Organizational

Behaviour

Module No. 012

Conflict and Negotiation

By
Muhammad Shahid Iqbal
 Conflict
 Conflict: is 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.
 that point in an ongoing activity when an interaction “crosses
over” to become an interparty conflict.
 Encompasses a wide range of conflicts that people experience in
organizations
 Incompatibility of goals
 Differences over interpretations of facts
 Disagreements based on behavioral expectations
 If no one is aware of a conflict, then it is generally agreed no
conflict exists.
 Also needed to begin the conflict process are opposition or
incompatibility and interaction.
 Transitions in Conflict Thought
 Traditional View of Conflict: The belief that all conflict is
harmful and must be avoided. Conflict was viewed negatively
and discussed with such terms as violence, destruction, and
irrationality to reinforce its negative connotation.
 Causes: Conflict was a dysfunctional outcome resulting from
poor communication, a lack of openness and trust between
people, and the failure of managers to be responsive to the needs
and aspirations of their employees.
 Interactionist View of Conflict: The belief that conflict is not
only a positive force in a group but that it is absolutely
necessary for a group to perform effectively. This view
encourages conflict on the grounds that a harmonious, peaceful,
tranquil, and cooperative group is prone to becoming static,
apathetic, and unresponsive to needs for change and innovation.
 Functional versus Dysfunctional
Conflict
 Functional Conflict: Conflict that supports the goals of the
group and improves its performance, a constructive form of
conflict.
 Dysfunctional Conflict: Conflict that hinders group
performance, a destructive form of conflict.
 What differentiates functional from dysfunctional conflict? The
evidence indicates we need to look at the type of conflict,
whether it’s connected to task, relationship, or process.
 Task conflict relates to the content and goals of the work.
 Low-to-moderate levels of this type are FUNCTIONAL
 Relationship conflict focuses on interpersonal relationships.
 Almost always DYSFUNCTIONAL
 Process conflict is about how the work gets done.
 Low levels of this type are FUNCTIONAL
 Three Loci of Conflict
 Loci of Conflict: Another way to understand conflict is to
consider its locus, or where the conflict occurs.
 There are three basic types:

 Dyadic conflict is conflict between two people.

 Intragroup conflict occurs within a group or team. High

levels of task conflict decreased team performance but
increase creativity in groups in early development stage.
Task conflicts were unrelated to performance once the group
was in the later stages of group development.
 Intergroup conflict is conflict between groups or teams.
 The Conflict Process
 The conflict process has five stages: The first step in the
conflict process is the appearance of conditions that create
opportunities for conflict to arise. These conditions need not
lead directly to conflict, but one of them is necessary if conflict
is to surface. These conditions can be grouped into 3 general
categories: communication, structure, and personal variables.
 Stage I: Potential Opposition or
Incompatibility
 Communication: Semantic difficulties, misunderstandings, and
“noise” differing word connotations, jargon, insufficient
exchange of information, and noise in the communication channel
are all barriers to communication and potential antecedent
conditions to conflict.
 Structure: includes size of the group, degree of specialization in
the tasks assigned to group members, jurisdictional clarity,
member–goal compatibility, leadership styles, reward systems,
and the degree of dependence between groups.
 Personal Variables: include personality, emotions, and values,
people high in the personality traits of disagreeableness,
neuroticism, or self-monitoring are prone to tangle with other
people more often, and to react poorly when conflicts occur.
Emotions can also cause conflict
 Stage II: Cognition and Personalization
 Stage II is important because it’s where conflict issues tend to be
defined, where the parties decide what the conflict is about.
 Perceived Conflict: Awareness by one or more parties of the
existence of conditions that create opportunities for conflict to
arise. Emotions are expressed that have a strong impact on the
eventual outcome.
 Felt Conflict: Emotional involvement in a conflict creating
anxiety, tenseness, frustration, or hostility.
 Emotions play a major role in shaping perceptions. Negative
emotions allow us to oversimplify issues, lose trust, and put
negative interpretations on the other party’s behavior.
 Positive feelings increase our tendency to see potential
relationships among the elements of a problem, to take a broader
view of the situation, and to develop more innovative solutions.
 Stage III: Intentions
 Intentions: Intentions intervene between people’s perceptions
and emotions and their overt behavior. They are decisions to act
in a given way. We separate out intentions as a distinct stage
because we have to infer the other’s intent to know how to
respond to his or her behavior. Many conflicts escalate simply
because one party attributes the wrong intentions to the other.
There is also typically a great deal of slippage between intentions
and behavior, so behavior does not always accurately reflect a
person’s intentions.
 Primary conflict handling intentions have two dimensions:
 cooperativeness (the degree to which one party attempts to
satisfy the other party’s concerns)
 Assertiveness (the degree to which one party attempts to satisfy
his or her own concerns)
 Dimensions of Conflict-Handling
Intentions
 we can identify five conflict-handling intentions:
 Competing: A desire to satisfy one’s interests, regardless of the
impact on the other party to the conflict
 Collaborating: A situation in which the parties to a conflict
each desire to satisfy fully the concerns of all parties. win–win
solution that allows both parties’ goals to be completely
achieved.
 avoiding The desire to withdraw from or suppress a conflict.
 accommodating The willingness of one party in a conflict to
place the opponent’s interests above his or her own.
 Dimensions of Conflict-Handling
Intentions
 Compromising: there is no clear winner or loser. A situation in
which each party to a conflict is willing to give up something.
 Stage IV: Behavior
 Behavior: includes the statements, actions, and reactions made
by the conflicting parties, usually as overt attempts to implement
their own intentions.
 Conflict Management: The use of resolution and stimulation
techniques to achieve the desired level of conflict
 Stage IV: Behavior
 All conflicts exist somewhere along this continuum. At the lower
part are conflicts characterized by subtle, indirect, and highly
controlled forms of tension, such as a student questioning in
class a point the instructor has just made. Conflict intensities
escalate as they move upward along the continuum until they
become highly destructive. Strikes, riots, and wars clearly fall in
this upper range. 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.
 If a conflict is dysfunctional, what can the parties do to de-
escalate it? Or, conversely, what options exist if conflict is too
low and needs to be increased.
 Group Properties
 Conflict-Resolution Techniques:
 Problem solving: Meeting face to face for the purpose of
identifying the problem and resolving it through open discussion.
 Superordinate goals: Creating a shared goal that cannot be attained
without the cooperation of each of the conflicting parties.
 Expansion of resources: Expanding the supply of a scarce resource
(for example, money, promotion, opportunities, office space).
 Avoidance: Withdrawing from or suppressing the conflict.
 Smoothing: Playing down differences while emphasizing common
interests between the conflicting parties.
 Compromise: Having each party to the conflict give up something
of value.
 Authoritative command: Letting management use its formal
authority to resolve the conflict and then communicating its desires
to the parties involved.
 Group Decision Making
 Altering the human variable: Using behavioral change techniques
such as human relations training to alter attitudes and behaviors that
cause conflict.
 Altering the structural variables: Changing the formal organization
structure and the interaction patterns of conflicting parties through
job redesign, transfers, creation of coordinating positions, and the
like.
Conflict-Stimulation
Techniques Blank
Communication Using ambiguous or threatening messages to increase conflict levels.

Bringing in outsiders Adding employees to a group whose backgrounds, values, attitudes,

or managerial styles differ from those of present members.
Restructuring the organization Realigning work groups, altering rules and regulations, increasing
interdependence, and making similar structural changes to disrupt
the status quo.
Appointing a devil’s advocate Designating a critic to purposely argue against the majority positions
held by the group.
 Stage V: Outcomes
 The action–reaction interplay between the conflicting parties
results in consequences. these outcomes may be functional, if the
conflict improves the group’s performance, or dysfunctional, if it
hinders performance.
 Conflict is constructive when it Improves the quality of
decisions, stimulates creativity and innovation, encourages
interest and curiosity, provides the medium through which
problems can be aired and tensions released, and fosters an
environment of self-evaluation and change.
 Conflict is destructive when it Breeds discontent, reduces group
effectiveness, Retarded communication, Reduced group
cohesiveness and threatens the group’s survival.
 Creating Functional Conflict: Reward dissent and punish conflict
avoiders
 Negotiation
 Negotiation is a process in which two or more parties exchange
goods or services and attempt to agree upon the exchange rate for
them. process that occurs when two or more parties decide how to
allocate scarce resources.
 Negotiation permeates the interactions of almost everyone in
groups and organizations. Example, labor bargains with
management, managers negotiate with employees, peers, and
bosses; salespeople negotiate with customers; purchasing agents
negotiate with suppliers.
 we use the terms negotiation and bargaining interchangeably.
Every negotiation in organizations also affects the relationship
between the negotiators and the way the negotiators feel about
themselves.
 Bargaining Strategies
 There are two general approaches to negotiation.
 Distributive bargaining: Negotiation that seeks to divide up a
fixed amount of resources; a win-lose situation. labor–
management negotiations over wages. Typically, labor’s
representatives come to the bargaining table determined to get
as much money as possible from management. Because every
cent labor negotiates increases management’s costs, each party
bargains aggressively and treats the other as an opponent who
must be defeated. The essence of distributive bargaining is
negotiating over who gets what share of a fixed pie.
 Integrative bargaining: Negotiation that seeks one or more
settlements that can create a win-win solution. Integrative
bargaining bonds negotiators and allows them to leave the
bargaining table feeling they have achieved a victory.
 Distributive versus Integrative Bargaining
Bargaining Distributive Bargaining Integrative Bargaining
Characteristic

Goal Get as much of the pie as Expand the pie so that

possible both parties are satisfied

Motivation Win–lose Win–win

Focus Positions (“I can’t go Interests (“Can you
beyond this point on this explain why this issue is
issue.”) so important to you?”)

Interests Opposed Congruent

Information Low (Sharing information High (Sharing information
sharing will only allow other party will allow each party to
to take advantage.) find ways to satisfy
interests of each party.)

Duration of Short term Long term

relationship
 Staking Out the Bargaining Zone
 Parties A and B represent two negotiators. Each has a target
point that defines what he or she would like to achieve. Each also
has a resistance point, which marks the lowest acceptable
outcome—the point below which the party would break off
negotiations rather than accept a less favorable settlement. The
area b/w these two points makes up each party’s aspiration range.
 The Negotiation Process
 BATNA: The Best Alternative To a Negotiated
Agreement; the lowest acceptable value (outcome)
to an individual for a negotiated agreement. 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.
 Preparation and Planning: Make sure that your
goal stays paramount in your discussions.
 Put your goals in writing and develop a range of
outcomes to keep your attention focused.
 Assess what you think are the other party’s goals.
 Once you have gathered your information , use it
to develop a strategy. 
 The Negotiation Process
 Definition of ground rules: During this phase , the parties will
exchange their initial proposals or demands.
 At this phase you are ready to begin defining 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 will apply? To what issues will negotiation be
limited? Will you follow a specific procedure if an impasse is
reached?
 Clarification and justification: At this phase both you and the
other party will explain ,amplify , clarify and justify your original
demands. it’s an opportunity for educating and informing 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 helps support your position.
 The Negotiation Process
 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 will undoubtedly
need to make concessions.
 Closure and implementation: The final step in the negotiation
process is formalizing the agreement that has been worked out
and developing any procedures necessary for implementation and
monitoring.
 Individual Differences in Negotiation
Effectiveness
 Personality Traits in Negotiation: Negotiators who are agreeable
or extraverted are not very successful in distributive bargaining.
Why? Because extraverts are outgoing and friendly, they tend to
share more information than they should. Agreeable people are
more interested in finding ways to cooperate rather than to butt
heads. Best distributive bargainer appears to be a disagreeable
introvert. People who are highly interested in having positive
relationships, and who are not very concerned about their own
outcomes, are especially poor negotiators.
 Moods/Emotions in Negotiation: Emotions play an important
part in the negotiation process, Negative emotions can cause
intense and even irrational behavior, and can cause conflicts to
escalate and negotiations to break down. Positive emotions often
facilitate reaching an agreement and help to maximize joint gains.
Individual with anxiety about a negotiation used more deceptions.
 Individual Differences in Negotiation
Effectiveness
 Gender differences in negotiations: Women negotiate no
differently from men, men have been found to negotiate better
outcomes than women, although the difference is relatively
small. Men and women with similar power bases use the same
negotiating styles
 Women’s attitudes toward negotiation and their success as
negotiators are less favorable than men’s
 Culture in Negotiations: Negotiating is basically a relationship
between an individual’s style of negotiation and that
individual’s interpretation of the situation. Culture influences
both the individual’s style of negotiation and the way
negotiators interpret situations and their counterparts’ behavior.
 Third-Party Negotiations
 When individuals or group representatives reach a stalemate and
are unable to resolve their differences through direct negotiations,
they may turn to a third party.
 Mediator: neutral third party who facilitates a negotiated solution
by using reasoning, persuasion, and suggestions for alternatives
 Arbitrator: A third party to a negotiation who has the authority to
dictate an agreement. Arbitration can be voluntary (requested by
the parties) or compulsory (forced by law or contract).
 Conciliator: A trusted third party who provides an informal
communication link between the negotiator and the opponent.
They also engage in fact-finding, interpret messages, and
persuade disputants to develop agreements.
 Consultant: An impartial third party, skilled in conflict
management, who attempts to facilitate creative problem solving
through communication and analysis.