Interorganizational Goal Conflict Can Arise

Interorganizational Goal Conflict

Conflict can arise from all sorts of different situations. In a workplace situation, and particularly in one where the central issue is a social problem, conflict can arise from practical elements such as budget constraints and limited human resources. In a direction such as criminal law and correctional services, the general goal is to mitigate the problem of crime in the country where the various agencies operate, and concomitantly increasing public safety. However, in accomplishing these goals, interferences such as budget constraints and personnel shortages result in a conflict of goals that are secondary in importance. While the primary goal is therefore still the mitigation of crime, the road towards achieving this goal is necessarily subject to the means available. As such, law enforcement agencies, the correctional department, and the division of parole often find themselves in conflict as a result of secondary problems, which detracts from the focus on the primary goal.

In criminal justice, there are three main steps a criminal might expect to go through, if convicted. First, there is the conviction by the law enforcement agency. Secondly, the correctional department incarcerates the criminal, who is thirdly reviewed by a parole board. In committing themselves to reaching the goal of improving public safety, law enforcement agencies seek to convict and jail as many criminals as possible. The goal behind this is that criminals are removed from the streets, and thus that the problem of crime itself is mitigated. Correctional facilities have as their goal the prevention of crime via reformation. The problem is the constraint not only of space, but also of money and time. The correctional department is under extreme strain, because it does not have enough space to house the increasing amount of criminals convicted by law enforcement. In turn, parole boards are increasingly stringent in their decisions regarding parole. While attempting to adhere to standards of public safety, the parole board is also under bidet constraints, making it difficult to achieve a very high level of parolees without having to employ additional parole officers. This creates intra-departmental conflict situations between law enforcement, correctional departments, and parole boards. While law enforcement convicts an increasing number of criminals, space in prisons is running out, while parole boards are unable to deliver a high enough turn-around of convicts that are released back into society. The strain place upon individuals may result in an inability to find targeted solutions to existing problems, and instead interdepartmental hostility may result. This in turn creates a perpetuation of rather than a solution to the problem. In order to find targeted solutions, the focus needs to move away from the immediate logistical and financial problems experienced towards a solution-oriented focus on the primary goal.