Management - Vikhanskiy OS

3. The Role of Human-Organizational Relations

As already mentioned, the organization expects from a person that he will perform a certain role. If a member of the organization successfully performs its role and if at the same time he personally is satisfied with the nature, content and results of his activities in the organization and his interaction with the organizational environment, then there are no conflicting contradictions that undermine the interaction of man and organization. One of the most important conditions for this is the correct construction of the role and, in particular, the formation of the right prerequisites for the content, essence and place of this role in the organization system.

To formulate the prerequisites for the role in such a way that the role, on the one hand, corresponds to the goals, strategy and structure of the organization and, on the other hand, meets the needs and expectations of the individual, is extremely difficult. The two necessary conditions for this are the clarity and acceptability of the role. The clarity of the role assumes that the person who performs it knows and understands not only the content of the role, i.e. The content of his work and the ways of its implementation, but also the connection of his activities with the goals and objectives of the organization, its place in the totality of the work performed by the team. Acceptability of the role is that a person is ready to perform it consciously, proceeding from the fact that the performance of this role will give him some satisfaction and lead to a certain positive result, which need not be of a material nature and be clearly defined for a person before the action begins .

The use of a role-based approach to involving a person in an organization can be accompanied by the emergence of conflicts in the performance of roles and the emergence of a number of problems that complicate the existence and authorization of the organization. Very often in organizations with formal organizational relations, the source of unsatisfactory performance of the role is the uncertainty of the role. If the content of the role is not clearly defined, the person performing this role can interpret it in such a way that its actions will not lead to the result expected by the organization. Fuzzy instructions and vague statement of the task, ambiguity of the meaning and meaning of the commissioned action in the absence of a proper system of communication and feedback in the organization can lead to the fact that a person performing a certain role, even though diligence and desire to do everything in the best possible way, will get negative from the position Organization's interests result. The uncertainty of the role can not be unequivocally regarded as a negative characteristic of the construction of the role. In any organization, with an increase in the level position of the role, its uncertainty necessarily increases. Moreover, in some situations, uncertainty of roles can be considered as a positive characteristic of relations in the organization. This is due to the fact that it contributes to the development of independence, expands the sphere of decision-making, promotes the training of employees and, most importantly, develops a sense of responsibility and commitment to the organization.

In certain circumstances, the fulfillment of a certain role can be hampered by the contradictions generated by the role. A contradiction may arise between the management and the employee if the former believes that he is wrongly fulfilling his role, or the second believes that he is presented with unreasonable demands, claims and charges. Conflict about the performance of the role can arise even when the expectations of colleagues are not consistent with the actions of a member of the organization. Often this happens in a situation where a new member of an organization performs its role in a different way than its predecessor did and what the colleagues around it are used to. A role contradiction can arise if the goals of a member of an organization are contrary to the goals of the organization, if its values ​​do not correspond to the values ​​of the group in which it works, etc.

Role conflicts are quite common in many organizations, and they should not be viewed solely as a negative phenomenon, as they often carry the impulses that inspire renewal, improvement and development of both the organization and individuals. In an organization with strict regulation of roles, formal structures and authoritarian power, usually any role conflict is regarded as a negative phenomenon, as it most often consists in an inadequate formal description of the performance of the role. In flexible organizations, where informal structures are common, where there is no clear description of the work, conflicts about the performance of the role in principle are not considered something abnormal, which should be avoided. Moreover, it is believed that the presence of conflicts is favorable for the organization. The important thing is not whether there are conflicts or not, but how they are resolved and what they lead to.

You can point to several typical situations that lead to conflicts of this kind. Knowledge of the existence of such situations can be useful for predicting the possibility of conflict. Conflict over the performance of a role often occurs when an individual simultaneously performs several different mutually exclusive roles at different moments. A conflicting order or a contradictory task leads to a role conflict, requiring simultaneous observance of the rules for performing a role and achieving a result unattainable when these rules are implemented. The problems of implementing a role arise when a member of an organization has to play a role that occupies a dual or borderline position in an organization in relation to which there are mutually exclusive expectations. A strong source of problems with the role is the contradiction between the values ​​of the individual and the nature of the role he performs. The conflict is brought about by changes in the content of the role, accompanied by an inadequate change in the remuneration for the implementation of a new role-playing activity.

One of the strong factors that generate conflicts in the implementation of the role is the so-called congestion of the role. It consists in raising expectations in relation to a worker who performs a certain role, significantly exceeding expectations, corresponding to his role. As a result, this employee is loaded with tasks that also go beyond the role. Often problems of this kind arise in good workers due to the fact that they are ready to perform what goes beyond the formally defined scope of their role. Congestion of the role leads to the fact that either the employee does not cope with the role assigned to him, or is unable to cope with tasks that go beyond his role.

A generalization of what has been said about the sources of role conflicts makes it possible to identify the main groups of causes that give rise to problems of performing a role. The first group consists of the causes of conflicts associated with the contradictions originally embedded in the content of the role. The second group can be attributed all those reasons that are associated with the contradictions between the person and his role in the organization. The third group consists of the reasons caused by the contradiction between the role and its perception of the organizational environment. Finally, the fourth group consists of the causes of conflict situations, generated by the contradiction between this role and some other roles.

The conflicts and contradictions that arise during the performance of roles can be eliminated in various ways. It can be a change in the content and mode of the role (change of work), the development of people performing the role, and their rearrangement.

When the work changes (the first approach), the causes and factors in the roles that lead to conflicts and contradictions are clarified, and the role is corrected. If the role is internally contradictory, then it is necessary to exclude one of the alternative sides from it. Work can be too intense and intense. Therefore, it should be facilitated or relieved. Depending on the nature of the work, there may be a need for a clearer description of the work and more precise regulation of its boundaries. There may be a reverse situation in which it is necessary to make the job description less detailed, thus giving the work executor an opportunity for creative and independent work.

The second approach is that the development of a person is carried out so that he can fulfill the role assigned to him and cope with emerging conflicts. The development of the employee takes place in three directions. The first is a more in-depth familiarization with the role. Often it is the ignorance of the role of the worker that causes role conflicts. The second is improving the skills and improving the performance techniques of the employee. Improved performance significantly reduces the strain experienced by the employee in performing the role. The third is the development of the artist's ability to cope with contradictory situations, adjust to work in conflict situations, be able to recognize and adequately respond to emerging problems, communicate correctly with people in conflict situations.

The third approach to preventing role-based conflicts is to rearrange workers from one role to another, depending on their ability to cope with conflict situations. For example, if conflicts are generated by uncertainty and ambiguity of a role, then it is not necessary to seek to eliminate these role characteristics. In the organization there can be people who are able to successfully cope with the role under such conditions. Similar to this problem, the problem of the role overloading and its increased intensity can be solved.

In addition to the rights and responsibilities that define the content of roles, there is a certain status for each role . There is a formal status reflecting the position of the role in the hierarchical organization of the organization, and the informal status of the role that is attached to it by surrounding people. The formal status of the role speaks about what power rights the performer of this role has, what is his position in the formal hierarchy of distribution of influence on the activities of the organization. Roles located on one hierarchical level can have different formal status, since it is determined not only by the hierarchy level, but also by the activity environment to which the role belongs. For example, the role of the department head may have different status depending on what position the department occupies in the organization.

The informal status of the role is set either by the personal characteristics of the role's executor, or by informally defined values ​​and the influence of the role in the organization. A person can have special personality traits or age and qualification characteristics that will cause increased respect for others and a willingness to recognize his leadership position higher than that determined by the formal status of the role. Usually, with the departure of this particular person from this role, its status status is restored to formal, and sometimes even below formal. There are roles that are formally located at a low and even low status level, but due to the special nature of the work they acquire a significantly higher status than the formally established one. Usually these are auxiliary roles serving the performance of an important role in the formal status, such as roles associated with a unique activity, rare in content and strong in terms of impact and possible negative consequences.

As can be seen from the foregoing, the role-based approach to building human-organizational interaction assumes that the entire set of actions that the organization performs in the process of its functioning can be broken down into separate jobs that have a specification- specific content defining qualifications, knowledge and experience that Must have an employee who performs each specific job. To fulfill its role, the employee is given rights, he assumes certain obligations to the organization and receives a certain status in the organizational environment. With this approach, a person is perceived by the organization primarily as a specialist performing a certain work and possessing the necessary knowledge and skills. However, even if one considers a person solely as an executor of a certain role, his characteristics can not be reduced only to professional qualification characteristics. A person is not a machine, and when performing any work, he is present completely with the whole set of his personal characteristics and moods, which necessarily affects the quality and quantity of his work. If you look at the problem of interaction between a person and an organizational environment more than just through the prism of his role, it turns out that the value of personal characteristics of a person is not only very large, but can often be decisive in its interaction with the organization.