Conflict Management

Wherever people come together, there will be conflicts. Depending on personality and disposition, the way in which conflicts take place can vary: wordily, factually, noisily, silently, aggressively, or not at all. Unresolved conflicts may have impact on the overall working climate and may affect the motivation, even of staff members who are not directly involved. It is therefore important to address conflicts and to find lasting solutions. 

If you find yourself in a conflict, you are not forced to solve it by yourself. There might be moments or cases where you feel you need to turn to a trusted person for support, advice, or just a listening ear. The institute provides a number of contact points that are available to assist you. Some of these are interconnected; as responsibility cannot always be clearly defined. No matter whom you choose to contact, your concern will be treated in a confidential and appreciative manner, and it will only be communicated to further or correct body (or bodies) with your permission. 

The points of contact:

• Your superior
• Managing Director (Simon Fisher) - as employer representatives
• Gender Equality Officers (Karin Kastens, Barbara Molz, Annelies van Wijngaarden)
• Ombudsperson (Beate St Pourcain)
• PhD representatives
• Deans (Else Eising, Yayun Zhang, Stan van der Burght, Hatice Zora)
• Occupational Health & Safety Service AMD (Arbodienst)
• Mediation advisors

Please note: contact whoever you feel most comfortable with and/or with whom you think your problem is best addressed. 

Your superior may be your first point of contact when it comes to conflicts within the team, with your peers from your own unit or from other units within the facility. It is your supervisor's job and responsibility to analyze the conflict and to provide support to enable the parties to address and solve the problem together. 

What you should know: senior staff members with a management function have a duty of care. In the case of severe situations, superior staff members may need to act quickly to fulfill their duty of care. 

If your superior is a conflict party themselves, you may contact the superior staff member at the next level up in the hierarchy. If you prefer a greater degree of distance and confidentiality, please use another point of contact. Communicating your problem to one of the indicated points of contact should not lead to any disadvantages for you. 

Staff members may always contact the local employers representatives directly if they feel that they are being disadvantaged, treated unfairly, or in any other way affected by their specialist or operational superior. This applies to senior staff members too, who feel they are in such a situation in their role as a superior. 

The role of the employer representative is usually performed by the Managing Director. If they consider the complaint to be justified, they are obliged to take action to remedy the situation. If the Managing Director is affected themselves, there are further points of contact, which are also bound to confidentiality. 

Please feel free to contact the Gender Equality Officers  if your concern relates to aspects of sexualised discrimination and the Principles of Gender Equality and the Code of Conduct of the Max Planck Society are violated as a result. This may be the case, for example, if you feel that you are being put at a disadvantage due to your sex or gender role, or if the reconciliation of career and family life is not facilitated. If the Equal Opportunities Officer considers your complaint to be justified, they can contribute actively to resolving the conflict and solving the problem. 

There is also a central equality officer of the MPG. 

Equal Opportunities Officers must and may only take action after you have instructed them to do so. They have the right and duty to secrecy. 

The ombudsperson, who is elected by all staff members of the institute, provides advice in the case of conflicts related to issues of good scientific practice. Please refer to the respective rules for detailed information about the issues in question. The ombudsperson performs an essential role of scientific self-monitoring. The conversations they have are confidential, provided that a conflict can be solved at an institute and that this is done successfully. Furthermore, each of the three Sections has one further ombudsperson. Click here for their names and for information about the ombudspersons scheme. 

It is defined in the Rules of Procedure how the involved parties should act upon suspicion of scientific misconduct. 

The PhD committee represents the interest of PhD students to senior management and administration and strives to improve working and living conditions for students at the MPI. The committee is composed of three internal PhD representatives and one external PhD representative. 

There are four MPI Deans who have been appointed as ombudspersons to assist in matters concerning PhD students and their supervision. Their role is to check that existing supervision arrangements are working well and to facilitate solutions to possible problems with supervision. 

All four Deans are research staff members. Students and supervisors are not assigned to a specific Dean and can contact any of them for confidential and impartial advice. 

The current Deans are:

• Else Eising (L&G)
• Yayun Zhang (LDD)
• Stan van der Burght (PoL)
• Hatice Zora (NBL)

Our institute is collaborating with the Occupational Health & Safety Service AMD (Arbodienst) of the RU and Radboud UMC. Services provided by the Arbodienst are, for example, sick leave support, preventive care, counseling, personal advice and coaching, advice for managers, etc. 

Employees who experience work-related problems with their health can turn to the AND for an appointment. This is always possible, even if you are not ill but want to ask someone questions regarding your health in relation to your work. 

According to the Mediation Guidelines of the MPG, each staff member has the right to request a mediation procedure if complaints or conflicts cannot be settled at an institute. 

The Mediation advisor will strive to resolve the issue. To this end, they have the right to obtain information from the involved parties and the Institute Management. They are obliged to maintain confidentiality. The procedure takes place at the level of scientific Sections; three mediation advisors from the scientific area are identified for each Section. 

For our institute, these are:

• Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Klein
• Prof. Dr. Marie-Claire Foblets
• Dr. Daniela Sammler