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As part of an ESRC call entitled 'Transforming productivity via management practices and employee engagement', the Forum is partnering with Sheffield University Management School on a three-year funded project worth £600k to evaluate the impact on employee engagement and productivity of 'conflict competence' and other core management practices in both private and public sectors, and to develop training interventions that can be replicated in a wide range of organisational contexts. See opposite for key definitions.
The Forum views management’s primary contribution in knowledge-based businesses as being to build teams and foster teamwork. Conflict between two or more team members usually results in poor team performance and therefore a multiplier reduction in employee engagement by all team members and also by others who come in contact with the dysfunctional team. A project to develop training tools that can help management to avert and/or resolve team conflict makes a lot of sense.
Who's behind the project?
Senior researchers from Sheffield, Plymouth and Westminster business schools, partnering with the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and the Forum. The project is being funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Although it is a truism that engaged and motivated managers and employees are more innovative and productive, there is still a dearth of academic knowledge over how individual managers, employees, firms, regions and national policy can support, diffuse and capitalise on the factors that drive effective management and employee engagement practices. Recent research shows that: