2009

Al Yamamah University Isa Ogailan

[FACTIONALISM AT WORK]
In this article you will read about an issue you are facing in your company. This issue is organizational feuds which are considered as a problem for most companies. In this article there is an intensive, extended and discussed issues relates to organizational feud in organizations. Also, there are solutions in the end which are tested by managers before.

Factionalism at work

Factionalism at work

Abstract
In this article you will read about an issue you are facing in your company. This issue is organizational feuds which are considered as a problem for most companies. In this article there is an intensive, extended and discussed issues relates to organizational feud in organizations. Also, there are solutions in the end which are tested by managers before.

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Introduction
Three-quarters of human resource managers now say that skilled workers in their industries are "scarce." The cost of hiring and training a replacement worker now averages 30% of annual salary, and it's even higher in critical occupations. Among sources of turnover, one that stands out is workplace stress. And nothing does more to create an atmosphere of stress than does an organizational feud. (Brenner, 2009) Factionalism at work or organizational feuds have the same meaning of that there is a war between two individuals, groups or organizations. I am writing this essay because I still in the middle of a war in the company and I think many times why do I have this and why do I still in the middle of this war. After an intensive research I have done before and after I have read about this problem I discovered that organization feuds has changed my vision of work which is its your successful if your organization is successful. I am experiencing poor of the efficiency that I used to before and Rick Brenner clarifies that as he says an organization plagued by feuds can become unable to exploit opportunities or meet critical challenges. (Brenner, 2009) So, I would like to propose the hall problem as what is an organizational feud? What are the kinds of organizational feuds? How can you deal with others if you live in organizational feuds and the solution to end the organizational feuds?

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Organizational feuds What is an organizational feud? It is the waste of time, the waste of resources and the increase of turnover. It is not a regular conflict it is more than that. In summary, organizational feuds should have a person who have psychological problem in the midst. We can observe as Benner says that Organizational feuds differ from more typical conflict in three ways:

The feuding partners engage in intense, personal attacks, usually out of all proportion to the issue at hand.

Even though the issues may change, the feuding partners almost always sort out along the same dividing lines. Agreement on any issue whatsoever is rare.

Organizational feuds persist. Lifetimes of months or years are typical. They persist even in spite of staff turnover.

In more typical organizational conflict, people might disagree on one issue, while they agree on another. In organizational feuds, the partners are very consistent in their polarization. They simply cannot work together on anything. (Brenner, 2009)

This clarify that there is a hate inside one of these parties. It might be in (individuals) one of them not all. These feuds start factionalism which usually start from person to person or from person to group which will transfer later from group to group and this will be discussed in details in kinds of feuds later.

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Kinds of organizational feuds

There are three kinds of organizational feuds which are:

Interpersonal Structural Inter-professional

In my case it was inter-professional feud and transferred into interpersonal feud. The structural one is exist in the company too but not that much as much of interpersonal one. As Rick Benner said that in the structural feud, enmity is based on organizational affiliation. Think of the structural feud as an analog to sibling rivalry. The feud is more evident when the organizations are similar two competing product lines, for example, or Corporate HR and Divisional HR. Risk of feud development is higher when the organizations have conflicting responsibility. For example, regional sales organizations can conflict with Strategic Accounts or Government Sales or Retail Customer Service vs. Corporate Customer Service or Saturn vs. Pontiac. (Brenner, 2009)

In my case it started with inter-professional feud and transferred to interpersonal feud. It started with other department in the company because of disrespect of job descriptions of my department and they started to get some of our responsibilities. This action gives a bad feeling for me and my colleagues. After that we found that there is something interpersonal when we deal with them.Inter-professional feuds are feuds between groups that self-identify by profession. Labor vs. Management is perhaps the best-known such feud. In project-oriented organizations, inter-professional feuds are common across the

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boundary between task and business results. On one side are the professions associated with the task engineering, product development, patient care, design, creative, testing, or research. On the other side are those professions associated with financial results sales, marketing, finance, account management, general management, purchasing, and often human resources.

When feuds are based on profession, they usually attain a personal dimension. This can mystify even the feuding partners themselves: "We used to be such good friends I don't know what happened. How could I have been friends with such an idiot?" This puzzlement enables the feud to persist. (Brenner, 2009).

Interpersonal feuds feuds between individuals can occur at any level within an organization. Rarely are they purely personal. More often they're manifestations of impersonal feuds, or they at least have an organizational dimension. Since interpersonal feuds can be sorted out at the interpersonal level, rather than the organizational level, it's useful to examine the interpersonal feud to identify some tools for distinguishing it from impersonal feuds. Usually, the feuding partners have few allies who contribute in the feuding without any conscious. In impersonal feuds, the factions tend to be sizable, often encompassing entire organizations. In interpersonal feuds, factions tend to narrow down to a small circle of close friends. Other co-workers maintain a safe distance. Even the inner circles tend to be insulated and secretive, to minimize risk for those who offer support to the feuders. (Brenner, 2009)

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Living within an organizational feud

Living within an organizational feud forces you to do one of these:

Participate in the feud

Easily you can follow one of the factions unconsciously and this is somehow comes by natural. Once you involve to a company which has a factions you can decide. If you find yourself in the midst of an organizational feud, and you're a member of one of the feuding factions, you probably have participated to some degree. Perhaps you participated unwittingly or unwillingly you felt as if you had little choice. Perhaps you were enthusiastic about your participation. However you feel about your participation now, realize that no good can come of the feud. Even if the faction you belong to should prevail, another feud will surely follow, because the organizational culture permits feuds and rewards the "winners." A choice to participate in a feud is a choice to adopt the feuding way of life at work. As you now know, that life isn't a pleasant one.

The option to participate might seem tolerable for the short term, but how do you feel about it as a career choice? Participation might or might not be the best option, but it comes with a high cost. (Brenner, 2009)

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Stand aside from the feud

If you are going to be Neutral that means you are putting yourself in a difficult position. They will start blaming and they will ask you to give your opinion on some matters wich will be uncomfortable for you. If you've managed to stand aside so far. You aren't involved directly. People around you are consumed and angry, but you've maintained your perspective. You might have noticed some changes around you:

Feud participants try to recruit you. They want you to help frame a memo, or they ask you to find out some information about their feuding partners, or they invite you to conspire with them in some way.

You feel uncomfortable about being seen with members of one faction or the other. Your choice of lunch partners has become an exercise in needle threading.

You've had to deny that you knew something that you did know, or let someone believe that you felt something you didn't feel.

You've been put on the spot in a meeting, asked to give your opinion about an issue that has become a battlefield for the feuders. You diplomatically found a way out.

Maintaining neutrality becomes increasingly difficult as the feud matures. More and more "neutrals" give up, and join one side or the other, or become irrelevant. Neutrality works for a time, but eventually, you'll have to find another path. (Brenner, 2009)

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Trying to end the feud

Even if you want to finish this you are putting yourself in much difficult position because feuders will think that you are defending other party. Benner explain this in details when he says Attempting to end the feud seems like a constructive approach, but unless you have organizational responsibility for all the feuding participants, your chances of success are slim. Since feuders tend to interpret all actions by all parties through the prism of the feud, your attempts to end the feud will appear to them to be attempts to aid the other side.

Even so, the immediately responsible manager is in a different position. Since typical feud strategy is to maneuver so as to gain the support of the responsible manager, almost anything the responsible manager wants is taken seriously by both parties.

That's why attempting to end the feud is probably a futile act unless you're the immediately responsible manager. (Brenner, 2009)

Report the feud to management Reporting to management is dangerous because you wont be hidden like before. You can do that by being hidden and let someone as a consultant out of the company to take the role (responsibility of this).Reporting the feud is one of the most dangerous tactics you can try. You could instantly become a target of both feuding parties, because you might be seen by each as having joined the other side. Perhaps you should risk that anyway? Probably not. If the responsible manager is so out of touch that the feud is news, reporting it probably won't help much. And if the responsible manager already knows
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about the feud, and has allowed it to persist anyway, you risk being seen as critical, and might even insult the manager. Reporting a feud yourself is a very risky approach.

But you can have a consultant do it, which limits the risk to you, and might even bring in the necessary expertise for dealing with the feud. The trick is to bring the consultant into the organization through the responsible manager, and to do it in such a way that the consultant has a charter broad enough to include reporting the feud. Not easy but doable. This is the best option for the organization. (Brenner, 2009)

Leave the organization

The last choice of living within an organizational feud forces you to leave the company you are working with. Rick Benner classifies these options as the best option while I do not prefer it. I think the most successful person is the one who can challenge and adapt to his situation. Your best option, assuming that you can leave and that you can find somewhere else to go. After you leave, the feud becomes irrelevant to you, and you're out of reach of the feuding parties. Actually, many of them will likely envy your move, wishing they too could leave. They might even follow you.

If you can't leave, what can you do? Of the other options, neutrality is probably safest for you personally. It's not appealing, and it might not work, but try it. If it fails, you can revisit the option to leave. (Brenner, 2009)

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The solution of this issue

There are two solutions one of them is to be one of the feuders. In this situation you can solve the problem with help of another feuder from the other party who has the same thoughts of you to end this feud. You can go throw this to match thinking between parties. However this way is not efficient and it might not work well but it is enhance the process to have an outside intervention. To end a feud, first recognize that you can't do it alone. If you're one of the feuding partners, you need the cooperation of the other feuding partner if you want to end it. If you try to withdraw unilaterally, your partner in the feud is likely to escalate the attack in the hope of finally finishing you off. Unilateral withdrawal thus intensifies the feud. In general, the participants in a feud have few options intervention from outside the feud system is much more likely to be successful. (Brenner, 2009)

The other solution is when you are the manager or the owner of the organization. In this case as Rick Benner says you cannot finish this issue by a letter or memo to these feuders. You have many choices you can choose one of them. Any successful intervention must break the feud's strange loop. Approaches that break the loop include:

Reorganization Cross-linking employee compensation Altering the balance of power Altering the belief systems: "moccasin" workshops

As with most issues involving wonderful human beings, there's no one best way. All of these techniques "work" and don't to varying degrees. (Brenner, 2009)

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The strange loop means that the loop of feuding heredity. You can notice that when someone new came to the organization and work with one of the feuders after a while he will involve them as a choice by natural as I mentioned before. I can simplify this by showing you this study of five monkeys and a cage. As a Psychologist I have studied human behavior. While I am not a veterinarian, I can make several applications and lessons learned from the following story about monkeys, especially as it applies to life and business. Can you? Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, you'll see a banana hanging on a string with a set of stairs placed under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, all of the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt to obtain the banana. As soon as his foot touches the stairs, all of the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. It's not long before all of the other monkeys try to prevent any monkey from climbing the stairs. Now, put away the cold water, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him as he makes his way toward the stairs. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

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After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. (Beasley, 2008) Reorganization

Reorganization means that you have to rearrange their positions. Mix the feuders together. This will help when the organizational feud is inter-professional. It will mix them in one profession and this will remove the image of the feud. Reorganization can help, especially when you're dealing with structural feuds. If you can reorganize along lines that break the organizational affiliations of the feuders, you deprive the factions of clarity of self-image. You accomplish this by mixing the factions, which formerly defined themselves along organizational lines, into new organizations in which former affiliates of the factions must work side-by-side. The thoroughness of the mix determines how thoroughly you erase the former self-images. (Brenner, 2009)

Cross-linking employee compensation

We can interpret that as reediting the responsibilities of the organization to help in making good environment to work with new rules help the company to success. You can do that by giving the priority to some tasks of departments. This will help when the problem is structural or inter-professional. Linking the compensation of one faction to the high performance of the other is a two-edged sword. On paper, it looks like a good idea by cross-linking compensation, you introduce some negative feedback and perhaps it does work in some instances. Here's how it works. Suppose that Development

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and Sales are feuding. In its efforts to make the quarterly numbers, Sales has repeatedly promised capabilities and features without checking first with Development, which has resulted in disruption of Development's product plans. And Development has refused consistently to provide support for key clients, citing its need to avoid such disruptions and to adhere to a project schedule. Under cross-linked compensation plans, the sales force is compensated in part on the basis of Development's schedule performance. The theory is that this will cause sales people to think twice before they place demands on developers' time. In turn, Development is compensated in part on how well Sales meets its quarterly goals. The theory is that this will motivate developers to assist sales people when they're asked to do so, and to provide new capabilities that meet customer needs.

It looks like a scheme that could work, and it has worked in some cases.

The essence of the argument is that extrinsic motivational factors can never achieve what can be achieved only by intrinsic factors. And for knowledge workers, we need the kind of internal motivation and drive that can only come from intrinsic factors.

Perhaps cross-linked compensation structures might be one of the moves you make to end feuds, but relying solely on cross-linked compensation structures would be foolhardy.

Altering the balance of power

Altering balance of power is good idea when two departments in your company are blaming. It is even good when the blame is structural and inter-professional. Simply, it

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means prefer a department or parties on others by letting the other faction follow the preferred one. By altering the balance of power, you end the feud, though you might not get the result you want. Since the balance of power ensures that neither faction can dominate the other, each volley in the exchange is guaranteed to leave the other standing. By altering the balance of power, you remove the guarantee. Eventually, one side or the other prevails, and the feud ends.

However, if what you really want is for the two factions to work in harmony, dominance of one faction by the other is undesirable. For example, in our example of Sales vs. Development, a Sales-dominated company fails just as surely as a Developmentdominated one. The two must work together harmoniously to ensure a balanced approach to the needs of the market. Thus, the "solution" of hiring a Sales-oriented CEO and creating a sales-oriented development culture might be no solution at all, especially in a marketplace that values innovation. Use this approach with caution. (Brenner, 2009)

Altering belief systems: "moccasin" workshops

This is the last solution you can use to treat the problem which is gathering each group in open discussion. You have to be a neutral. The best way for that is letting each faction to think in the point of view of others. Once you do that and let them think as human beings it will break the strange loop. Altering the belief systems of the two sides can be an effective method of breaking the strange loops of a feud. Since most of us want to see ourselves as humane and reasonable, de-humanizing our feud opponents makes it much easier for us to execute acts that harm them. Using "moccasin" workshops, you work to
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show the two opponents to each other as human beings, worthy of respect, doing the best that they know how to do.

In a moccasin workshop, you give members of each faction an opportunity to look at the world from the point of view of their feuding partners. The term comes from the Cheyenne proverb: Don't judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins. Because its goal is achieving a shift in people's perceptions of other people, a moccasin workshop must be carefully planned, tailored to your specific situation, and skillfully executed. Once the belief system is seen to be faulty, the feud's strange loop is broken. Thereafter, its dynamics are different, and the feud might even end. (Brenner, 2009)

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Conclusion In conclusion organizational feud is a bad point in the history of the company and its employees. As we define that before it seems as an irregular conflicts. Also, there are kinds of organizational feuds and it depends on three main factors which are interpersonal, inter-professional and structural. However, new employees can contribute in the organizational feuds and adapt in their working environment. You can fight to end this feud but the results are not guarantee. Solutions of removing the feud are available and there are options but these options are guaranteed for the manager or the owner of the company while it seems ok for persons who are involved in the feud.

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