By Dr. Esua Dennis Fozong
The central theme of this research study is focused on digging out the fundamental causes of stress and conflict in business. Several procedures were applied to carry out rigorous quantitative analysis. Organisations can help reduce the overall effects of stress and conflict by developing and implementing prevention and intervention methods as well as employees management in order to cope with job stress and conflict.
Stress is a fact of everyday life. When people reach out for help, they are often dealing with circumstances, situations and stress in their lives that leave them feeling emotionally and physically overwhelmed.
Many people feel that they have very little resources or skills to deal with the high level of stress they are experiencing. The importance of this research is to provide information on stress and conflict, its effects on businesses and the most popular stress management and relaxation techniques that are being used today.
This research will be helpful for people who want to learn how to react to stress in a more constructive and proactive way.
Owning a farm or other business is much more than just a way to make a living; it is a way of life. Everyone involved in business knows there are occasionally some very stressful times. During business seasons or critical production periods, it is normal to be faced with time constraints and work pressures. If you are also faced with major financial issues, these pressures can be multiplied many times over.
Unfortunately, at times, these demands can put everyone involved in the business under a great deal of stress. With so many potential challenges (many of which are usually out of your control), Dr. Esua Denis Fozong found it important to identify practical ways of coping with these issues.
The purpose of this research is clearly to understand the principal causes of Stress and Conflict in Business today. It is in answering the following questions that the author makes us to better understand the whole thing.
– What is Stress and Conflict?
– What are the difference types of Stress and Conflict?
– What are the effects of Stress and Conflict in Business?
– How can we create a successful business?
– How can we avoid Stress and Conflict?
– How can we resolve Stress and Conflict using mediation and third party?
All these questions are answered in this research from chapters 2 to 5.
The term stress as it is currently used was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined stress as the « non – specific response of the body to any demand for change ».
Any definition for stress should therefore also include good stress or what Selye called eustress. For example, winning a race or election can be just as stressful as losing.
Although we all talk about stress, it often isn’t clear what stress is really about. Many people consider stress to be something that happens to them, an event such as an injury or job loss. Others think that stress is what happens to our bodies, mind and behavior in response to an event.
While stress does involve events and our response to them, these are not the most important factors. Our thoughts about the situations in which we find ourselves are the critical factors.
When something happens to us, we automatically evaluate the situation mentally.
From another point of view, stress is caused by two things, primarily it is down to whether you think the situations around you are worthy of anxiety, and then it is down to how your body reacts to your though processes.
The instinctive stress response to unexpected events is known as fight and flight. Stress happens when we feel that we cannot cope with pressure, and this pressure comes in many shapes and forms, and trigger physiological responses. These changes are best described as the fight and flight response, a hard – wired reaction to perceived threat to our survival.
According to a survey carried out by the International Labor Organisation in 2013, forty percent of workers admit experiencing office stress and one quarter says work is the biggest stress in their lives.
The workers of International Organisations working in the field especially those in war and natural disaster zones have more stress than those working in offices.
Their stress causes include unhappiness with their jobs, having heavy workload or too many responsibilities, dealing with terrorist actions, working for long hours, having poor management, unclear expectations of their work, working under dangerous conditions and facing discrimination and harassment at work.
Life stress can also have a big impact, this include death of love ones, divorce, loss of job, increase in financial obligations, getting married, moving into a new home and chronic illnesses or injury, emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, grief, guilt and low self-esteem, taking care of elderly and sick people traumatic event such as natural disaster, thief, rape or violence against them or a love one.
Sometimes stress comes from inside rather than outside. You can stress yourself out just by worrying about things; all of these can lead to stressor.
Signs of stress include: – headache, fatigue, difficulties in sleeping, and concentration, upset stomach and irritability. Long stress leads to depression, high blood pressure, abnormal heart beat, heart disease, heart attack, heartburn, weight gain and loss, change in sex drive and fertility problems.
Conflict and stress can prevent individuals from performing their best. Stress can be caused by a variety of factors and can lead to numerous consequences. Stress is a frequent cause of conflict, and conflict can increase stress. Conflict occurs whenever we interact. Conflict arises because individuals have different needs, interest and goals.
It can be a highly destructive force if left unchecked, and can lead to low productivity and morale. Conflict is a disagreement between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations. Conflict can be superficial or strong. It can be short – lived or can also exist for long periods of time.
Although conflict can be a major problem, certain kinds of conflicts can be beneficial. When a conflict is handled in a cordial and constructive manner, it serves a useful purpose. What constitutes the optimal level of conflict varies according to the situation and people involved.
Conflict is a naturally occurring phenomenon with both positive and negative effects depending on its management. It is a phenomenon inherent in all organizations, and arises from differences in their goals, needs, interests, attitudes, values and perceptions during the interaction of groups such as management and labor.
Essentially, organisations function as a means for internalising conflict, bringing them within a bounded structure so that they can be confronted and acted upon.
Fred Luthans (1995) has classified conflicts as intra -individual, intra-personal, intra-group, and organizational. Intra-individual conflict arises due to frustration and frustration arises due to incompatibility between the perceived goals and the actual achievements.
When individual employees encounter incongruous goals, they become aggressive and frustrated. Ultimately, they decide to either withdraw from the pursuit of their goals or fix themselves, realizing that nothing is going to be achieved. However, during the final stages of conflict resolution, individual employees may compromise.
Goal conflicts can also be categorized as approach-approach (cognitive dissonance), approach-avoidance (conflict between organizational goals and individual goals), and avoidance-avoidance (perceptive goal congruence). Also, role conflict and ambiguity are classified under intra-individual conflict. Role conflict and ambiguity mostly arise from cultural differences.
Inter-personal conflict arises due to personal differences, information deficiency, role incompatibility, and environmental stress. We resolve this type of conflict through negotiation. Inter-group conflict arises due to competition for resources, task interdependence, jurisdictional ambiguity, and status struggle.
In organizations, we adopt the following strategies to deal with inter-personal conflict: avoidance, diffusion, containment, and confrontation. Organizational conflict occurs mostly due to structural conflict, hierarchical conflict, functional conflict, line and staff conflict, and formal and informal conflict.
The statistics of war are so appalling that they raise a question everyone ought to ask: Are such level of suffering, imposes by human beings on each other, really necessary? Aren`t there better ways of managing and resolving the differences between people and groups of people, which brings about war and violent conflicts?
Conflict is a characteristic of human existence. It is part of the dynamic of life that drives us into the future. But it needs to be managed constructively. When associated with violence, destruction and killing, it is no longer a healthy part of living. Violence conflict solves few problems, creates many, and breeds more unhealthy conflict to come.
Conflict has characteristics of its own, and it is possible to analyses its structural and behavior. When conflict is understood, it`s easier to find ways to predict it, prevent it, transform it and resolve it. But this research is based on conflict in business and not conflict of war.
Therefore learning to manage conflict is integral to high-performance team. Although very few people go looking for conflict, more often than not, conflict results because of miscommunication between people with regard to their needs, ideas, beliefs, goals or values. Conflict management is the principle that all conflicts cannot necessarily be resolved, but learning how to manage conflicts can decrease the odds of nonproductive escalation. Conflict management involves acquiring skills related to conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict communication skills, and establishing a structure for management of conflict in your environment.
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Secondly, it also gives opportunities for the Cameroonian to be able to gather knowledge from the two language backgrounds. But unfortunately it has not been advantageous as such to the people. Rather than being a uniting factor, it seems a dividing factor because we discovered that the Anglophones have always been marginalized because the majority who are of the French background are dominant in almost all aspects of public life and they don’t even think that the Anglophone has a place in this country.
The hair style for the school is Malta Guinness with black cellotape as from January 2016. When coming back any other hairstyle will not be accepted.
I wish to use this opportunity to thank the man we are blessed to have as proprietor of the school for his intervention to make sure the institution remains “a place to be.” Elizabeth Foundation has as such come to transform the way young Cameroonians are educated. The people of Kosala and its environs therefore stand a chance at benefitting from this initiative.
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