Chapter 2 - 2

02 Business

Listen to a lecture in a business class. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

M: OK, students. Yesterday, we started to talk about conflict in organizations. Organizational conflicts happen all the time in business, and uh, often disrupt employee satisfaction and workflow.

So, if we’re managing a business, and we encounter a conflict, what would our natural tendency be?

Either suppress the conflict or try to solve it, right? After all, isn’t conflict a bad thing?

Well, it depends on what viewpoint you take. Today, we’re going to discuss the opposing viewpoints of Frederick Taylor’s traditional view of conflict versus the interactionist view of conflict proposed by Stephen P. Robbins.

In order to understand Taylor’s views, we need to take a closer look at his contribution to scientific management.

In the late 19th century, Frederick Taylor began searching for ways to make workers more productive.

He began to break job tasks down into their components and spent his time measuring how long it would take for a worker to complete each part.

He then set specific standards for performing each job. Uh, he called his method scientific management.

Under his system workers who were fast and efficient got paid more money, while workers who were slower and could not meet his standards were paid less or laid off.

In other words, managers could get rid of slow workers until the workforce consisted of the best, most productive workers.

Of course, by making his workers follow a set standard of production, he regarded them as little more than emotionless robots that could all produce at the same rate.

So, how does this relate to organizational conflict? When Taylor first applied scientific management to a company in 1893, he was able to get thirty-five people to do the work once performed by 120!

Wages were increased for those workers by eighty to one hundred percent!

He thought his theory was a success and decided to apply it to conflict management.

Taylor was so confident in scientific management that he believed managers who applied his technique correctly could eliminate all conflict in the workplace.

See, Taylor thought that conflict in organizations was always harmful because it hindered productivity. He believed that organizational conflict was unnecessary and could be avoided.

However, as time passed, views of conflict began to change. During the 1970s a man named Stephen P Robbins suggested an alternative position toward conflict called the interactionist view.

The interactionist view states that conflict is not only unavoidable, but necessary for an organization to function properly.

Like Taylor, Robbins did acknowledge that conflict could be harmful to an organization.

Yet Robbins also felt that some conflicts actually result in the search for new ideas and solutions.

Therefore, a certain level of conflict was desirable for a company to expand. Robbins believed the best way for managers to handle conflict was to manage it in such a way as to reduce its harmful features and increase its beneficial features.

This would raise production to its highest possible level. As you can see, Robbins’s interactionist view differs greatly from Taylor’s traditional approach.

1) According to Taylor, how does the proper use of scientific management affect conflict?

2) What did interactionists like Robbins think about organizational conflict?

3) According to Robbins’s theory, what can be a positive result of conflict? Choose 2 answers.