Potential Causes of Conflict Occurring Within Health Care Organizations

Potential Causes of Conflict Occurring Within Health Care Organizations

There are different principles of negotiation and conflict resolution strategies that nurse leaders can use to address the conflict. One is forcing, which involves the utilization of formal authority vested in nurse leaders to satisfy given concerns without considering the side of the adverse party. The other strategy is collaboration which entails cooperating with the adverse party to understand their issues and concerns to enable a mutual and acceptable solution. Accommodating is another strategy that entails helping the adverse party satisfy their issues while ignoring personal interests as a nurse leader. That is, a nurse leader strives to be cooperative and not assertive.  The other strategy is avoiding. It entails paying no attention to the conflict and failing to take action to address it. This method is ideal when the conflict is beyond the possible reward for addressing it. The final strategy is compromising. The strategy entails addressing the conflict by recognizing a partly acceptable solution to both parties but unsatisfactory to both parties. Here, no party gets all they want (Fotohabadi & Kelly, 2018).

The identified model for addressing conflict is transactional analysis. The model requires looking at the conflict (transaction) and figuring out the role of people in it. Transactions between individuals hold both direct and hidden parts of the conflict (Laugeri, 2020). Therefore, nurse leaders need to focus on the issue in question, ask questions, highlight the facts without blame or emotions, seek the opinions of the parties to the conflict, and appeal to their positive side by seeking their support and help in addressing the conflict and demonstrating care to them through being open to their concerns.

References

Fotohabadi, M., & Kelly, L. (2018). Making conflict work: Authentic leadership and reactive and reflective management styles. Journal of General Management, 43(2), 70-78. DOI:10.1177/0306307017737363

Laugeri, M. (2020). Emerging Change: A New Transactional Analysis Frame for Effective Dialogue at Work. Transactional Analysis Journal, 50(2), 143-159. https://doi.org/10.1080/03621537.2020.1726660