Resolving Conflicts

INTRODUCTION

The aims and objectives of the pages to follow are to analyze what is teamЁCwork and why it is more and more preferred. However, it is understood that, teams consist of persons from different cultures, with different ideas and thoughts therefore, inevitably, conflicts arise. between the members. It can be imagined how much more intense team diversity exists within a multinational shipping corporation.

Unfortunately, conflicts, usually, make performance suffer and that is where HR management is called to try and find the basic reasons for conflictsЎЇ arousal and the steps that will lead them to their resolution.

Following a series of methods based on various motivation theories, such as the ones developed by Maslow and Herzberg, the HR manager will try and resolve any drawbacks occurred, which prevent the team from achieving its goals and make sure that such ones will never come up again.

However, what is a multinational shipping corporation? What are teams? What do we mean by conflict and what affect do such situations have on teamsЎЇ performance? How easy it is to identify the root of the conflicts? What are the steps to be followed by the HR Manager in order to settle things? We will find the answers in the paragraphs to follow.

MULTINATIONAL SHIPPING CORPORATION

The term ÐŽoMultinational CorporationÐŽ± first appeared in American dictionaries around 1970, and has since been defined in various ways in business publications and text books. A Multinational Shipping Corporation is a company that has significant operations in more than one country. Basically, a multinational corporation is an organization that is involved in doing business at the international level. It carries out its activities on an international scale that disregards national boundaries, while being guided by a common strategy from a corporation center. (Certo, 2003)

In contrast to the international model, the multinational corporate model uses subsidiaries (i.e., independent companies) in each country in which the company does business and provides a great deal of discretion to those subsidiaries to respond to local conditions. Each local subsidiary is a self-contained unit with all the functions required for operating the host market. Thus, each subsidiary has its own manufacturing, marketing research, and human resources functions. Because of this autonomy, each multinational subsidiary can customize its products and strategies according to the states and preferences of local consumer; the competitive conditions; and political, legal, and social structures (Bateman, 2004).

THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATE PHENOMENON

Multinational entities have played a role in international trade for more than 300 years. The beginnings of these operations can be traced to the British and Dutch trading companies and, after their decline, to European overseas investments, mainly in the extractive industries. The phenomenon as it is known today is the result of the lead taken by U.S. ЁC based companies in the post-World War II period and later followed by western European and Japanese entities. By the 1998 the total number of multinationals exceeded 45.000 with 280.000 affiliates around the world. They are engaged in activities from the extractive to the manufacturing sectors, and they account for a significant share of the worldЎЇs output. The global sales of foreign affiliates of multinationals are estimated to be $ 7 trillion, far greater than world export at $ 5 trillion. The largest 600 multinationals are estimated to generate between one-fifth and one-fourth of the value added in the production of goods and services (Czinkota, 1992).

The major disadvantage of the multinational form is higher manufacturing costs and duplication of effort. Although a multinational can transfer core skills among its international operations, it cannot realize scale economies from centralizing manufacturing facilities and offering a standardized product to the global marketplace. Moreover, because a multinational approach tends to decentralize strategy decisions, it is difficult to lunch coordinated global attacks against competitors. This can be a significant disadvantage when competitors have this ability (Bateman, 2004).

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HR MANAGEMENT

The utilization of people, at least in a rudimentary form, can be traced to ancient times. Efforts to best use talents, even though informal in nature, were undertaken whenever people came together in a community. The change has been that during the course of the past century efforts to best manage human resources have become more formal and specialized. The history of HRM can be characterized as moving through four broad phases: The craft system, scientific management, the human relations approach and the current organizational science ЁC human resource approach (Fisher, 1999).

ÐŽ¤ The Craft system: Best suited to domestic industry, which the master operated on his own premises, with his assistance residing and working in the same house.

ÐŽ¤ Scientific Management is that there is one best way to do a job. The best way will be the most efficient and therefore the fastest and the least expensive.

ÐŽ¤ Human Relations: It emphasizes on the fact that employees need to be understood in order to be satisfied and productive.

ÐŽ¤ Organizational Science: Focuses more on the total organization and less on just the individual.

HR Management

ÐŽoHuman resource management involves all management decisions and practices that directly affect or influence the people, or human resources, who work for the organization.ÐŽ± (Fisher, 1999)

Depending on the needs and size of each organization, human resource management involves a number of functions. (Fisher, 1999)

These functions are (Dessler, 2003):

Planning: Establishing goals and standards; Developing rules and procedures; developing plans and forecasting.

Organizing: Giving each subordinate a specific task; establishing departments; delegating authority to subordinates; establishing channels of authority and communication; coordinating the work of subordinates.

Staffing: Determining what type of people should be hired; recruiting prospective