Exam 11: Conflict and Negotiation in the Workplace

Mergers and acquisitions tend to increase conflict due to different values and beliefs.

Why should leaders of diverse teams require better conflict management skills?

In most cultures, making concessions symbolizes a negotiator's motivation to bargain in good faith.

Which of the following most likely produces the highest risk of conflict?

Moderate levels of conflict produce improved decision-making.

Increasing inventories between sequential work units tends to reduce potential conflict by:

Conflict occurs when one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party.

Negotiators tend to avoid "hardline" behaviors when they know an audience is watching them.

Managers tend to prefer which of the following types of third-party intervention?

Although constructive conflict can degenerate into relationship conflict, it is easy to prevent this from happening.

Two team members who disagree over their work schedule approach their team leader to help resolve the conflict.Based on your knowledge of third-party conflict resolution, the team leader should:

Communication is a potential source of conflict because:

Increasing resources and creating more precise rules for the allocation of those resources represent two ways to increase conflict.

Employees at a specialty steel company are divided into the 'hot end' and the 'cold end' of the production process.The hot end forms the steel rods that make their way down the line to the cold end where they are packed for shipment to clients.Employees at the cold end are primarily responsible for quality control because they are the last ones to see the product before it leaves the plant.Their performance is measured by an index of customer complaints and returns so they are motivated to reject any rods that do not meet quality standards.However, employees at the hot end of the production line earn bonuses based on their output and rejection rate - the fewer the number of rods rejected by employees at the cold end of the process there are, the fatter the bonuses of employees at the hot end.This creates conflict between the hot-end and cold-end employees.Hot-end employees complain that their cold-end colleagues are too fussy about product quality and cold-end employees do not like the hot-end employees questioning their quality control decisions.Discuss the source(s) of conflict in this situation and recommend a solution to this conflict.

Jane has just been appointed as purchasing manager of Tacoma Technologies Corp.The previous purchasing manager, who recently retired, was known for his "winner-take-all" approach to suppliers.He continually fought for more discounts and was skeptical about any special deals that suppliers would propose.A few suppliers refused to do business with Tacoma Technologies, but senior management was confident that the former purchasing manager's approach minimized the company's costs.Jane wants to try a more problem-solving approach to working with suppliers.Contrast Jane's and her predecessor's approaches to negotiating in terms of the dimensions of interpersonal conflict management styles.Further, explain why Jane's approach will be effective or not.

Scenario: NewTel, Inc. NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions through promotions rather than hiring from outside.Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people into senior executive positions from the engineering areas.Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago in junior engineering positions.There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more marketing and service oriented.As a result, four people were hired last year from consumer products and retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service management.The external hires were necessary because current employees were not sufficiently qualified.Now there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities.The four new hires have been frustrated in their attempts to have the company put more money into marketing and customer services instead of technology investment.The conflict episodes are viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve the problem. -Conflict at NewTel appears to have all of these sources EXCEPT:

For everyday disputes between two employees, managers should use ______ as a third-party intervention.

Employees in engineering and marketing often disagree with each other mainly because they have unique backgrounds, experiences, and training.The most apparent source of conflict here is:

Poor work ethic is one of the main sources of conflict between Baby-boomer and Generation-X employees.

NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions through promotions rather than hiring from outside.Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people into senior executive positions from the engineering areas.Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago in junior engineering positions.There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more marketing and service oriented.This resulted in four people being hired last year from consumer products and retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service management.The external hires were necessary because current employees were not sufficiently qualified.Now there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities.The four new hires have been frustrated in their attempts to have the company put more money into marketing and customer services instead of technology investment.Explain why conflict has occurred among the senior executives at NewTel.