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Management Practices

Lecture-20

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Recap

• Career Development• Career Stages• Career Management• Stress & Performance• Managing Conflict

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Today’s Lecture

• Conflict Management Strategies• Negotiation• Political Strategies for Increasing Power

Conflict Management Strategies

• Compromise– each party is concerned about not only their goal

accomplishment but also the goal accomplishment of the other party and is willing to engage in a give-and-take exchange to reach a reasonable solution.

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Conflict Management Strategies

• Collaboration– both parties try to satisfy their goals by coming up

with an approach that leaves them both better off and does not require concessions on issues that are important to either party.

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Conflict Management Strategies

• Accommodation – An ineffective conflict-handling approach in which

one party, typically with weaker power, gives in to the demands of the other, typically more powerful, party.

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Conflict Management Strategies

• Avoidance – An ineffective conflict handling approach in which

the parties try to ignore the problem and do nothing to resolve their differences.

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Conflict Management Strategies

• Competition – An ineffective conflict handling approach in which

each party tries to maximize its own gain and has little interest in understanding the other party’s position and arriving at a solution that will allow both parties to achieve their goals.

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Negotiation

• Negotiation– method of conflict resolution in which the parties

consider various alternative ways to allocate resources to come up with a solution acceptable to all of them.

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Third-party Negotiators

• Mediators – facilitates negotiations but no authority to impose

a solution• Arbitrator

– can impose what he thinks is a fair solution to a conflict that both parties are obligated to abide by

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Political Strategies for Increasing Power

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Political Strategies for Gaining and Maintaining Power

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Strategies

Controlling Uncertainty Reduce uncertainty for others in the firm

Making Oneself Irreplaceable

Develop valuable special knowledge or skills

Being in a Central Position

Have decision-making control over the firm’s crucial activities and resources

Generating Resources Hire skilled people or find financing when it is needed

Building Alliances Develop mutually beneficial relations with others inside and outside the organization

Political Strategies for Exercising Power

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Functional versus Dysfunctional Conflict

• Functional Conflict Conflict that supports the goals of the

group and improves its performance.• Dysfunctional Conflict

Conflict that hinders group performance

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Conflict and Unit Performance

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Conflict Management Techniques

• Problem solving• Super ordinate goals• Expansion of resources• Avoidance• Smoothing• Compromise• Authoritative command• Altering the human variable• Altering the structural variables

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Conflict Management Techniques

Communication Bringing in outsiders Restructuring the organization Appointing a devil’s advocate

Source: Based on S. P. Robbins, Managing Organizational Conflict: A Nontraditional Approach (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974), pp. 59–89

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Factors Influencing Conflict

• Content Related vs. Personal• Size of Conflict• Rigidity of the Issue• Power Differences• Individual Personalities, Traits,

and Dispositions

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Summary

• Conflict Management Strategies• Negotiation• Political Strategies for Increasing Power

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Next Lecture

ConflictSources of ConflictTypes of Conflict(1) Intrapersonal conflict, (2) Interpersonal conflict, and (3) Interdepartmental conflict