CONFLICT AND NEGOTIATION.

COURSE: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR.

GROUP MEMBERS:
ANOSHIA ADNAN(FA18-BBA-006).
M HARIS (FA18-BBA-018).
M TALHA NAEEM(FA18-BBA-027).
M JUNAID(FA18-BBA-031).
DATED: 5TH JAN,2020.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
AFTER STUDYING THIS CHAPTER, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:

• Describe the three types of conflict and the three loci of conflict.
• Outline the conflict process.
• Contrast distributive and integrative bargaining.
• Apply the five steps of the negotiation process.
• Show how individual differences influence negotiations.
• Assess the roles and functions of third-party negotiations.
 CONFLICT.

• A process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is
about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about.
• A conflict is a clash of interest.
• Conflict describes the point in ongoing activity when interaction becomes disagreement.
• The basis of conflict may vary but it is always a part of society. Basis of conflict may be personal,
racial, class, caste, political and international.
 TYPES OF CONFLICT ON THE BASIS OF THEIR
EFFECT.
• Contemporary perspectives differentiate types of conflict based on their effects.
1. Functional conflict:
Conflict that supports the goals of the group.
and improves its performance.
2. Dysfunctional conflict:
Conflict that hinders group performance.
 TYPES OF CONFLICT.

1. Task Conflict:
It relates to the content and goals of the work.
• If task conflict is too high, however, infighting will quickly degenerate into relationship conflict.
2. Relationship conflict:
It focuses on interpersonal relationships.
3. Process conflict:
It is about how the work gets done.
• Process conflicts often become highly personalized and quickly devolve into relationship conflicts.
 LOCI OF CONFLICT.

Another way to understand conflict is to consider its locus, or the framework within which the
conflict occurs.
They are of three types.
1) Dyadic conflict: Conflict that occurs between two people.
2) Intragroup conflict: Conflict that occurs within a group or team.
3) Intergroup conflict: Conflict between different groups or teams.
 THE CONFLICT PROCESS.

The conflict process has five stages:

1. Potential opposition or incompatibility.
2. Cognition and personalization.
3. Intentions.
4. Behavior.
5. Outcomes.
 STAGE I:
POTENTIAL OPPOSITION OR INCOMPATIBILITY.
• Appearance of conditions—causes or sources—that create opportunities for it to arise.
• These conditions need not lead directly to conflict, but one of them is necessary if it is to surface.
• Three general categories of conditions are:

1. Communication.
2. Structure.
3. Personal variables.
• Our last category of potential sources of conflict is personal variables, which include personality,
emotions, and values.
 STAGE II:
COGNITION AND PERSONALIZATION.
If the conditions cited in Stage I negatively affect something one party cares about, then the potential for
opposition or incompatibility becomes actualized in the second stage. As we noted in our
1. Perceived conflict:
Awareness by one or more parties of the existence of conditions that create opportunities for conflict to
arise.
2. Felt conflict:
Emotional involvement in a conflict that creates anxiety, tenseness, frustration, or hostility.
• Stage II is important because it’s where conflict issues tend to be defined,
where the parties decide what the conflict is about.
 STAGE II:
COGNITION AND PERSONALIZATION CONTD.
Negative emotions:
• Negative emotions allow us to:
 Oversimplify issues.
 lose trust.
 Put negative interpretations on the other party’s behavior.

Positive feelings:
In contrast, positive feelings increase our tendency to:
 See potential relationships among elements of a problem.
 Take a broader view of the situation.
 Develop innovative solutions.
 STAGE III:
INTENTIONS.
Intentions intervene between people’s perceptions and emotions, and their overt behavior.
• They are decisions to act in a given way.
• Two dimensions:
1) Assertiveness: Degree to which one party attempts to satisfy his or her own
concerns.
2) Cooperativeness: Degree to which one party attempts to satisfy the other party’s
concerns.
 CONFLICT-HANDLING INTENTIONS.

We can identify five conflict-handling intentions:

1) Competing : Assertive and Uncooperative.
2) Collaborating: Assertive and Cooperative.
3) Avoiding: Unassertive and Uncooperative.
4) Accommodating: Unassertive and Cooperative.
5) Compromising: Midrange on both Assertiveness and Cooperativeness.
 FIVE CONFLICT-HANDLING INTENTIONS.

1)Competing: When one person seeks to satisfy his or her own interests regardless of the impact on the
other parties in the conflict, that person is competing.
2)collaborating: A situation in which the parties to a conflict each desire to satisfy fully the concerns of
all parties.
3) Avoiding: A person may recognize a conflict exists and want to withdraw from or suppress it.
4) accommodating: The willingness of one party in a conflict to place the opponent’s interests above
his or her own
5) compromising:willingness to ration the object of the conflict and accept a solution with incomplete
satisfaction of both parties’ concerns.
 STAGE IV: BEHAVIOR.

• When most people think of conflict, they tend to focus on Stage IV because this is where
conflicts become visible.
• The behavior stage includes statements, actions, and reactions made by conflicting
parties, usually as overt attempts to implement their own intentions.
• Stage IV is a dynamic process of interaction.
• Conflicts that reach the upper ranges of the continuum are almost always dysfunctional.
• Functional conflicts are typically confined to the lower range of the continuum.
 STAGE IV: BEHAVIOR CONTD.
• Intentions that are brought into a conflict are eventually translated into behaviors.

It brings out active attempts to contend with team members, and more individual effort to achieve ends without working together.
Competing

Collaborating It creates investigation of multiple solutions with other members of the team and trying to
find a solution that satisfies all parties as much as possible.

Avoidance It is seen in behavior like refusals to discuss issues and reductions in effort toward group goals.

• People who accommodate put their relationships ahead of the issues in the conflict, deferring to
Accommodate
others’ opinions and sometimes acting as a subgroup with them.

Compromise
• Finally, when people compromise, they both expect to (and do) sacrifice parts of their interests, hoping
that if everyone does the same, an agreement will sift out.
 STAGE V: OUTCOMES.

• The action–reaction interplay between conflicting parties creates consequences.

• These outcomes may be functional if the conflict improves the group’s performance, or
dysfunctional if it hinders performance.
• Functional Outcomes:
• Conflict is constructive when it improves the quality of decisions, stimulates creativity
and innovation, encourages interest and curiosity among group members, provides the
medium for problems to be aired and tensions released, and fosters self-evaluation and
change.
 STAGE V: OUTCOMES COND….

• Dysfunctional outcomes:
The destructive consequences of conflict on the performance of a group or an
organization are generally well known.
• Uncontrolled opposition breeds discontent, which acts to dissolve common ties and
eventually leads to the destruction of the group.
• Among the undesirable consequences are poor communication, reductions in group
cohesiveness, and subordination of group goals to the primacy of infighting among
members.
 MANAGING FUNCTIONAL CONFLICT.

• One of the keys to minimizing counterproductive conflicts is recognizing when there

really is a disagreement.
• Groups that resolve conflicts successfully discuss differences of opinion openly and are
prepared to manage conflict when it arises.
• Groups with cooperative conflict styles and a strong underlying identification with the
overall group goals are more effective than groups with a competitive style.
• Having considered conflict—its nature, causes, and consequences—we now turn to
negotiation, which often resolves conflict.
 NEGOTIATION & BARGAINING STRATEGIES.

• A process in which two or more parties exchange goods or services and attempt to agree on the
exchange rate for them.
• Bargaining Strategies:
There are two general approaches to negotiation.
1. Distributive bargaining:
Negotiation that seeks to divide up a fixed amount of resources; a win–lose situation.
2. Integrative bargaining:
Negotiation that seeks one or more settlements that can create a win–win solution.
 THE NEGOTIATION PROCESS.

• It views negotiation as made up of five steps:

1. Preparation and planning.
2. Definition of ground rules.
3. Clarification and justification.
4. Bargaining and problem solving.
5. Implementation.
 PREPARATION AND PLANNING.

• Before you start negotiating, do your homework.

• What’s the nature of the conflict?
• What’s the history leading up to this negotiation?
• Who’s involved and what are their perceptions of the conflict?
• What do you want from the negotiation?
• What are your goals?
 BATNA.
(THE BEST ALTERNATIVE TO A NEGOTIATED AGREEMENT).

• Once you’ve gathered your information, develop a strategy. You should determine your
and the other side’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA.
• The best alternative to a negotiated agreement; the least the individual should accept.
• Your BATNA determines the lowest value acceptable to you for a negotiated agreement.
• Any offer you receive that is higher than your BATNA is better than an impasse.
 DEFINITION OF GROUND RULES

• Once you’ve done your planning and developed a strategy, you’re ready to define with the other
party the ground rules and procedures of the negotiation itself.
• Who will do the negotiating?
• Where will it take place?
• What time constraints, if any, will apply?
• To what issues will negotiation be limited?
• Will you follow a specific procedure if an impasse is reached?
• During this phase, the parties will exchange their initial proposals or demands.
 CLARIFICATION AND JUSTIFICATION:

• When you have exchanged initial positions, you and the other party will explain, amplify,
clarify, bolster, and justify your original demands.
• This step needn’t be confrontational.
• Rather, it’s an opportunity for educating each other on the issues, why they are important,
and how you arrived at your initial demands.
• Provide the other party with any documentation that supports your position.
 BARGAINING AND PROBLEM SOLVING

• The essence of the negotiation process is the actual give-and-take in trying to hash out an
agreement.
• This is where both parties need to make concessions.
 CLOSURE AND IMPLEMENTATION

• The final step in the negotiation process is formalizing your agreement and developing
procedures necessary for implementing and monitoring it.
• For major negotiations—from labor–management negotiations to bargaining over lease
terms—this requires hammering out the specifics in a formal contract.
• For other cases, closure of the negotiation process is nothing more formal than a
handshake.
 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN NEGOTIATION
EFFECTIVENESS.
• Four factors influence how effectively individuals negotiate:
1. Personality.
2. Mood/ emotions.
3. Culture.
4. Gender.
 PERSONALITY TRAITS IN NEGOTIATIONS.

• Personality and negotiation outcomes are related but only weakly.

• Most research has focused on the Big Five trait of agreeableness, for obvious reasons—
agreeable individuals are cooperative, compliant, kind, and conflict-averse.
• One complicating factor for agreeableness is that it has two facets: The tendency to be
cooperative and compliant is one, but so is the tendency to be warm and empathetic.
• It may be that while the former is a hindrance to negotiating favorable outcomes, the latter
helps.
• Low levels of stress, in turn, made for more effective negotiation outcomes
 MOODS/EMOTIONS IN NEGOTIATIONS.

• Do moods and emotions influence negotiation? They do, but the way they work depends on the
emotion as well as the context.
• It also appears that having a history of showing anger, rather than sowing the seeds of revenge,
actually induces more concessions because the other party perceives the negotiator as “tough.”
• Another relevant emotion is disappointment.
• Anxiety also appears to have an impact on negotiation.
• Researchers have found that negotiators who express positive and negative emotions in an
unpredictable way extract more concessions because this behavior makes the other party feel less in
control.
 CULTURE IN NEGOTIATIONS.

• Emotions are culturally sensitive, negotiators need to be especially aware of the

emotional dynamics in cross-cultural negotiation.
 GENDER DIFFERENCES IN NEGOTIATIONS

• There are many areas of organizational behavior (OB) in which men and women are not
that different.
• A popular stereotype is that women are more cooperative and pleasant in negotiations
than men.
• Men tend to place a higher value on status, power, and recognition, whereas women tend
to place a higher value on compassion and altruism.
• Moreover, women do tend to value relationship outcomes more than men, and men tend
to value economic outcomes more than women.
 NEGOTIATING IN A SOCIAL CONTEXT.

1. Reputation:
• Your reputation is the way other people think and talk about you.
• When it comes to negotiation, having a reputation for being trustworthy matters.
2. Relationships:
• Negotiators who consistently act in a way that demonstrates competence, honesty, and
integrity will usually have better outcomes in the long run.
 THIRD-PARTY NEGOTIATIONS.

• There are three basic third-party roles:

1. Mediator:
• A neutral third party who facilitates a negotiated solution by using reasoning, persuasion, and suggestions for
alternatives.
2. Arbitrator.
• A third party to a negotiation who has the authority to dictate an agreement.

3. Conciliator.
• A trusted third party who provides an informal communication link between the negotiator and the opponent
 IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGERS.

• Choose an authoritarian management style in emergencies, when unpopular actions need to be implemented (such as
cost cutting, enforcement of unpopular rules, discipline), and when the issue is vital to the organization’s welfare.
• Be certain to communicate your logic when possible to make certain others remain engaged and productive.
• You can build trust by accommodating others when you find you’re wrong, when you need to demonstrate
reasonableness, when other positions need to be heard, when issues are more important to others than to yourself, when
you want to satisfy others and maintain cooperation, to minimize loss when you are outmatched and losing, and when
others should learn from their own mistakes.
• Consider compromising when goals are important but not worth potential disruption, when opponents with equal
power are committed to mutually exclusive goals, and when you need temporary settlements to complex issues.
• Distributive bargaining can resolve disputes, but it often reduces the satisfaction of one or more negotiators because it
is confrontational and focused on the short term.
• Integrative bargaining, in contrast, tends to provide outcomes that satisfy all parties and build lasting relationships.