Workplace Conflict Management: Legal Intentions Versus Managers' Experiences

Abstract

The Employment Relations Act 2000 directs employees and employers to resolve employment relationship problems (ERP’S) early without judicial intervention. The goal is to ‘build mutual trust and confidence in all aspects of the employment environment’. However, the policy intentions to focus on early resolution through problem solving, interest based negotiation, facilitation and mediation have not been researched at the level of the workplace. Drawing on conflict events in the primary school sector this paper investigates the theme of relational trust. The preliminary findings reported in this paper have emerged from a qualitative study that involved semi-structured interviews with a range of actors. A preliminary analysis identified situations where parties had resolved problems without damaging trust by implementing reflective collaborative interest based processes. In spite of identifying positive outcomes of conflict events, principals and senior leaders reported that trust was damaged when competition for performance based remuneration fuelled conflict and when complaints from parents escalated. These findings highlighted the special nature of conflict management in schools where the goal of ‘mutual trust and confidence in all aspects of the employment environment’ may be vulnerable to complex conflicts of interest in the employment relationship in the New Zealand primary education sector.