Conflict and Negotiation Notes

Conflict and Negotiation

Scenarios

Satyendu Munda

• Satyendu Munda feels he is consistently assigned unskilled tasks in a garment shop team due to his origin.
• Tasks include attending to customers' kids and providing water.
• He resents not being given a chance to explore his sales talent.
• This leads to resentment against team members and managers, resulting in verbal conflict.

Mohan and Kailash

• Mohan is an engineer who helps team members, making him popular.
• Kailash, the floor manager, feels threatened by Mohan's popularity.
• Kailash reports Mohan for interfering with his work and hampering productivity, surprising everyone.

Akhilesh and Golak

• Akhilesh introduced Golak to his company.
• Golak quickly gains the confidence of his bosses and receives critical tasks and extra remuneration.
• Akhilesh feels neglected as he doesn't receive similar increments.
• Golak notices the difference and is concerned.

Transitions in Conflict Thought

• Traditional View: All conflict is harmful and must be avoided.
• Human Relations View: Conflict is a natural and inevitable outcome in any group.
• Interactionist View: Conflict is a positive force and necessary for a group to perform effectively.

Functional versus Dysfunctional Conflict

• Functional Conflict: Supports the goals of the group and improves performance (Positive).
• Dysfunctional Conflict: Hinders group performance (Negative).

Conflict Defined

• A process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about.
• It is the point in an ongoing activity when an interaction “crosses over” to become an interparty conflict.
• Encompasses a wide range of conflicts that people experience in organizations.
• Involves incompatibility of goals, differences over interpretations of facts, and disagreements based on behavioral expectations.

Types of Conflict

• Task Conflict: Conflicts over content and goals of the work.
• Relationship Conflict: Conflict based on interpersonal relationships.
• Process Conflict: Conflict over how work gets done.

The Conflict Process

The conflict process consists of five stages:

• Stage I: Potential opposition or incompatibility.
• Stage II: Cognition and personalization.
• Stage III: Intentions.
• Stage IV: Behavior.
• Stage V: Outcomes.

Stage I: Potential Opposition or Incompatibility

• Communication:
  • Semantic difficulties, misunderstandings, and “noise”.
• Structure:
  • Size and specialization of jobs.
  • Jurisdictional clarity/ambiguity.
  • Member/goal incompatibility.
  • Leadership styles (close or participative).
  • Reward systems (win-lose).
  • Dependence/interdependence of groups.
• Personal Variables:
  • Differing individual value systems.
  • Personality types.

Stage II: Cognition and Personalization

• Perceived Conflict: Awareness by one or more parties of the existence of conditions that create opportunities for conflict to arise.
• Felt Conflict: Emotional involvement in a conflict creating anxiety, tenseness, frustration, or hostility. Can lead to positive or negative feelings.

Stage III: Intentions

• Intentions are decisions to act in a given way.
• Considers cooperativeness (attempting to satisfy the other party’s concerns) and assertiveness (attempting to satisfy one’s own concerns).

Dimensions of Conflict-Handling Intentions

• Includes competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising.

Stage III: Intentions (cont’d)

• Competing: A desire to satisfy one’s interests, regardless of the impact on the other party to the conflict.
• Collaborating: A situation in which the parties to a conflict each desire to satisfy fully the concerns of all parties.
• Avoiding: The desire to withdraw from or suppress a conflict.
• Accommodating: The willingness of one party in a conflict to place the opponent’s interests above his or her own.
• Compromising: A situation in which each party to a conflict is willing to give up something.

Use of Different Intentions

• Use Competition:
  • When quick, decisive action is vital (in emergencies).
  • Where unpopular actions need implementing (in cost cutting, enforcing unpopular rules, discipline).
  • On issues vital to the organization’s welfare.
  • When you know you’re right.
  • Against people who take advantage of noncompetitive behavior.
• Use Collaboration:
  • To find an integrative solution when both sets of concerns are too important to be compromised.
  • When your objective is to learn.
  • To merge insights from people with different perspectives.
  • To gain commitment by incorporating concerns into a consensus.
  • To work through feelings that have interfered with a relationship.
• Use Avoidance:
  • When an issue is trivial, or more important issues are pressing.
  • When you perceive no chance of satisfying your concerns.
  • When potential disruption outweighs the benefits of resolution.
  • To let people cool down and regain perspective.
  • When gathering information supersedes immediate decision.
  • When others can resolve the conflict effectively.
  • When issues seem tangential or symptomatic of other issues.
• Use Accommodation:
  • When you find you’re wrong and to allow a better position to be heard.
  • To learn, and to show your reasonableness.
  • When issues are more important to others than to yourself and to satisfy others and maintain cooperation.
  • To build social credits for later issues.
  • To minimize loss when outmatched and losing.
  • When harmony and stability are especially important.
  • To allow employees to develop by learning from mistakes.
• Use Compromise:
  • When goals are important but not worth the effort of potential disruption of more assertive approaches.
  • When opponents with equal power are committed to mutually exclusive goals.
  • To achieve temporary settlements to complex issues.
  • To arrive at expedient solutions under time pressure.
  • As a backup when collaboration or competition is unsuccessful.

Stage IV: Behavior

• Conflict Management: The use of resolution and stimulation techniques to achieve the desired level of conflict.

Conflict Management Techniques

• Conflict Resolution Techniques:
  • Communication.
  • Bringing in outsiders.
  • Restructuring the organization.
  • Appointing a devil’s advocate.

Stage V: Outcomes

• Functional Outcomes from Conflict:
  • Increased group performance.
  • Improved quality of decisions.
  • Stimulation of creativity and innovation.
  • Encouragement of interest and curiosity.
  • Provision of a medium for problem-solving.
  • Creation of an environment for self-evaluation and change.
  • Creating Functional Conflict: Reward dissent and punish conflict avoiders.
• Dysfunctional Outcomes from Conflict:
  • Development of discontent.
  • Reduced group effectiveness.
  • Retarded communication.
  • Reduced group cohesiveness.
  • Infighting among group members overcomes group goals.

Negotiation

• Negotiation: A process in which two or more parties exchange goods or services and attempt to agree on the exchange rate for them.
• BATNA: The Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement; the lowest acceptable value (outcome) to an individual for a negotiated agreement.

Staking Out the Bargaining Zone

• The bargaining zone is determined by each party's aspiration range, target point, and resistance point.

Bargaining Strategies

• Integrative Bargaining: Negotiation that seeks one or more settlements that can create a win-win solution.
• Distributive Bargaining: Negotiation that seeks to divide up a fixed amount of resources; a win-lose situation.

Distributive versus Integrative Bargaining

The Negotiation Process

• Includes preparation and planning, definition of ground rules, clarification and justification, bargaining and problem-solving, and closure and implementation.
• BATNA is important during the preparation and planning stage.

Issues in Negotiation

• The Role of Mood and Personality Traits in Negotiation:
  • Positive moods positively affect negotiations.
  • Traits do not appear to have a significantly direct effect on the outcomes of either bargaining or negotiating processes (except extraversion, which is bad for negotiation effectiveness).
• Gender Differences in Negotiations:
  • Women negotiate no differently from men, although men apparently negotiate slightly better outcomes.
  • Men and women with similar power bases use the same negotiating styles.
  • Women’s attitudes toward negotiation and their success as negotiators are less favorable than men’s.

Third-Party Negotiations

• Mediator: A neutral third party who facilitates a negotiated solution by using reasoning, persuasion, and suggestions for alternatives.
• Arbitrator: A third party to a negotiation who has the authority to dictate an agreement.
• Consultant: An impartial third party, skilled in conflict management, who attempts to facilitate creative problem solving through communication and analysis.
• Conciliator: A trusted third party who provides an informal communication link between the negotiator and the opponent.