The complicated structure of corporate organizations unambiguously implies the emergence of various kinds of conflicts. Since the structure of any medium or large company suggests the involvement of supervisors, employees, and the HR department, these frictions usually conflict with each other. The cause of such disputes may vary from team to team, yet the core of the conflict is intrinsically the same.
According to Student Two response, the primary reason for any conflicts lies in the unclear distribution of responsibilities between the three departments. This argument is relatively sound since it complies with the primitive human behavior of attempts to reserve boundaries of one’s stratum. Accordingly, such understanding of one’s position presupposes demands for others who cannot think similarly and unavoidably dispute with their colleagues.
However, the other approach may be applied to the problem of conflicts between various departments of an organization. According to Kalter, Bollen, Euwema, & Verbeke (2021), the core component of differences between subordinates and supervisors is their diverse emotional perceptions. While supervisors tend to express their emotions freely and feel positive after conflicts, their subordinates suppress impulsive outbursts and experience more negative emotions (Kalter et al., 2021). Such distinctions presume that the conflict’s cause lies in the hierarchical structure itself. They are built into it initially; the unequal distribution of power and the emanating allowances for the seniors provoke negative emotions, which yield conflicts. Therefore, an alternative treatment of the conflict issue is to perceive them as a natural confrontation between denominations of workers.
The Bible’s narratives usually reveal the same pattern of organizational conflicts. A company with supervisors, employees, and HRs could be compared to a family of Matthew 18:15-17. Namely, Bible recommends bringing up the existing problems within a person, which can be resolved privately. If the private conversation does not work, one should try to involve intermediates or, at the worst, high authorities (BibleStudyTools Staff, n.d.). This system is similar to the hierarchical structure of problems resolved within a corporate organization which includes different levels of administrators. Thus, the Bible accounts for a presentable method of settling conflicts within a hierarchical society.
Decentralization within corporate structures is often perceived as unfavorable, but this opinion is far from the truth. In fact, segmentation and network distribution of individual parts of a large company operating in different geographic areas and niches is a good solution. This allows individual teams to achieve the assigned tasks more effectively, particularly managers who know the specifics of their team’s work and the environment around them. Under centralized management, the company becomes less efficient as it grows. Since the center of the company cannot fully understand the specifics of the environment in which the branch operates, the more it expands, the more difficult it is for management to understand the new operating conditions.
Answering the theses put forward by my peer, I agree with the main direction of the ideas, but they also have several additional inferences. In particular, the apparent dominance of the decentralization approach in large organizational systems, be it corporations, states, or bureaucratic structures, as evidenced by many examples from both history and the modern structure of large communities.
An excellent and illustrative example states the United States and the Russian Federation, a moderately decentralized union of states, and a hyper-centralized Russia. In the case of the United States, we see stable economic development in autonomous administrative units, while in Russia, stable development is observed mainly in the central region. The above result concludes that decentralization is not an optional solution but a vital necessity for large organizations, especially corporations and companies, which can be seen in examples from related areas.
It is worth noting that research in the business environment speaks in favor of decentralized alliances. As asserted in Devicienti et al. (2017, p. 15), “workplace unionization decreases the level of technical efficiency, while aspects limiting the unions’ power such as a strong exposure to international markets, high debt levels or the prevalence of flexible assets partially reduce the negative effect.” In turn, the use of decentralized management stabilizes the deficiencies of unified systems. Since more people become involved in administration and supervision, the results of their governance indicate collaborative effort coming from numerous pieces of evidence preceding decision-making. This clearly demonstrates the above thesis about the benefits of decentralization for large companies, minimizing the negative consequences of external and internal factors.
Often, the same centralization is associated with the personal greed of top executive managers and directors who do not want, as it seems to them, to lose total control over all assets. However, the Bible answers such desires clearly in Ecclesiastes 5:10, “he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity” (KJV, 2015). The greed and avarice of individual parts of a shared collective always harm the money-lovers and the entire community. Given the importance of central management even in decentralized systems, such selfishness and disregard for the company’s general goals only lead to a general decline of all those involved in this.
References
BibleStudyTools Staff. (n.d.). Matthew 18:15–17. Biblestudytools. Web.
Devicienti, F., Manello, A., & Vannoni, D. (2017). Technical efficiency, unions and decentralized labor contracts. European Journal of Operational Research, 260(3), 1129–1141. Web.
Kalter, M., Bollen, K., Euwema, M., & Verbeke, A. L. (2021). A matter of feelings: Mediators’ perceptions of emotion in hierarchical workplace conflicts. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–13. Web.
K. J. B. Online (2015). Bible verses about greed. King James Bible Online. Web.