Summary Conflicts are seen in almost all the organizations. In health care organization where physicians, nurses and technologists work under stressful condition that conflicts can easily arise. The article that I have selected for this paper discusses about the conflicts that are seen in healthcare organization and the ways the manager implements in resolving the same. The author selected few employees from two rural Midwestern hospitals (Nebraska) and conducted a survey on job satisfaction based on their relationship with supervisors and other managers.
The survey was conducted to collect data from the hospital after receiving approval from the respective human resource department and the department officials granted to reveal the results publicly. The survey of Hospital A was conducted by the third party and had 31 questions while, in case of B it was administered and tabulated internally and contained 39 questions. Hospital A with 1100 and the other with 150 employees. The survey of hospital A was conducted on 2007 while B was in 2006.
The questionnaire contained about 31 questions for hospital A and 39 for hospital B. About 97% of the subjects have participated in hospital A while B had only 50%. The difference in the participation varies in both group since Hospital B was not provided with any department level incentives. The questions were based on 1) association with their supervisors 2) leadership, education and planning 3) job satisfaction. The survey was scaled from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree) in Likert scale.
Even though both the hospital surveys had different questionnaire and format, the results seems to be similar. In the 31 questions surveyed, 22 have scored on 80th percentile or above. The calculated percentile shows how we compare this result of Hospital A with multiple other facilities. Even though the hospitals had a different set of questions and format, the result was found to be the same. The overall demographics showed similar results like the subjects were all middle aged, white, full time female employees in both the groups.
Both the hospitals revealed a very good score in the area regarding bonding with the supervisors while planning had the least score of 3. The interesting part of the result was Hospital A individual was satisfied with their job, but don’t want to continue for a longer period, while those employed in Hospital B reported that it’s very comfortable to work in Hospital B environment and the employees would like to continue in their job for a longer period of time. (1) The author has explained clearly about different types of conflicts and all the employees fit into any of this type.
The four main types of conflicts included in study were intraindividual, interindividual, intragroup and intergroup conflicts. For example, intraindividual conflicts arise when an individual has two opinions like incase if the employee submits the report later and the supervisor do not involve since the employee will have a good impact on the individual from their previous experiences, interindividual conflicts occurs when conflicts occurs between two individuals like when two supervisors oppose each other in selecting a particular product.
Intragroup arises when a person in a group has different goals from the others while intragroup conflicts arise when each group are working for different goals and doesn’t get along with each other. (1) Technology is also one factor that leads to conflicts. As mentioned in the article, most of the hospitals seen in the rural region of Nebraska had only online data and few din’t even have a report. Archival data were determined to examine the difference between centers that will attribute to conflict management.
The size of the organization is also an important factor while handling conflicts since if its larger, then it will have an influence on the funds since, Hospital A can provide continuing education on conflicts to its supervisors and managers. The author also believes that when an internal employee conduct the survey the participation rate will be less when compared to those conducted by a third party because of the confidentiality. (1) One of the interesting factors in the study was those who worked in Hospital A dint wish to continue their job for a longer period while the other group were happy to continue in long terms.
This may be because of the hostile environment due to the extremely offensive behavior of the co-workers or physical violence. (2) The sample size drawn by the author while surveying for Hospital A and B had an impact on results. Regardless of the aim of the study, one can conclude only with appropriate sample size, if the sample size is smaller like in case with hospital B it will result in false negative ending in a type 2 error. Therefore, for accurate results the size of the sample is an important factor. While large sample size will end up time consuming and expensive. (3)
