Konflikter på arbetsplatsen
Förebygga, hantera och lära ur ett chefsperspektiv
The aim with this essay is to investigate the attitude that employers have towards conflicts at the workplace and how this affects their way to prevent and deal with conflicts among employees. Another part of the essay is to discuss pedagogical issues related to learning through conflicts. With this aim and these questions of issues, we have found out which attitude employers have towards conflicts at the workplace as well as how they prevent and deal with them. We have also investigated which opportunities for further development employers sees in situations of conflict. This study is based on qualitative interviews with six women who are head of units within the communal area. The information gathered through empirical interviews, have been analyzed from several different theories that deal with the topic of conflict handling -and learning. We have also used more general theories about learning such as Kolbs theory, where the focus is on the individual learning as well as Illeris model that aside from the individual aspect of learning, also brings in learning through interaction with the environment. Our results show us that there is in fact only one of the six employers that personally have expressed using a thoroughly explicit strategy for how she deals with conflicts. The other employers have also said that they have a working strategy for when conflicts occur, though through our interviews, we have come to the understanding that only one of the interviewed employers, actually seem to have well and thought through plan of how she going to handle conflicts among her employees. Our impression was that she was also the one with the most positive attitude towards conflicts on the workplace. We can also see that all of the employers express that they have learned something in situations of conflict, but most of them had a difficulty describing what they had learned in words. Keywords: Conflicts, conflict management, learning, communication, employers