9.1. CONFLICT WITHIN INDIVIDUALS
Many kinds of conflict occur within individuals. The first one we will discuss is role conflict. Roles are ideas about correct behavior for a person holding a position in a social system. For example, the position of chief engineer specifies particular activities that are appropriate for the position. When analyzing roles, it is important to talk about prescribed, subjective, and enacted roles. A prescribed role is a role that is prescribed by other people. In other words, the chief engineer usually receives definitions of what he or she is supposed to do from the boss, from subordinates, and from peers, and each has specific ideas about the engineer's role, which are integrated into a concept of what he or she is supposed to be doing. In other words, when the chief engineer says, "I am doing this because I am the chief engineer," that is an element of the subjective role; the role thought appropriate by the individual. Finally, we have the enacted role, which is the actual role behavior of the chief engineer.
It is useful to look at the enacted role and see if it corresponds to the subjective role or to the prescribed role. According to research, the three kinds of roles—the prescribed, the subjective, and the enacted—frequently do not match very well. In other words, what is prescribed may actually not be similar either to the subjective role or to the enacted role.
In one of the situations of role conflict, the various prescribed roles are usually quite different. That is, the person receives prescribed roles from a variety of individuals, and these role senders disagree among themselves about what that particular individual's role should be. As a result, the subjective role the person develops is confused or contains elements that are in conflict because the boss says one thing, a subordinate says a different thing, and a colleague says yet another. Other situations of role conflict occur when a person does not develop a subjective role that resembles the prescribed role or when the person developing an enacted role fails to match the prescribed one.
Research done by Kahn, and summarized in Katz and Kahn (1980), indicates that about 50 percent of the people studied in various organizations have experienced a great deal of role conflict, much of it due to conflict with the hierarchy. That is, the person's definition of what he or she is supposed to be doing is different from the definition that the boss is sending or that the top manager is sending to the boss.
A second kind of role conflict is related to workload—in other words, how much is one supposed to do. Given a particular role, there are different definitions of how much one should do.
A third conflict has to do with creativity. Who is supposed to initiate what or who is supposed to do new things does vary according to role senders.
Finally, there are conflicts that have to do with organizational boundaries and who has responsibility for what activity—for example, who must decide whether a laboratory member is to go to a conference.
The research by Kahn shows that the greater the role conflict: (1) the greater the dissatisfaction of the individual, (2) the more frequent the physical symptoms of the individual, (3) the greater the number of hospital visits the individual undertakes, and (4) the less confidence the individual has in the organization.
A good example of role conflict in research and development organizations is the conflict that occurs when the person is part of a team that is developing a new product that involves both research people and marketing people. Depending on the structure of such teams, a person may experience varying degrees of conflict. In Chapter 4, "Job Design and Organizational Effectiveness," we discussed a very interesting project by Souder and Chakrabarti (1980) in which they identified three kinds of relationships between a research and development team and a marketing team. They were the stage-dominant, the process-dominant, and the task-dominant structures within the organization. We identified the conditions under which the various forms of organization might be more or less effective. The greatest role conflict is apt to occur in the task-dominant form of organization, since it is in that particular structure that the individual is both a marketing person and a scientist. In the stage-dominant structure, there will be a minimum amount of conflict, since in that form of organization there is a very clear separation between the scientist and the marketing team. In the process-dominant form there will be an intermediate amount of conflict.
9.1.1. Technicians versus Researchers
Other kinds of intrapersonal conflict occur when certain technical employees have problems with the way they are perceived by members of the organization. A good example is provided by Fineman (1980), who discusses the problem of technicians in large R&D organizations. They are often in a supportive role; in other words, they are supposed to be helping the researcher do the work. This frequently makes them feel like second-class citizens who are being "used" by the researchers as servants rather than as co-workers. Furthermore, their job appears to lack creativity, since it is the researcher who does all the original work and they are only providing the technical support. Naturally, such people often feel that their technical skills and qualifications are underutilized and that their superiors do not take their personal needs into account. In R&D organizations, quite often, support personnel experience helplessness and lack of power and influence. Managers must find ways to integrate support staff by providing common goals for them and for the researchers.
Furthermore, in research organizations people are likely to get promoted primarily on the basis of technical excellence rather than managerial skills. As a result, the managers tend to be technically competent but rather poor administrators. Managers who focus on technical problems often do not take the personal needs of their subordinates very seriously, and, as a result, their subordinates are upset and unhappy and experience a good deal of conflict about staying in the organization.
Fineman (1980) provides a number of suggestions that may reduce some of these problems. For example, organizations might give higher-sounding titles to the support personnel and develop promotion policies that allow them to feel better integrated into the organization. In addition, they can enrich their jobs by doing a greater variety of activities. Organizations may also find it useful to pay more attention to the training of their R&D management personnel. Finally, selecting technicians and support personnel who are "thick-skinned" enough to put up with poor managers might be a good strategy for this kind of situation.
9.1.2. Supervisor–Subordinate Expectations
A frequent problem in most organizations is that the expectations of one's supervisor and of one's subordinates may be quite different. This problem becomes especially difficult to solve when the training backgrounds of the supervisor and the subordinates are very different. For example, in some commercial organizations the top management has MBA training or degrees in law or finance. Managers of the R&D functions may report to an MBA while their subordinates might be physicists or engineers. The expectations of people with such varied kinds of training can be very different. As a result, the managers find that their supervisor expects a particular set of behaviors while their subordinates expect a different set with minimal overlap between them. Such "role conflicts" have been found to result in health problems (e.g., ulcers), job dissatisfaction, and even depression.
Tierney and Farmer (2004) found that supervisor performance expectations ultimately influence employee performance, which supports the conclusion that positive role identification can increase performance within an organization. It is important for people who find themselves in role conflict situations to first identify that they are facing a role conflict, and second to bring the relevant parties to a conference to "negotiate" the kind of role that they should have. Generally, when such a problem is identified and discussed, solutions can be found. One technique that is especially helpful is to discuss with co-workers what they expect the manager to do "more of" and "less of." For example, subordinates may indicate that they want to be evaluated more frequently, but be given explicit directions less often about how to do their jobs. It is through such discussions that roles can be clarified, negotiated, and agreed on. Role conflict can, in principle, be eliminated if reasonable people are allowed to discuss the problem and to seek constructive solutions.
9.1.3. Engineers' Status and Organizational Conflicts
An analysis of the kinds of stresses that professional engineers face is provided by Keenan (1980). Keenan also identifies, as a problem, the fact that professional engineers have a relatively low status in society (mostly the case in the United States, not so in Japan and Germany) despite their academic level of qualifications and their level of contributions to society. A number of scholars have pointed out that scientists and engineers who work in industrial organizations are likely to experience strains due to the conflict between their professional values and the goals of the organization for which they work. Conflicts between the technologist and the organization over issues such as which project to focus on and how and in what way to do them can drain the engineer's energies.
An important basis for these conflicts is the fact that technologists generally desire to be involved in projects based on their technical and scientific merit, whereas the primary consideration of the organization is product marketability. Keenan further summarizes a number of studies that show that there is a good deal of stress among technologists and scientists in various organizations. Among the complaints of engineers and scientists is that they do not have enough job autonomy and that they lack the opportunity to use their research skills. This dissatisfaction is particularly high among the younger engineers and scientists. There is also some evidence that those organizations that provide freedom to do research, promote personnel on the basis of technical competence, and allow individuals to attend scientific meetings to improve their professional knowledge and skills generally have scientists and engineers who are less dissatisfied than those in organizations that do not have such policies.
9.1.4. Role Ambiguity
In addition to role conflicts, some of the scientists and engineers experience role ambiguity—that is, uncertainty about the meaning of communications received from a variety of important "others" in the organization. About 60 percent of the engineers and scientists in one study experienced role ambiguity. In other words, they did not really know what the boss wanted.
9.1.5. Role Overload and Underload
In some cases, there is role overload; that is, the work that needs to be done is too difficult and exceeds the individual's abilities, skills, or experience. In a study summarized in Keenan's (1980) paper, French and Caplan (1973) found that engineers and scientists more frequently experienced situations in which the job was too difficult than did administrators. Another problem is role underload; the demands made by the job are insufficient to make full use of the skills and abilities of the scientist. The Keenan paper suggests that this is a frequent problem among engineers. Engineers receive sophisticated training (e.g., in mathematics) that results in skills often not required by their job. In one study, more than half of the engineers complained that many aspects of their jobs could be handled by someone with less training.
9.1.6. Boundary Role
Another source of stress or interpersonal conflict comes from occupying a boundary role, one that connects the organization with the external environment. There is some evidence that engineers who are in such roles experience more stress and strain than other engineers. Individuals in boundary roles frequently complain that they experience greater deadline pressure, fewer opportunities to do the work they prefer, and less opportunity for advancement. They also claim that they are not attaining the maximum utilization of their professional skills.
9.1.7. Coping with Conflict and Stress
The ways engineers cope with work-related stress is discussed by Newton and Keenan (1985), who point out that there are different ways in which one can cope. For example, one can talk with others, take direct action, withdraw from the situation, or simply resent it. Exactly what is done depends on (1) individual differences (for example, people who are characterized as having a Type A personality are most likely to be resentful), and (2) situational variables (for example, withdrawal or doing as little as possible occurs more frequently among those who work in organizations that lack a supportive climate). Withdrawal appears to be more common in some fields of engineering than in others. Also, the way the person looks at the stressful situation determines whether the person will talk to others or take action, such as quitting. One cannot generalize and say that there is an effective coping technique that should be taught to everyone, because coping differs from person to person and from organization to organization. It also depends on the way the person perceives the conflict situation. Nevertheless, in training engineers and scientists, we can sensitize them to intraperson conflict and teach them stress-reduction techniques (such as biofeedback). Often being able to understand that role conflict and role ambiguity are "normal" in organizations makes dealing with such conflict more manageable. Facing the conflict squarely by "negotiating" one's role is most helpful.
It is important to realize that one of the best ways to reduce role ambiguity and role conflict is to use participative management. In participative management situations, employees determine what they are to do, when they are going to do it, and how they are going to do it. When such factors are decided either by the supervisor or by the job itself (i.e., by "external" determinants), there is more role conflict and role ambiguity (Jackson and Schuler, 1985). In this study, which analyzed 29 correlates of role ambiguity and conflict, it was found that across a large number of empirical investigations the best correlates of low conflict were participation and feedback. In other words, when the employee sets the task cooperatively with the supervisor and the supervisor (or the task) provides feedback to the employee, there is minimal role conflict. Incidentally, the same study showed that when there is conflict there is tension, dissatisfaction, and low self-ratings of performance.