Reference no: EM133044708

You are the CEO of Tech-X, a mobile applications development company, founded in 2010. The company currently employs 80 full-time staff in Singapore. Half a year ago, you started recruiting fewer full-time staff, instead supplemented them with contract employees to cope with fiercer competition for projects and fast-changing technological landscape. The advantages of having more contract workers are that you pay them less and provide fewer benefits (due to different benefit plans). They require less training investment and can be let go relatively easy when the company is in financial difficulty. Despite the short-term contract of project-based employment, the company has been able to attract quality applicants because the company is well known as a "good" employer and having a strong paternalistic culture. Those who are applying for these positions generally think that they will be a step closer to full-time employment after their contracts expire. 

Your HR Manager told you that the change in manpower mix has resulted in unexpected issues and concerns. As there is unclear organizational policies and practices towards the deployment of contract employees, managers decide what jobs the contract employees will do and dictate what hours they work. They are assigning more and more tasks typically managed by full-timers to contractors, which result them to be working longer hours. Contract workers are finding it difficult to reject tasks or ask for time-off. Full- timers are increasingly anxious that they may one day be replaced by contract workers or their permanent position be converted to short-term contracts. As such, full-timers seldom interact with the contract staff and some even withhold information or resources from contract staff. Contract employees soon find that this two-tier system does not benefit them either. They feel that they are treated as 'cheap labour' as they get thrown all the 'dirty work' that the full-timers want to avoid and are not compensated or recognised for their contributions. While there are still ample applicants for contract positions at the moment, your HR manager is worried that the applicant pool will dry out after the word-gets-around. 

Due to the more complex organisational structure, some full-timers feel that the company's carefully crafted culture and values have changed. Less and less emphasis is placed on building a long-term relationship with employees and employees may be viewed as dispensable. Many are thinking whether they should move on to another firm. While you are aware of the growing dissatisfaction, you believe that contract workers have to be a mainstay of the company's workforce for the company's survivability and also progress as it enables the company to tap on new IT competencies quickly. However, you also recognise that the value propositions to full-time and contract employees have to change to avoid recruitment and retention challenges in the future. 

(a) Distinguish between personality versus intergroup conflict. Analyse the type of conflict that exist in Tech-X and identify FIVE (5) antecedents of this conflict from the case.

(b) Describe the FOUR (4) layers of diversity, and identify the layer which full-time vs. contract employees within Tech-X differ on with justification.

(c) Given the employee issues, discuss if there is a business case for maintaining a mixed workforce in Tech-X. Propose TWO (2) positive conflict outcomes that the CEO should work toward to meet the business imperatives.