Organizational Learning

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the conflict and decision making that occurs in organizations. The paper uses the Orangewood Childrens' Home as a case study. The paper points out that both conflict and decision making are part of organizational behavior, and they are both important, as both contribute to group dynamics and the sense of community that can be built within an organization.


Outline:
Introduction
Conflict
Decision Making
Combining Conflict and Decision Making
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"In other words, the differing opinions of people on the inside and how they react to ideas for the future of the organization are often related to the reactions of those on the outside. People within the organization can provide new and innovative ways of looking at a problem or idea. In this way, conflict is actually good (Eisenhardt, 1999). It is better to spot a problem within the organization than for the employees to keep silent and let the problem make its way out to where the public would be the first ones to notice it. This could cause a much larger problem for an organization than a little bit of internal conflict would, and this is why many organizations choose workgroups that will have some conflict. Orangewood is one of those organizations that has carefully chosen their groups to have just the right amount of conflict to stimulate decision making without creating groups that only want to fight with one another."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bartlett, Christopher A., and Ghoshal, Sumantra. "Changing the Role of Top Management." Harvard Business Review, (1995): 132.
• Bethel, SM. Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. Food Management. (1999).
• Boyd, Lynn, Gupta, Mahesh, and Sussman, Lyle. "A new approach to strategy formulation: Opening the black box." Journal of Education for Business, (2001): 338.
• Cole, Sam. "Dare to dream: Bringing futures into planning." Journal of the American Planning Association, (2001): 372.
• Dalton, Linda C. "Thinking about tomorrow: Bringing the future to the forefront of planning." Journal of the American Planning Association, (2001): 397.

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