Exam 11: Conflict and Negotiation in the Workplace

Avoiding is usually the best interpersonal conflict management style when the issue is trivial to everyone involved.

Emotional intelligence helps employees to avoid escalating constructive conflict into relationship conflict.

Communication is a potential source of conflict because:

Comment on the accuracy of the following statement: 'Negotiators tend to bargain more effectively if they don't make concessions.'

Which of the following is a third-party conflict resolution strategy with high process control and high outcome control?

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

Conflict management styles are defined in terms of their:

Conflicts can be minimized by negotiating a collective agreement between union and management which both parties must follow.

Canuck Airlines International (CAI)is the result of five airlines that merged over six years.These airlines had energetic leaders who established distinct operating procedures and demanded absolute loyalty from their employees.When the airlines merged into CAI,employees continued their allegiance to their former airline by identifying themselves with its colour - blue for Pacific Airlines,orange for Northern Air,green for EastAir,and so on.Coffee break groups began to form around colour codes rather than work groups.Employees who transferred to different work units were routinely asked what colour they came from.In some areas,colour heritage decided a promotion,explained a botch-up,or was offered as a reason why things couldn't change.Discuss this incident in terms of the sources and consequences of conflict in organizational settings.

The problem-solving conflict management style involves a high degree of assertiveness and cooperativeness.

Approximately 42 percent of a manager's time is spent dealing with workplace conflict.

In the conflict process,what immediately follows conflict perceptions and emotions?

The view that conflict in organizations is bad is oversimplistic and in some cases incorrect.

Conflict tends to escalate more with a win-lose than with a win-win orientation.

Resolving differences with the opposing party through direct communication is not as comfortably applied in collectivist cultures.

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

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,so four people were hired one year ago from consumer products and retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service management.The external hires were necessary because 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.What conflict management strategies could be applied at NewTel to minimize dysfunctional conflict among these senior executives?

If conflict was eliminated,organizations would be more productive.

In a purely win-lose situation,the bargaining zone states that the opposing parties:

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