The department head did not waste any time notifying all the other heads at various offices that Mrs. Phat-Ho might be selling her company. After a short time, rumors were flying to and fro and Mrs. Phat-Ho got word of what was going on and became furious. She discovered the initial source of the rumor and let him go with a severance deal and then either fired or reprimanded the other managers. Then she hired new managers with higher starting pay. Veteran managers became very resentful because of this inequality and their poor attitudes began to rub off on every level of personnel. Surprisingly, the 'end of the year' surveys indicated that the turnover rate only rose a half percent from the previous year; however, satisfaction rates plummeted down 50%. Veteran managers decided to appeal to Mrs. Phat-Ho about unequal pay but it was mostly in vain apart from one or two exceptions. She stated that either they stayed and continue to work for her with the current pay or found another job.
As we can see, Pet Ensure Inc. has been suffering from dysfunctional conflict resolution due in great measure to poor communication lines, personality clashes, and inefficiency. This conflict has been on-going for a couple of years now without resolution perhaps as the company lacks a capable conflict resolution system and processes that are effective in dealing with ongoing conflicts in the workplace. It is interesting to note that many organizations tend to rely on a traditional system that depends heavily on adversarial and costly processes that in many cases do not meet the underlying needs of the conflicting parties (Oudeh 22).