Designing an Internal Organization System for Conflict Management Based on a Needs Assessment - Chapter 6 - AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - Third Edition

Author(s):

Etty Liberman

Yael Foux Levy

Peretz Segal

Page Count:

24 pages

Media Description:

1 PDF Download

Published:

December, 2015

Author Detail:

Etty Liberman heads the field of research at the National Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution (NCMCR) in the Ministry of Justice, Israel. Her areas of research include programs for training mediators in small claims and labor courts, conflict management processes in organizations, community dispute resolution, and criminal restorative justice programs.

Yael Foux Levy is a Lawyer at the NCMCR. She heads the field of ADR in the workplace, in organizations and in business. She has established and operated practical experience programs and the applicable professional standards for mediators in courts throughout Israel.

Peretz Segal heads the Legal Advice and Legislation Department in the Ministry of Justice. In 1988, he established the NCMCR as an independently functioning unit within the Ministry. He works to advance the use of alternatives to the legal system.

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Description:

Originally from:

AAA Handbook on Employment Arbitration and ADR - Third Edition

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In recent years there has been growing acceptance of the notion that an internal conflict management system (CMS) for workplace disputes must be designed to promote a positive work environment. This article discusses the design and implementation of a CMS for an Israeli municipality: it focuses on the findings of a needs assessment survey, which guided the design of the system, and reports on how the organization promoted the CMS to its employees. In addition, it assesses how effective the CMS has been from the perspective of users on improving interpersonal relationships and creating a positive workplace atmosphere. It concludes with a discussion of the conditions required for a successful incorporation of the system within an organization.

Conflict is an integral and inevitable aspect of life, including the workplace, even within successful organizations. There could be dissatisfaction with the way an employee, manager or executive interacts with others, or a decision by management (such as to deny a promotion or discipline an employee).1 There could also be unhappiness with aspects of the organization’s operations, procedures, products or services.

In the past, the accepted premise was that conflict is harmful to organizations and should be suppressed. Today the inevitability of conflict is accepted, and regarded as an opportunity and catalyst for organizational growth and development. It is believed that the proper handling of conflicts in an organization can improve management, employee performance and morale. One of the most fascinating challenges organizations face is how to properly manage conflicts to achieve these results.

This article discusses how a large Israeli municipality with 314 employees, five departments and nine divisions, serving a community of 75,000 residents, faced this challenge when it decided to design and implement a streamlined conflict management system for employment disputes, jointly with the National Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, an independent unit of the Ministry of Justice with which we are affiliated.

First the article discusses workplace conflicts in general; then it goes on to analyze the needs assessment on which the design of the CMS was based, and how employees reacted to it in its first year of existence. This analysis sheds light on the conditions needed to implement a CMS successfully in the real world.