gradaustralia.com.au/graduate-employers/coles/reviews/culture
Analysis of the issues
About the issues in Coles, it has been found from the articles that there are dimensions of conflict
such as task conflict, relationship conflicts and process conflict. Researchers portray that
expressed and felt emotions by group can have a noteworthy role in the resolution of conflict.
The negativity among employees can be increased due to not giving a proper solution to the
issue. It has been analyzed by taking help of another article of managing cultural diversity that
there are some challenges faced by the employees due to diversity that are mentioned below:
 Incorporation between multicultural teams can be hard in the illumination of
discrimination or unenthusiastic edifying stereotypes.
 Professional communication can be affected due to cultural diversity.
 There can be different professional etiquette in diverse people (Nagarjan, et. al., 2018).
Conclusion and Recommendations
It has been concluded from the above discussion that the conflict management and managing
cultural diversity has a significant role for growth in the competitive market. It is recommended
to Coles to apply strategies for handling conflict management in order to show a single way of
attaining the goals of the company. To resolve the concern of inequitable treatment of diverse
people, unfair treatment with employees and customers, the company should understand that

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such treatment is bound with the ineffective implementation of human resources and customer
retention policies. It is recommended to the company in the context of managing cultural
diversity to keep the focus on giving preference to each employee because each employee has
the strength to handle the task.
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324219631_Cross_Cultural_Workforce_-
_Challenges_and_Strategies
Above image depicts a way of managing diversity within the workplace because with the help of
diversity workforce, the company can get a number of ideas in a one go. Flexible working
arrangements can stimulate employees to work more and help them to remain in the organization
for a long period. Every employee seeks for further growth in future; opportunities for
international careers will open door for them to move ahead in the career by staying in the
organization.

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References
Chaudhry, A.M. and Asif, R., 2015. Organizational Conflict and Conflict Management: a
synthesis of literature. Journal of Business and Management Research, 9, pp.238-244.
Coles, n.d. About Coles. Available [online] https://www.coles.com.au/about-coles Accessed on
30th March 2019.
Nagarjan, S., Sethupathy, P, Ramana, V. K., Govardhan, S, Parvathy. K. S and Sachin, S.T.K
2018. Cross Cultural Workforce -Challenges and Strategies. International Journal of Latest
Technology in Engineering, Management & Applied Science. 7(3) pp. 174-181.