Organizational Conflict and Conflict Resolution at John Lewis Waitrose Assignment

Organizational Conflict and Conflict Resolution at John Lewis Waitrose - Assignment Example It is against this background that organizational conflict and conflict resolution as a leadership and management issue at John Lewis Waitrose has been outlined in the current paper. Generally, Waitrose is identified as the supermarket division of the larger chain of companies operated under the brand of John Lewis Partnership. With an employee base of over 85,500 in almost 230 branches, it is common that issues of inter-personal conflicts will arise in the conduct of the daily tasks of employees. Through a comprehensive secondary data collection that was conducted on the company, it was realised that like most other organisations where employee-to-employee communication is part of the key chain of processes to get pieces of tasks executed, issues and reports of conflicts are very common. Some key words that emanate from the case study are organisational conflict, conflict resolution, conflict prevention, productivity, inter-personal, and maturity Waitrose is a supermarket component of the larger John Lewis Partnership. Waitrose is thus responsible for the food retail division of John Lewis Partnership, which has been identified as Britain’s largest employee-owned retailer (John Lewis Partnership, 2013). ... Meanwhile in a situation where there exists such differences, perceived and actual oppositions set in, bringing about organizational conflicts (Canary, Coach & Serape, 2001). This situation has however not been a major cause to deter the company from a rapid annual growth, for which reason the company currently boasts of revenue of ?5400.4 million, backed by an operating income of ?173.5 million and net income of ?123.3 million (Gardener, 2013). This feat has been achieved while operating under the mission and vision to be a dedicated, energized and team spirited company that brings excellent food retail services to customers. Cases of Organizational Conflict A case of organisational conflict was found in literature through secondary research in Ting-Toomey, Oetzel & Yee-Jung (2001). It was realised that one employee, Staff X (name withdrawn for ethical purposes) had a communication confrontation with another employee, Staff Y (name withdrawn). Staff X was the employee responsible fo r giving customised service and assistance to a prestige customer of the company. One day as the prestige member comes to the premises of the store, he first approaches Staff Y and asks if Staff X was around to deliver serve as usual. Meanwhile, Staff X had noticed Staff Y that she was going on a lunch break and that Staff Y should cover her back. Because of this, Staff Y accepted to take the role of Staff X and give the prestige member the needed service he always had from Staff X. It turned out that the prestige customer became very satisfied with the services of Staff Y and personally requested from management to assign Staff Y to him from henceforth. Once Staff X was