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Social Representations of Conflict in Romanian Organizations - State-owned and private Smaranda Buju, Ana-Maria Hojbot Graduates, students in MA

Abstract The aim of the present study was to identify the elements of the social representations of workplace conflict in Romanian organizations with the free association method. Based on the documented differences between the two sectors, differences referring to different aspects of individual or organizational functioning, we also tried to compare the concepts generated by participants form state owned organizations and from the private sector. Although the elements of the central core were salient to both samples, some differences based on frequency or importance were observed and discussed. Our findings suggest that conflicts in state sector institutions are more diffuse, latent, more related to inequity, favoritism and felt as more stressful, while in the private sector, conflicts seem more overt, accepted as functional, related to divergences of opinion.

Content 1. The structuralist perspective on social representations and the approach of conflict within organizations 2. Empirical research 2.1. The Goal of the study 2.2. Sample 2.3. Method 2.4. Results 2.5. Discussion

Key words: social representations, workplace conflict, free association technique

1. The structuralist perspective on social representations and the approach of conflict within organizations The theory of social representations has become a reference point not only in social psychology, but in other social sciences as well, which proves the researchers increasing interest for the collective phenomena and in particular for the rules that guide social thinking. The study of nave thinking, of the common sense, of the vision on the world that individuals and groups have and use to act or to take a stand is acknowledged as essential for the understanding of the dynamics of social interactions and to highlight the main influence factors of social and organizational practices. By approaching the subject of social representation, social psychology

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has moved beyond the sociological paradigm, describing social representations as a specific way of understanding and communicating, which creates and influences both reality and common sense in a continuous, dynamic process (Moscovici, 1976). Social representations -although bearing the mark of the society or the organization in which they are born and develop- have their own identity and autonomy. The reality of social representations is easy to grasp, but the concept is harder to delineate because it refers both to psychological phenomena (perceptive and intellectual) and social phenomena (their particular structuring by society, culture, organization, collective). The representations are social because they indicate an active attitude regarding certain realities (position grip) and at the same time they cause a certain communication orientation and shape the social behaviors production process (Moscovici, 1976). The same author invests social representations with two important roles. On the one hand, they conventionalize objects, people and events, rendering them a precise form and placing them in a given category, which asserts itself gradually as a distinct model of a certain kind and is being shared by a group of people. Because no mind is free of the effects of primary conditioning (imposed by representations, language, culture), people end up seeing what the implied conventions allows them to, without being actively aware of those specific conventions; in this way the social representations become a kind of reality, composed by what is socially accepted as reality. On the other hand, representations are prescriptive-in other words, they are imposed with an irresistible force, they impose our mind to integrate them, even if they arent consciously perceived and accepted. From the multitude of definitions being given to the social representations, we will focus on the aspects that are useful to the present research. As a product of human interaction and communication, social representations are a block of concepts articulated in different manners, not very systematic but sometimes scattered, dynamic, always changing, which have their own life (they circulate, attract, reject, or generate others, tend to disappear or fuse together). The two sides of social representations, the image and the meaning, turn them into a rating instrument, a reference grid for the reading and interpretation of reality, thus becoming an intermediate between perception, information, attitude and image. To re-present is not synonymous with to re-produce individual reflections proposed by the immediate reality, but, as Jodelet (1984) notes, social images are structures, an individual or collective creation that sums up both ideas and actions. They are not just simple mechanical assumption based on images given by the context, but require filtering, elaborating and incorporating into the individuals value system, without creating a rift between the persons and the groups outer or inner realities. The individual animates the objective reality, restructures it. As cognitive phenomena, social representations engage the individuals social affiliation, with al the affective and normative implications, contributing to the incorporation of experiences, conduit models and thinking, socially inoculated or transmitted through social communication. This is the reason why social representations are approached both as products and as processes of moving towards the exterior reality and also the psychological alteration of this reality. The elements of social representation (information, beliefs, opinions, attitudes) are structured in hierarchies and establish relationships which determine their meaning, as well as their place in the representational system. The simple identification of its content is not sufficient to reveal its specific character and neither for the comparative study of representations. This is the reason why the central core theory (Abric, 1976, 1987) marks a critical influence in the understanding and study of the phenomenon. This theory will show that the entire representation is organized around a central core, in relation to which every element of the representation will be interpreted (it is the stable, rigid, qualitative component of the representation). These are elements

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(that form the central system) are closely tied to the collective memory of a group and are relatively resistant to change. The peripheral elements form the essential part of the image, the most accessible, concrete and vivid part, which Flament will analyze to a greater extent (Flament, 1984). These elements allow inter-individual differences, support the heterogeneity of groups and also have the role of adapting the representation to concrete social practices. The study of social representation of the conflict within organizations is not purely explorative, it can provide us with significant data on taking decisions in order to efficiently solve different types of conflicts which can positively improve the organizational climate. Although there isnt a wide spread and universally accepted definition, the conflict is most often a process that begins when an individual or a group perceives the differences and oppositions between himself and another individual/group at interest, resources, values and practice levels. Globalization, with its main consequences (free movement of the work force and outsourcing) will lead to the emergence, development and diversification of new practices within organizations. Without developing constructive conflicts, the organizations will have difficulties in adapting to the requirements of a continuously changing, dynamic market. Acknowledging differences and irregularities helps the institutions to achieve the proper development level required for adjusting to the demands of the market. In the same time, conflicts can be considered, at this moment, to be the most costly of all social and organizational dysfunctions (Milcu 2007, p 359). This phenomenon takes place not without a gap between the old and the younger structures and between the remnants of the local deep-rooted mentality during the socialist decades, still latent in some state-owned institutions and specific of the new companies, which already adopted new management styles and strategies. This delay is, in our opinion, visible in the attitude towards the conflict, starting with the way it is defined, in terms of causes (the ones most often mentioned being personality differences - dogmatism, dominance, likeable, opinions, values, negative emotions, roles diversity their ambiguity and autonomy, interpersonal perceptions (stereotypes, prejudices), the development of negative attitudes, power relations, norms, performance evaluating systems and faulty communication (Milcu, 2007), consequences/effects on individuals and organizations, both constructive and destructive, but also of ways to prevent and manage it. Thus we consider that in the two different types of organizations (private/state institutions) we will find proof of the existence of some distinct value systems, beliefs and myths that facilitate some specific norms, which, in turn, can lead to attitudes that generate conflicts. Taking into consideration the researchers poor orientation towards the empirical approach of the organizational conflict phenomenon (which implies high costs and long term consequences) which would interest both the managers and the employees, as well as the work relationships specialists and the work and organizational psychology theoreticians, we propose an exploratory analysis of the elementary perceptions that people associate with workplace conflicts. In social psychology interpersonal relations have been approached from the perspective of analyzing social representations of friendship, authority, submission, cooperation or power, but few are based on the conflict phenomenon (Flament, 1986). The Romanian researchers efforts to make a theoretical synthesis doubled by an empiric exploration of the phenomenon are disparate and sporadic, due to -on the one hand- the conceptual size of the phenomenon and on the other hand-the methodological difficulties related to its study. Generally speaking, at a common sense level a number of differences are attributed to the quality of the relationships, the work conditions and the employees motivation from the private and state sector. These are due to the differences regarding the need for financial gains, the job confidence (the individuals feel protected and appreciated), loyalty, work commitment, but also regarding the

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policies to stimulate the retention of personnel: capitalizing seniority or encouraging personnel fluctuation, promoting youth values (Tudorescu , 2007). All these aspects can be potential factors for starting any kind of conflict, on which there can be different perceptions by employees from different organizational environments: state or private.

2. Empirical research
2.1. The Goal of the study This study attempts to identify the main concepts that draw up the employees representations from Romanian organizations towards workplace conflicts. We seek to reveal the way the perception of this phenomenon is organized, in two target samples: employees from public institutions and private organizations. We were primarily concerned with finding the elements of the central core and the peripheral aspects of this social representation. Our hypothesis is that the subjects from the state institutions will produce different associations with the concept of interpersonal conflict than those from the private firms. 2.2. Sample Our samples are composed of 60 research respondents from the private sector and 60 from the state owned sector, balanced by the gender. The age of the subjects ranges between 22 and 60 years, with a lower mean for the first sample (private sector workers). We also tried to polarize the two distinct samples by choosing for the first one young firms with a strong and competitive management style that adopt different programs to develop group cohesion and enhance interdepartmental communication; the organization of the activities in these organizations presents also strong tendencies towards autonomy inside teams and departments. The specific activities of these firms are mainly IT (software development and implementation) and business consultancy. The state-owned organizations are more heterogenous: public administration, legal sector, education, health and a state-owned public transport company. 2.3. Method The complexity of the phenomena coupled with the extreme sensibility of this kind of subject to any attempts to an objective study (with any kind of methodological study instrument), lead us to the decision of utilizing the free association technique (Abric, 1973, apud Moliner, 2003). This is a simple, direct method used to reveal the spontaneous associations the individuals produce when asked to think about the issue of conflict. It is an important instrument that by its intrinsic construction can extract direct answers, unbiased by effects such as social desirability. The completion of the words (or phrases) was also anonymous to reduce more of these possible effects. The subjects were first asked to produce spontaneous associations with the trigger word (workplace conflict) and then asked to rank them in a specific hierarchy following their own impression on their importance for the description of the work-related conflicts. This individual ranking was designed to further verify the centrality of the elements that compose the central core of the social representation. 2.4. Results In order to quantify the data we obtained from our field research we initially developed calculations of the frequencies of specific words or phrases. The following operation consisted of

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the calculation of the mean ranks of these concepts, both globally and separately (on the two samples). In the end there were 45 refined groups of words/ phrases (semantic categories), obtained from the analysis of the primary data. In the following tables we tried to organize the data for a better presentation of the differences between the two separate domains. The first table inventories the concepts sorted descending by the value of their frequencies in this study:
Table 1. Frequencies > 10

Dimension (associated word/ phrase) Deficient organizational communication Aggression Disputes, contradictions Stress Unsatisfying pay Professional background/ incompetence Dissent (conflicting ideas, attitudes, values) Inequity/ unfair treatment Manipulation/ machiavellism Resentment, envy, malice Laziness, indolence Pride

State owned organizations 18 7 21 17 11 15 3 17 13 11 15 6

Private organizations 22 17 5 9 8 7 15 10 6 9 3 15

As one can see, the concepts our respondents mentioned vary across all the aspects of the conflict, from its sources, forms of manifestations, to consequences (both on group and individual level) and a few on conflict management strategies. As can be easily observed, the first three aspects in order of frequency are failure of the communication systems, which are considered universal and the major source of conflict, aggression and disputes, all three referring to the patterns of interactions in organization. The other concepts are various sources of professional dissatisfaction, describing pay and promotion policies, inequity, the lack of competence of the colleagues and superiors. Table 2 shows the importance atributted by the respondents to those concepts to their role in the dynamics of conflict. We dont insist on discussing these ranks because this research focuses only on the gross structure of social representation of conflict, not the hierarchy and relations between the several factors that compose it. For this level of analysis we only calculated the frequency indicators, mean ranks 1 of each concept and then multiplied the two indicators 2 . Table 2 shows the comparative mean ranks obtained for each of the two samples. Table 2 Mean of rank> 3
1

The mean rank is the average value attached to the concepts generated in the free association task -the entire procedure is described by Verges (Verges, 1992 apud Moliner, 2002) 2 the result of this multiplication is named the social representation coefficient

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Deficient organizational communication Aggression Disputes, contradictions Stress Unsatisfying pay Professional background/ incompetence Dissent (conflicting ideas, attitudes, values) Inequity/ unfair treatment Manipulation/ machiavellism Resentment, envy, malice Laziness, indolence 3,40 4,14 3,38 3,17 3,83 2,45 2,83 2,6 2,81

State owned organizations

Private organizations 4 3,17 2,80 3,88 1,30 3,87 3,62 3,66 3,66 3,77

The next step of our measurement procedure was the prototipicality analysis (Verges, 1992 apud Moliner, 2002, p.143), which consisted in the construction of a matrix (known as the Verges matrix) in which the concepts are distributed on four quadrants. Based on the frequencies and mean ranks the first 60% of the concepts generated by our subjects, the data was organized as follows: the first quadrant listing the concepts listing above average frequency and above importance rank, the second listing words/ prases with above average frequency and below average rank, the third with below average frequency and above average rank, the fourth: below average frequency, below average rank. In this logic, the cathegories in the first quadrant (upper-left) are more frequent and important (considered most salient). In table 3, can be observed the elements of the central core and the peripheral cathegories obtained form both samples. The elements of the central core were therefore chosen based on the congruence of two aspects: high frequency and high ranks 3 . The second and the third were ignored in the analysis, because they show inconsistency between frequency and importance and this can inform us that these are unstable, uncrystallized elements of the representation. The elements of the central core are: deficient communication, aggression, inequity, disputes, stress and envy and the peripheral are: management, inflexibility, laziness, pay, tasks, dissent and gossip.
Table 3 Verges Matrix Social representation of workplace conflict
Mean rank > 3 Frequency > 20 Mean rank < 3

Communication Aggression Unfair treatment Disputes Stress Envy-malice

Pride Manipulation/machiavellism

the concepts were divided by ranks/ frequencies choosing the average values (3 for the importance rank/ 20 for the frequency) as the cut-off-points.

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Frequency < 20

Stupidity Negative emotion Frustration

Management Inflexibility Laziness Pay Tasks Dissent Gossip

The next graphic shows the elements we kept in the analysis for the central core and the peripheral elements (the left circle contains the central core and the right circle the peripheral elements).
Social representation of workplace conflict
160 140 120 RS coefficients 100 80 60 40 20 0
ic at io n S tr e ss In eq ui ty D is pu te ag s gr es En si on vy -m al ic e ay se nt La zi ne In ss fle xi M bi an li a g ty em en t G os si p Ta sk s P

Series1

co m

m un

conce pts

Fig.1 Internal structure of the social representation of conflict within organizations Next we will discuss some conclusions, based not only on the elements of the central core, because there are also others than indicate interesting differences between the two samples.

2.5. Discussion The elements from the central nucleus show the same saliency. We focus here on the variable elements and also on the differences on the two samples by the content, frequency and importance of some of the generated concepts. By comparing the concepts generated by the two samples, some conclusions can be drawn (although, the validity of these conclusions is restricted by the fact that the comparisons are made on gross data, without specific comparisons, based on statistical tests; these observations can constitute premises for future studies).

D is

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For state-owned organizations, the more salient elements associated to conflict are disputes, stress, unsatisfactory salary, incompetence, laziness/indolence, inequity and manipulation. In contrast, for the employees from the private sector, conflicts are more associated with insufficient communication, verbal or physical aggression, different opinions and pride. This first observation suggests that characteristics of the jobs in the state sector are an important source of influence on the evolution of conflicts. Because the sanctions applied for underperformance on a job are ordained only after a long and complicated procedure, the employees from the state-owned sector are more tempted to dodge their responsibilities, therefore there is a greater chance for conflicts to be triggered by indolence, laziness, inadequate work performance. These aforementioned factors are undoubtedly also present in the private sector, but we suggest that they are better managed (by different means: more efficient and punctual recompenses, a closer monitoring of the work tasks and work conditions, compensations differentiated by performance and not only by work experience. The concept that shows a great congruence between the two sectors is the one related to the quality of communication and disputes related to the scarcity of several resources. Words like stress, tension, frustration and others reflecting negative emotionality are more frequent in the public sector sample, while in the private sector sample, there are also words and phrases that are mentioned more often, such as aggression (both verbal and physical), conflicting opinions, values and ideas. This may indicate that the conflicts in the first mentioned work environment are more latent, while in the second, there is a more overt manifestation, suggesting that the disputes ignite more quickly and, they also possibly tend to end earlier. Studies show that the disputes with profound emotional consequences are often related to social identity and relationships and they usually have a greater impact on mental and physical health (De Dreu et al., 2004). Based on these assumptions and considering also the rigid hierarchical structures of these organizations, we expect the conflicts in state sector to be more status-related. We also suspect that these differences are given by the age differences between the two samples. In the private firms there is a greater homogeneity of age and professional background, with a lower age-mean than that of the contrasted sample. The work environment in this type of firm is more competitive, requiring high professionalism and team-work. This may lead to more overt opinion confrontations. We also explain the greater associations with indicators of a more open hostility as a consequence of the age bias of the sample (the younger are usually considered more impulsive and less motivated to regulate their external emotional responses). The open manifestation of the conflicts can be also interpreted as a sign of the more decentralized structures (a horizontal division of labor), characteristic for the private organizations. These organizations not only promote the open expression of opinions and needs, but their members tend to exhibit greater resistance or reactance to any type of attempts that would constrain their need for a larger autonomy. An interesting observation is the fact that, unlike the employees from the state sector, those from the private firms name also positive aspects of conflicts: conflict is seen not only as inevitable and intrinsic for any working group, but also challenging and also a useful indicator of less observable organizational malfunctions. This may reflect a different mentality towards change and competitiveness, which cannot be incited without the existence of conflict at a certain level. Conflicts, if controlled and kept within certain

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parameters, could be a real source of progress, innovation and development (Coser, 1956; Moscovici, 1980). Another interesting element is the fact that the ideas of inequity, excessive use of authority, preferential treatment and machiavellism are more frequent in the state-owned sector sample. In contrast, in the young, private organizations, the tendency is towards organizing the work in semi-autonomous teams. This practice challenges the traditional power-based hierarchic relations, promotes transparence and fairness. This situation is also changing the set of competencies required for the individuals, who should be more concerned with the acquisition of the more soft skills needed for conflict management and negotiation, in order to obtain a sufficient capability of self-management for the team. In conclusion, we suggest that there is a series of differences between the representations of conflict in organizations based on the type of ownership, in terms of sources, modes of manifestation and resolution) but also common phenomena such as insufficient communication, disputes, mistreatment, incompetence. Considered as less important, although constantly listed elements are: inflexibility, laziness, forms of group aggression (gossip, discrediting), dysfunctional management and payment. In this study, the differences were not analyzed at a more statistically significant level, given the relatively small size of the samples, but we intend to develop a more refined exploratory study, based on these preliminary hypotheses, validate them with elaborate instruments. The issues we intend to address will be concerned with various aspects: the nature of conflicts and the way they are approached, the influence of various factor, such as the type of encouraged performance (does the management promotes quantity versus quality?), style of leadership, the type of provided feed-back (are the errors closely monitored and penalized and the successes ignored, or are the both adequately managed?), how formal or informal parties intervene or the influence of organizational culture (the common view is that the state-owned institutions have a traditional, conservative culture, more bureaucratically and rigidly controlled, with nonparticipatory decision making systems in which the exchange of ideas is discouraged and the organizational communication has to cross long hierarchical distances). Research on the way people understand and approach conflict in their specific work environments can be useful for the development of consistent theories of conflict management with greater applicability at different levels and in various contexts. We need to go a step further, towards the study of the associative power of these elements in order to decide which are really central and which ones are peripheral and adapted to the specific of the work environment.

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