Educational institution; overcoming role, communication problem, lack of cohesiveness, and inter group conflict. When considering the factor that affects group productivity, I realize a key to a productive group from start to finish is the attitude each member has during the forming stage. One must understand that there is no one in a team, no matter one’s level of expertise or lack thereof. Team process and performance both require and support the development of relevant soft skill such as effectiveness, communication, viewpoint sharing, constructive conflict and criticism, active listening, power-sharing, self-management, negotiation, and compromise. This factor will be more thoroughly be discussed within my research focusing on how these play a part in an educational institute.
From our title productivity is a process that shows whether an Institution is effective and efficient. Organization productivity improvement is a process of doing the right things better as part of the continuous process. In our discussion is about how we can improve the productivity of an educational institution. An educational institution is a place where people gather knowledge and skills or are being educated, and it comprises preschool, middle school, high school, and universities. For this paper, I will major on university level to analyze or discuss all the factors that I have mentioned above.
University comprises of different stakeholders like students, teaching staff, non-teaching staff, the board of management and student board of management. In every group of management has to work as a team to deliver high-quality service to their students. At the same time work might be faced various problem or conflict like lack of trust which can be caused by poor leadership, due to location of the institution, diverse member, maybe team might be too big, lack of good structure and way of doing things, have unclear vision and mission and being less concerned about each other. But all these can be resolved through demonstrating good leadership by making a trust a high priority and creating a conducive environment for every one of a team member.
The other one is the absence of team identity where team member some time feel unaccountable to one another concerning the objectives of the team. This can be caused due to lack of commitment and effort, differences on team goals and goals and objectives or inappropriate collaboration. These will happen due to lack of identity as a cohesive unit. To overcome all these organization need to align the team with appropriate values of an organization.
Another challenge that contributes conflict in a team group is lack of open communication. If team member suffers from poor communication, this will automatically end in inefficiencies, ineffective, lack of understanding, duplicate of things and many other problems. This can only be resolved by establishing the appropriate mechanism of communication among all team members and institution management. For example in a poor university communication might lead to a riot, strike, destruction of property, etc.
Difficulties in making the decision is another challenge that can cause conflict between team members. This is mainly derived when a member might be rigid in adhering his/her position during decision making or bringing an argument instead of providing new information. Also, ambiguity in upper leadership can cause difficulties in deciding on the institution. The form of communication that a team tends to use in deciding within themselves need to be very well understood.
Also, lack of ability to resolve conflicts in a group of people of individuals. This can be steered by communication issues which bring difficulties in resolving conflicts between the team members. Also, conflict can’t be resolved especially when the tension is very high, when the team member is attacking each other or when there are demonstrating aggressive behavior. This can only be resolved by establishing a good leadership and establishing an intelligent system for dealing with conflict.
Another key factor that causes conflict in a group of people is the size of the team. When the team is very large, it raises a lot of differences which mostly lead to a conflict of interest. Location, where the institution is located, can also cause conflict due to either insecurity, transportation barrier, difficult climate or diversity. In case the team is very well diverse, mostly will have better sharing which will help understand each other differences and way each view things.
Lastly, ineffective leadership will also lead to conflict on a team group. This can be caused where the leader fails his or her team member by misinterpreting of vision, and improper way of delegating duties. This can be corrected by being conscious of any of imbalance in the participation of people. Improve maturity level to each and every one of team member will end up having a cohesive group of people and well-performing team, which need to have a clear objectives, meet many times, participation in constructive argument concerning on how to offer the best service to the students, exchanging information, coordinating their task, backup each other, and also reviewing their performance and come up with a way to improve the institution.
All these factors if are not well addressed will automatically affect the productivity of the institution due to ineffective and inefficient. All organization or any institution to be productive it should first ensure that all team members are working with oneness and cohesion so that they can offer the best service to their client. For an educational institution like the university, all member of the board of management needs to have trust with each other and have trust with the chairperson of this board. Also, all member of this group must be accountable of each other, need to give everybody a chance to express the his\her opinion and respect each other views or opinion. But if this board of management won’t have conducive environment, work with oneness and cohesiveness no doubt automatically there will be a total mess to the whole management and institution which may lead to lack of development in the institution, low quality of education, poor management of resources, conflict between students, board of management, teaching staff and supporting staff which it might introduce riots, strikes or damage to resources and infrastructures.
Also teaching staff group members need to have good communication between each other, have respect, be accountable of each other, need to give everybody a chance to express the his\her opinion and respect each other views or opinion. But if either of these group management won’t have a good conducive environment, work with oneness and cohesiveness, automatically there will be a total mess in some group of management, and the institution at large won’t give the best service to its students.
Also supporting staff group members need to have good communication between each other, have respect, be accountable of each other, need to give everybody a chance to express the his\her opinion and respect each other views or opinion. But if either of these group management won’t have a good conducive environment, work with oneness and cohesiveness, automatically there will be a total mess in some group of management, and the institution at large won’t give the best service to its students.
Another is student leadership group members need to have good communication between each other, have respect, be accountable of each other, need to give everybody a chance to express the his\her opinion and respect each other views or opinion. But if either of these group management won’t have a good conducive environment, work with oneness and cohesiveness, automatically there will be a total mess in some group of management, and the institution at large won’t give the best service to its students.
For example, if there won’t have good management in the leadership of teaching staff, it might end up teacher not to offer teaching services to their student as require and result from the low quality of education. So good management will result in a high quality of education, and this will improve education institution productivity.
Another problem an education institution might face is excessive intergroup conflict. This is where the different group of management like the board of management, teaching staff management group and student board of management need to have a good mechanism of communication between all groups that are responsible for management. But at the same time there is those factor that promotes an institution to have an intergroup conflict which is diversity which is brought but differences in backgrounds and experiences which give staff or member of the group a different view of things once exchanging thought or handling challenge. Mainly large workload mostly produce a wide range of way of doing things and solutions. Also, the diversity can affect conflict for both side within the teams and between the team.
Different groups might have incompatible goals where the most common and easy way to have a clear understanding of the effectconflict on intergroup is mainly incompatible goals. According to Belak as well as Miles Hewstone and Katy Greenland in their 2000 International Journal of Psychology article on the topic, just as conflict arises among group members with different goals, groups competing against each other for shared resources often disagree on how to use those resources based on their competing objectives.
Another factor that can cause causer intergroup conflict is poor communication. This is mainly caused by little or lack of communication. Also, it is indicated that separation among groups contributes a sense of superiority and limits the strength of how group members can interact. Once the groups that are supposed to work together toward institution goals fail or have an improper way of communicating their respective pursuits, misunderstanding, mismanagement, and feelings not satisfied are more prevalent. Every team required to have the ability to interact and communicate to work toward achieving specified goals.
Lastly, unequal reward structure is another factor that can cause intergroup conflict through when a certain team feels that another team is not fairly evaluated or rewarded regarding on different set standards, that team might become biased or envious because of the preferred group. Hewstone and Greenland indicate that this informal evolution of social identity within the workplace strongly impacts feelings of groups about one another.
Also, there are key ways of handling intergroup conflict with involves: Prevention of disruptive conflict which comprises establishing a conducive environment that characterized by trust and respect. Once a different team is required to work on a particular project it should start with by scheduling a kickoff meeting where is supposed to invite all the team members of all team that is supposed to participate. Despite some conflict are unavoidable all these groups need to discuss the need for establishing a comprehensive process of resolving inter-group issues when they arise. They need to think about possibilities and agree on decision-making strategy, and also they need to communicate it to all the team members.
The second way of handling intergroup conflict is coming up with a mechanism for resolving conflict where it starts by acknowledging the conflict. Once you assume issues or avoid confrontation, it might tend to cause a very big problem to fester. Furthermore, there needs to be an open discussion about the effect that a conflict has on group productivity. If there are disagreement of opinion that might hinder right communication, the task might not move as required from one end to another promptly. All group leaders should lead by example and keep communications open to all team members, and he/she need to use active listening skills to understand all sides of an issue.
The other way of handling intergroup conflict is understanding each other group or team which involves understanding ongoing issues, scheduling regular meetings and invite all the team members. It is also necessary to allow each team leader of every group to present an update on arising issues and then grant time for discussion. By doing so, it normally gives the whole team a chance to present their grievances and task on resolutions by avoiding issues from becoming personal through focusing on the exact problems but not person raising his/her issues. Also, it needs to avoid attacking each other and pay attention to the task at hand instead. Then clarify each group position when there is inter-group conflict.
Finally, the last way of handling intergroup conflict is agreeing. All group needs to have an agreement on a certain problem resolution and encourage every group member to be involved to keep an open mind. This requires analyzing the problem from different ways to get a broad perspective. Mainly, this technique typically can lead to come up with innovative and creative solutions that all team members can feel good about it. The facilitator needs to conduct a volatile discussion between teams. Also, it requires an impartial mediator who can help to calm tempers and help all team to reach the solution faster.
Conclusion
To improve productivity for an educational institution all team need to work with oneness and cohesion. Also, there must be a conducive environment for all board of management. In every group of management has to work as a team in order to deliver high-quality service to their students. At the same time work might be faced various problem or conflict like lack of trust which can be caused by poor leadership, due to location of the institution, diverse member, maybe team might be too big, lack of good structure and way of doing things, have unclear vision and mission and being less concerned about each other. But all these can be resolved through demonstrating good leadership by making a trust a high priority and creating a conducive environment for every one of a team member.
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