CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

2. CONFLICT AT WORK THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ORGANIZATIONS 71
embedded in the struggle over individual work effort between workers
(labor) and owners (capital). Their analysis assumed that labor (e.g.,
workers, employees) has a desire to minimize work effort, while capital
(e.g., owners, employers) seeks to maximize work effort. The traditional
method for extracting work effort and discouraging lollygagging is the
threat of dismissal. The problem from the perspective of owners, however,
is that the amount of effort employees expend is difficult to gauge
effectively and reliably. This is increasingly the case as work becomes less
manual and more mental, less the production of physical objects and more
the production and organization of knowledge. Employers can attempt to
measure work effort through greater supervision, bureaucratic monitoring,
and surveillance. However, as the underlying premise of this chapter
would suggest, humans subjected to this regime of oversight have the
capacity to assess this organizational arrangement subjectively. They may
assume that it represents a pronounced lack of trust by employers, and
this may produce greater hostility and resentment. Added to the potentially
negative impact on worker morale are the “hard” costs associated
with layers of additional supervisory management (what David Gordon,
1996, called “guard labor”) and technological monitoring devices.
A new dilemma is generated: Do the hard (e.g., personnel, technology)
and soft (e.g., employee morale, organizational climate) costs nullify the
gains derived from the enhanced detection of shirking? For economists
such as Bowles and Gintis, the additional hard costs produce inefficiencies
and nonoptimal outcomes that can only be addressed by examining
and reconfiguring the microfoundational relations between labor and
capital, in particular, the different interests workers and owners have
in the expending of work effort. One solution to this conflict—workers’
ownership and control—would give workers an interest in efficiency and
productivity. Workers would self-monitor their own efforts and have an
interest in also monitoring the efforts of their coworkers. This would presumably
produce greater harmony and productivity without the heavy
costs of bureaucratic surveillance and worker distrust.
Worker Dignity and Conflict
More recently, Randy Hodson (2001) advanced the concept of “dignity”
as a key entry point into workplace relations and organizational conflict.
Hodson suggested that all humans have an inherent dignity that is
developed through social action, as an inalienable trait carried into the
organization by the human factor of production. More specifically, “workers
from all walks of life struggle to achieve dignity and to gain some
measure of meaning and self-realization at work. The achievement of dignity
at work thus depends on creative and purposive activity on the part
of workers” (Hodson, p. 4). Dignity is something that all humans desire
and seek to realize in the various spheres of social participation. It entails