M: Organizational Behavior 2nd Edition by Steven McShane, Mary Von Glinow

Exercise 98

Scenario: NewTel, Inc.
NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions internally, 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 four new hires' attempt to have the company put more money into marketing and customer services instead of technology investment. This is mainly an example of conflict due to:
A) role ambiguity.
B) lack of communication.
C) sequential task interdependence.
D) overt behaviors.
E) goal incompatibility.