Contemporary Employee Relations: Conflict, Perspectives and Benefits

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary employee relations, focusing on the inevitability of conflict in the workplace. It defines conflict, explores its various forms, and examines the reasons behind employee-employer conflicts, such as miscommunication, personality clashes, and discrimination. The essay delves into the Unitarist perspective on conflict, viewing the workplace as a unified team with shared goals and values. It highlights how Unitarists perceive conflict as counterproductive and dysfunctional, overlooking its systemic nature. Finally, the essay discusses the potential benefits of dispute resolution processes in mitigating conflict and fostering a more harmonious work environment. The essay emphasizes the importance of effective conflict management skills and the development of an organizational culture that addresses disagreements promptly and equitably.

Running Head: EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP 1
Contemporary Employee Relations

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Introduction
In today’s workplace, conflict is often inevitable in the employment relationship. It cannot be
ignored since it is an unavoidable aspect of the work teams. In an organization, conflict can be
defined as a contest or struggle between people with contradictory ideas, needs, goals, values and
beliefs. It is an outcome of different behaviors and it is an important part of human and
workplace life. It is very important and vital to adopt effective resolution processes at the
workplace (Bingham, 2016). Therefore, learning to manage or resolve the conflict is essential to
a high performance team. Conflict management includes developing the skills which are related
to the conflict resolution, awareness about conflicts, communication skills and creating a
structure for the managing the conflict in workplace environment.
The major objective of this essay is to emphasize on the contemporary employee relations in a
workplace atmosphere. The essay includes different aspects related to conflict and conflict
resolution in the organization. The concept of conflict is defined by including the definitions of
different authors. In addition to this, it describes the reasons why the conflict may occur between
an employee and employer. Furthermore, it includes how the Unitarist perspective shows the
conflict in the employment relationship. At the end, the possible benefits of Dispute Resolution
Process are discussed in the essay.
Contemporary Employee Relations
As long as the companies continue to work with teams, conflicts cannot be ignored as it is an
unavoidable aspect of the workplace teams. Whenever, there is a communication, there is
conflict. Conflict refers to the expression of hostility, adverse attitudes, competition,
misunderstanding and aggression. It is also related to the situations which include opposing
interest between two groups (Rahim, 2017). In general, conflict can be explained as a
disagreement between two or more groups with one group or individual that is making efforts to
accept its opinions over others. Organizational conflict has negative impact on the business and
its operations as it can lead to the depressions in the productivity and it increases the
absenteeism. At workplace, it can be very unpleasant and stressful. Conflict has been researched
over the centuries by many academic authors. In modern business world, great developments
have been made in past few years in understanding the situations of conflicts and alleviating its
adverse impacts (Shaw, McPhail and Ressia, 2018).

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Thakore (2013) defined conflict as a process that starts where one individual perceives that
another individual has adversely affected or is about to adversely affects something that the first
person care about. This is an appropriate definition focusing that conflict is about people’s
perception not essentially actual hard facts (Thakore, 2013). The definition of this author points
to the emotional characteristics of conflict by including the word like care. Moreover, it states
that more than one group is engaged. Furthermore, it can be stated about the conflict that it is
type of behavior that occurs when two or more groups are in the battle or opposition as an
outcome of a perceived deprivation from the processes of or communicating with another group
(Bamber, et al, 2015).
In an organization, there may be different forms of conflict like interpersonal conflict,
intrapersonal, intergroup, intragroup and inter-organizational conflicts. In this context, Ikeda,
Veludo-de-Oliveira and Campomar (2005) observed that in an organization, organizational
conflicts includes interpersonal conflicts with the supervisors and colleagues, or intergroup
within different department of a workplace. In addition to above, a workplace may face vertical
and horizontal conflicts as well. Vertical conflicts can be seen between the groups of different
levels like salesman and supervisors while horizontal conflict can occur between the groups of
same level like managers in an organization (Ikeda, Veludo-de-Oliveira and Campomar, 2005).
In this way, conflict can occur in a workplace when the employees with different priorities work
together. The employees can express the conflicts in various ways like non-cooperation, insults,
anger and bullying. It can arise from different reasons like miscommunication, personality
clashes and organizational mismanagement.
Conflict can be an adverse situation in the organization that can have several negative impacts
like decreased efficiency and productivity, work disruptions, task failure, termination and
absenteeism. Additionally, the emotional stress can be both the cause and effect of an
organizational conflict. In a workplace, it is the responsibility of employers and senior managers
to manage the conflict situation by developing an effective organizational culture (Barsky, 2014).
They need to deal with the conflict equitably and promptly as the employees cannot solve among
themselves. The concept of conflict can be understood with an example of RMG sector. In the
year 2005, there was a great conflict between the garment owners and labor. The major issue
between both the groups was poor wages structure. In this situation, over 100 garment factories

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stopped the production because factory workers continued riot for demolishing new wage
structure (Powelson, 2015). This conflict had a negative impact on the revenues and growth of
RMG sector in the year 2010. Thus, a workplace may have different adverse effects due to
conflict situation and the employers should make efforts to deal with the situation of workplace
conflict by analyzing the reason behind conflict between employees and employers (Mone and
London, 2018).
In order to resolve the workplace conflict situation, it is very important to analyze that why
conflict may occur between an employee and employer. There may be various reasons behind
the conflict situation. In a workplace, conflict occurs due to different perspectives and
personalities. Even employees and employers may have differences of opinions and they may not
see the eye to eye on a personal or professional level. Each and every employee has different
needs and some expectations from its workplace and employer and conflict could arise in the
organization when people think that these needs and expectations are being avoided by his/her
employer (Budd and Bhave, 2017). An employee and employee will be in the conflict situation
when the salary paid to the employees is not enough to meet their basic needs For instance, when
the public employees work for the many years without any increment, they can feel dissatisfied
and deceived by their employer. Due to this, the organization will experience declined employee
productivity and increased conflicts in the workplace. In this situation, employees generally feel
excluded and disloyal to the employers with insufficient pay.
Moreover, the conflict may occur when an employee is the victim of harassment. In a workplace,
if an employee thinks that the management team allows the offensive situations at work and it
does not take any action to stop the harassment. Then, the employee will dislike the employer
and it will lead them to lose the trust in employer. Their resentful personalities will adversely
influence the employee morale. The employers need to provide legally a workplace free of
harassment. Poor Communication is one of the major reasons of conflict between employers and
employees in the workplace (Jackson, Doellgast and Baccaro, 2018). It can be resulted due to
differences in communication style or there may be failure in the communication process. For
instance, a senior manager re-assigned the task of an employee to his/her co-worker but failed to
communicate this re-assignment to the employee. It can lead the employees to feel upset that can
convert into hostility among both the employees and manager. This communication failure in the

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organization can cause the employees to develop wrong assumptions and trust in the gossip at
workplace. In this way, the poor communication may cause the conflict between employee and
employer and it decreases the morale and efficiency of employees.
In addition to this, employee absenteeism and tardiness is another reason behind the conflict
between employer and employee. When an employee regularly comes late or informs sick, then
eventually the employer will become very much frustrated with that employee and he will
question the lack of commitment towards his/her job roles and responsibilities. The reasons of
employees may be or even be real to him, but when the employer starts to feel that employee is
taking the benefits of his leniency (Keith, 2006). This situation will lead the things towards
workplace conflict. In this state, the employer may start to document the poor attendance and
lack of timeliness of employees.
Discrimination is also a major reason behind the conflict between employer and employee. In a
workplace, when either an employee or employer judges or behaves in a wrong manner on the
basis of others’ religion, race, gender, education and ethnicity then there will be discomfort. The
impact of discrimination can go deeper when an employer has discriminatory approaches
towards an employee. In this situation, employer can bar that person from an increment or
promotion that he/she deserves (Saeed, et al, 2014). It can lead the employer and employees
towards organizational conflict. Additionally, the conflict may occur between the employee and
employer over some specific matters like benefits and wages, safety, layoffs, unionization and
working hours.
In this way, these are the major reasons behind the conflicts between employer and employees.
In an organization, it is very important for the managers and supervisors that they should be
aware about the indications and situations of conflict. They should address them quickly and
resolve different areas of disagreement (Wallensteen, 2015). Employers need to consider their
employees as their significant asset and focus on their needs and expectations from the
workplace and its environment.
There are different perspectives which can be used to view the situation of workplace conflict in
the employment relations (Pocock, Charlesworth and Chapman, 2013). These perspectives are
such as Unitarist, Pluralist and Marxist. Different perspectives give different views on conflict in

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employee relations. In this essay, the major focus will be on the Unitarist perspective and its
view towards conflict. Unitarist perspective views a workplace as a team that is unified by a
common objective. This approach has identified a workplace as an integrated where all the
people are working for a common goal. This common goal is established with the cooperation of
all the employees where the management team and other staff members have the similar purpose
to achieve that focuses the mutual cooperation. It is based on different assumptions that a firm is
an integrated group of people with the single authority and loyalty structure. It has a set of
common interests, values and goals which are shared by all the people of organization.
Furthermore, this is considered as an authoritarian perspective where it emphasizes on the
employees’ loyalty (Li, Worm and Xie, 2018). Consequently, trade unions are regarded as
unrelated as the loyalty between companies and employees are considered equally constrained.
This perspective starts from a set of values and assumptions which hold the workplace conflict is
not an inevitable feature of relations between the employees and managers. Sometimes, conflict
in the workplace may develop between the two, but such incidences are supposed to be
deviations in a relationship which is essentially prone to become cooperative.
In an organization, Unitarists view the conflict in different manner. One of the major factors in a
company is the poor communication and Unitarists see this as counterproductive and
dysfunctional. They believe that conflict is not in-built in the employment relationship because it
does not make better sense for the firm. They overlook the conflict as an opposite to what they
stand for as it is not systematic and organized. Moreover, Unitarists consider it frictional because
it can cause splits and make different sub-cultures within an organization that goes against their
idea of the entire organization working together as a team (Aron, 2011). Under this, trade unions
can be seen as a possible source of conflict because they are the external stakeholders and an
interruption to the workplace. They are considered as not more important within the company
because they can develop an inappropriate focus for some of its workers. The employees can see
the trade union workers as part of their company thus they may have loyalty and trust in them
also that could be examined if the trade union will be dissatisfied with something and choose to
go on strike. This is the major reason that Unitarists consider the trade union as unnecessary
external component. Thus, it considers the conflict as an irrational activity.

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In today’s business environment, there are various businesses which prefer to use Unitarist
approach rather than Pluralist perspective. The major reason behind this is that this perspective
legitimizes the role of authority by projecting the interests of both employees and management as
being the same and by focusing on their role in the best interest of company as a whole.
Additionally, it assures the managers that conflict where it occurs, is the fault of government
than management. From the perspective of Unitarist framework, staff management conflicts are
perceived as rising from the lack of information and insufficient presentation of organization’s
policies (Greenwood and Van Buren, 2017).
About this, it can be stated that according to the Unitarist perspective conflict is frictional and
non-systematic and try to restrict it. Although, the conflict can arise within the actual employees
as they may experience that they have to avoid or keep silent about the things that can harm the
closeness of employees. This perspective can be considered as a perspective with the supreme
management that uses total and unilateral control of the company via orthodox integration of
unilateral management control of employment relationship (Halperin, 2014). The approach of
Unitarist sees the employment relationship as one of the most important aspects for an
organization. However, the conflict on employment relationship is considered disruptive and
pathological result caused by the communication breakdown, interpersonal friction and activists.
Thus, it can be stated about Unitarist Perspective that this approach gives a huge importance to
the employment relationship.
A workplace confronts various conflicts which can affect the productivity and morale of
employees. Eventually, it has adverse impact on overall performance of the workplace. Dispute
can arise at any workplace and it exists when one or more persons disagree about something and
these matters unresolved. In this situation, it is very important to develop a balanced and fair
dispute resolution process for effective business operations (Bray et al, 2018). Dispute resolution
is one of the most important organizational processes that resolve the disputes or conflicts
between two or more groups. This term may also be utilized interchangeably with the conflict
resolution where different styles of conflict can be practiced for different situations.
Dispute resolution refers to the process by which organizational conflicts are brought to an end.
It constitutes a significant managerial activity and responsibility that has a vital impact on the
well-being of a workplace. In this situation, generally the managers play the role of third parties

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to the dispute resolution process (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2018). They adopt many dispute
resolution strategies at different levels of the company. There are three types of dispute
resolution process which can be used by a workplace to resolve the conflict. These processes are
such as mediation, arbitration and litigation. The organization and employment relationship, both
has various benefits of the dispute resolution processes.
In an organization, effective dispute resolution process can assist the employers to establish and
maintain good relationships with the employees by handling the workplace conflicts at an early
stage. Employees will be more productive and cooperative if they know that their employer takes
their issues and grievances seriously and there is an opportunity for a third party to support in the
resolution of a dispute if it cannot be solved at workplace (Cascio, 2018). An effective dispute
resolution process with an emphasis on good resolution at the workplace may assist to ignore the
cost of resolving externally.
By the implementation of dispute resolution process, the organization will be able to reduce the
conflict and increase the productivity and efficiency of the employees. It will eventually enhance
the performance of overall organization. It will decrease the rate of conflict-related absenteeism.
The organization can show its commitment towards its employees and boost their loyalty and
trust. In addition to above benefits, dispute resolution processes can assist develop strong
relationships between employees, employers and management by enhancing the awareness about
the different perspectives. It can educate the staff about how they can avoid the situation of
conflict at first place. It develops a problem solving approach among employees. Having the
employees at the front of dispute resolution is an effective way of educating problem solving
techniques (Anitha and Begum, 2016). The adoption of dispute resolution techniques reduces the
tensions and stress in the workplace that makes its operations easier and smoother.
Ultimately, these resolution processes help the company to retain its employees for a longer time.
There are various issues which can be resolved by implementing these processes like lower
employee morale, absenteeism, stress, tension, poor communication, misunderstanding,
mismanagement etc. It can increase the motivation among employees that will enhance the
overall productivity and performance of workplace operations. It will improve the team
functioning, effectiveness and workplace communication (Charlesworth and Macdonald, 2015).
There will be development of conflict resolution skills among employees and employers in the

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organization. It is very important for an organization and its management team to implement an
effective conflict resolution process as it will support it to satisfy its employees and perform
better in the interest of organization as a whole. It is very beneficial for both the employers and
employees.
Conclusion
From the above essay, it can be concluded that it is very important for an organization to focus
on resolving the conflicts, arising in workplace environment. Effective resolution of workplace
conflicts meant that the employees can get on their jobs, saving the time, money and
employment relationships. If any organization failed to resolve the conflicts at workplace, then it
places a burden on the employees and organization. The above essay concludes that conflict is a
disagreement between two persons and groups with different principles and opinions. In an
organization, if the needs, beliefs and facts are different then it can lead to the situation of
workplace conflict because they cannot exist together easily. There are various reasons behind
the conflict situations between employer and employees. These reasons may affect the workplace
environment. Unitarist perspective views the conflict in different manner than other perspectives.
It can be found from the above essay that conflict resolution processes play an important role in
enhancing the performance of organization as it assists in establishing better relationships
between employer and employees.

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