Homework Question

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT

2

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT

Summative Assessment

Patricia Vela

Manage Difficult Conversations 

Virginia (Ginny) McMinn, MSIR, SPHR

Part I: Overview

Interpersonal conflicts are often inevitable in organizations. It is defined as conflicts that occur between two or more people in an organization as a result of various personal differences. Some of these differences may include but not limited to religion issues, culture, values, attitudes, and perceptions (Wright et al. 2017). What is most important in such a situation is understands how to mitigate their impacts or reduce their occurrence. In this case, religious discrimination and the organization culture are primary sources of the interpersonal conflict within the ABC Corporation which is an electronic device business trading in cellular phones and tablets. Religion discrimination has both material and physical impacts of an organization. Kareem was employed as a customer service representative at ABC Corporation after proving he could effectively manage the workload associated with the position during an interview. His pleasant phone voice and the yearning to please the customers were the other qualities that contributed to his hiring. However, he was a practising Muslim which would later be one of his undoing qualities.

As a practising Muslim, his religion dictates praying five times a day which required him to take numerous breaks in the day to perform his ritual. This also involves a series of movement, washing his hands and feet to be physically clean before praying spiritually, and Quran recitation. His workmate observed these practices even without Kareem thinking they were observing him. The organization culture at ABC Corporation is working hard, ensuring the numbers goes up and getting positive feedback from the customer. Therefore, Michael, through that Kareem was not working hard as required due to his religious practices and reported the matter to his supervisor, Jane. Jane observed the same and reported the case to Thomas, who is the call centre manager. Thomas followed closely and observed that Kareem was taking excessive breaks and decided to fire him even without any of all the three ABC staff discussing the issue of religious practices or the dropping performance with Kareem. Religion discrimination is, therefore, the primary source of bias in this case.

Customers and the employees are the primary stakeholders in this case. Employees are required to work for hand and ensure increasing numbers and customer's satisfaction to ensure the company has repeat customers. However, the company should develop a suitable culture that allows each employee to practice their religion in a friendly manner rather than discriminating them based on religion or any other aspect.

Part II: Conflict Analysis

All the stakeholders provided concurrent information concerning the incident of interpersonal conflict that resulted in Kareem losing his job at ABC Corporation. The first stakeholder who influenced the conflict was Kareem. According to the information provided by Kareem during the interview, he was also afraid of freely expressing his beliefs as a practising Muslim. He hoped that he could practice his rituals and prayers secretly, which was not the case. A specific example was when he was unwilling to discuss this issue with Jane, the call centre supervisor when she was asked where he was going when he left the desk before the lunch break or the 15 minutes break. Kareem was not willing to discuss the issue during the meeting that culminated to his firing. Janet's and Michael perceptions also contributed to the conflicts since they were unwilling to have a formal conversation with Kareem about his religious practices but observed him secretly and reported to their respective seniors.

Implicit communication practices were used in this case. All staff focused more on the ambiguous nature of the gestures, actions and vocal tones presented by Kareem (Gildert, Millard, Pomfret & Timmis, 2018). For example, Michael observed the strange religion practices by Kareem, which he thought he was talking to himself. He reported this to Jane, who also focused on the communication gesture when she tried to enquire where Kareem was going before the lunchtime or 15 minutes breaks. Thomas decides to secretly observe Kareem as he would pop up in his cube and notice his absence. The stakeholders did not focus on what Kareem could have said or written directly.

ABC Corporation needs to reconsider its communication strategy and the entire organizational culture. The company needs to create a culture that is sensitive to the employees' diversity, including different religious beliefs. Discrimination in the workplace has negative physical and psychological impacts. Proper communication training and diversity training is essential for ABC Corporation to eliminate biases (Vickers, 2016). ABC should also communicate and employment equal opportunities policy to eliminate any discrimination case. The policy should be effectively communicated to ensure all employees are aware of both conscious and unconscious discrimination.

References

Gildert, N., Millard, A. G., Pomfret, A., & Timmis, J. (2018). The need for combining implicit and explicit communication in cooperative robotic systems. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5, 65.

Vickers, L. (2016). Religious freedom, religious discrimination and the workplace. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Wright, R. R., Nixon, A. E., Peterson, Z. B., Thompson, S. V., Olson, R., Martin, S., & Marrott, D. (2017). The Workplace Interpersonal Conflict Scale: An Alternative in Conflict Assessment. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 22(3).