Karla Alvarez
Professor Danielle Camacho
BUS 520 – Leadership and Organizational Behavior
September 9, 2012
Conflict, Decision Making, and Organizational Design
The company that I work for is CareOne at Valley, a senior care company. We are a sub-acute rehabilitation and long-term care center. We have about 150 employees working in our 8 departments: nursing, rehabilitation, dietary, environmental, recreation, social services, marketing and administration. Our mission is to define excellence within the health care community. We treat residents, their families and each other with respect, dignity and compassion. We strive to lead the industry by delivering superior clinical outcomes and exceptional care in exceptional settings. Our vision to become New Jersey’s health care provider and employer of choice is supported by our ongoing commitment to achieving excellence, celebrating diversity, emphasizing education and promoting innovation (CareOne company website, n.d.).
Although our mission is to treat each other with respect, workplace hostilities can erupt for various reasons under almost any circumstances. According to Lanier (n.d.), the term conflict refers to perceived incompatibilities resulting typically from some form of interference or opposition. Conflict management, then, is the employment of strategies to correct these perceived differences in a positive manner. Some of the conflicts that can erupt in my workplace are a result of uneven distribution of the workload, misunderstanding of information or communication breakdown, personality clashes, and misinterpretation of duties or policies.
Excessive workload causes stress on the staff which can make them more aggressive or unwilling to work together. This creates conflict among the staff; some people might even take it personal and feel that a particular coworker has issues with them. A typical scenario at CareOne at Valley
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