Exam 11: Conflict and Negotiation in the Workplace

Scenario: Creative Crafts, Inc. The president of Creative Crafts, Inc., read about cooperation in Japanese companies and has vowed to bring this same philosophy to Creative Crafts.Before he declares his goal of no conflict at any cost, he wants to first understand more about the conflict process.The intended goal is to avoid all conflict so that employees would work cooperatively and be happier at Creative Crafts.Please help the president to understand the conflict process by answering the following questions. -According to the conflict process, which of these manifests conflict?

Effective managers should:

The preferred conflict management style tends to depend partly on the individual's cross-cultural values.

The bargaining zone model of negotiations describes the best physical zone in which negotiations should occur.

Initial, target, and resistance represent three elements in:

Relationship conflict refers to conflict between individuals, whereas constructive conflict refers to conflict between departments and organizations.

A major game software firm experienced conflict between the young Internet-savvy employees who designed the games and the older computer-illiterate executives who ran the company.The company hired team leaders who could work with the executives but were computer literate, and as a result were respected by the development staff members.By hiring these team leaders as liaisons between the executives and employees, the company would:

ADR usually begins with a meeting between employee and employer.

Generally speaking, which of these is suggested as the best type of third-party intervention?

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. -The conflict at NewTel appears to be:

Effective negotiators:

The two main forms of conflict are:

Two business units operate out of different buildings in a large city offering distinct products to customers and have their own budgets.However, they must share training facilities located at headquarters which is also located in the city.This often creates conflict because both business units tend to want the training facilities at the same time.Describe the source(s) of conflict that are apparent in this situation and describe two potential solutions that would minimize this conflict.

The bargaining zone model identifies:

Scenario: ABC International Employees at ABC International have been frustrated with the management on just about everything.The conflict episodes are viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve problems.Both sides have decided to seek third-party dispute resolution.Management prefers a third-party intervention that has high process and decision control while employees prefer a high level of process control and not decision control. -The conflict at ABC International appears to be:

Negotiators tend to be more competitive and less willing to give concessions when their audience directly observes the negotiations.

Some team norms encourage tactics that diffuse relationship conflict when it first appears.

Constructive conflict:

According to research on gender and conflict management styles, women tend to adopt the _____ style, whereas men tend to adopt the ______ style.

Which of these is NOT a strategy identified by the conflict management experts as something that might reduce the level of relationship conflict during constructive conflict episodes?