Conflicts and Negotiations

A
Term paper
For

Inter Personal Dynamics

Submitted

By

Kiran Paul J (F09029)

Contents

1. Different Schools of thought............................................................................................................................3

2. Avoidance to Management..............................................................................................................................3
3. Types of Conflict...............................................................................................................................................4
4. Relation between conflict and performance....................................................................................................6
5. Interpersonal Conflicts.....................................................................................................................................8
6. Negotiation.......................................................................................................................................................8
7. Negotiation Process..........................................................................................................................................9
8. CASE on Conflicts..............................................................................................................................................9
9. Ideal Solution..................................................................................................................................................11

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Conflict is not endemic in a particular organization or society. It’s a global phenomenon. It is endemic
across the entire human race. Our workplaces are fraught with grudges, rumours, criticisms,
dissatisfactions, sarcasms, unpleasant comments, gossips and most of all the typical office politics. A
place that has the above mentioned aspects would indeed result in conflicts. The conflicts would be
varied in situations, scale and magnitude. The circumstances become so difficult that it spread to the
personal lives leading to a confused personal and professional life. On the contrary there are also few
organizations where the employees would be cherished to share their time with colleagues and share
their personal problems. There are companies where the employees and the management form one
family of professionals. The important factors leading to having a harmony in the organization is in the
hands of the management to engage in effective negotiation between the conflicting teams or
individuals. The major part to play depends on the effective conflict management measures taken by the
management through their Human resource team.

1. Different Schools of thought

 Conflicts of any kind are harmful and must be avoided. They serve no purpose causing
distractions to the employees.
 Conflict is natural and is an inevitable outcome in any group. It must be accepted as a
reality without much focus on it.
 Conflict is not only a positive force in a group but also it is absolutely necessary for a
group to perform effectively.
 Conflict is may be harmful or positive but primarily it is yet another human reaction that
needs to be mitigated if it occurs excessively.

2. Avoidance to Management
In the past organizations and management theorists said that conflict avoidance is absolutely necessary
for a firm to perform well. In the recent times this philosophy has been largely altered by the concept of
conflict management. Conflict management has portrayed that conflicts have certain costs associated
with it but it can also bring benefits to the organization. The concept of avoidance has been identified as
a clear failure as it is not possible to avoid conflicts but to only manage conflicts. The conflict

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management would come in place in order to maintain the conflict at optimum levels so that it only stays
as a motivator rather than a hindrance to the employees or departments or teams.

The management of conflict would largely depend on the two important perspectives of conflict which
are cognitive perspective and interactional perspective. The managers or the respective team heads are to
realize these two important aspects of ay conflict in order to solve it in the best manner possible. The
cognitive perspective is about how and what people think about a given situation, The individual’s
interpretation and perception of the situation plays a vital role in the management of any conflict. This is
the first thing that one needs to identify before beginning the process of negotiation. The other
perspective is the interactional one which deals with the how one behaves with the other person in a
given situation. For example if the boss talks in a stern manner to the subordinates, the subordinates
would be disturbed mentally as well as in behavior. The primary reasons for this are the cognitive and
interactional perspectives associated with that particular conflict.

The other aspect that is equally important in conflict management is the negotiation. This plays a vital
role in the entire process of managing the conflicts effectively. Negotiations must be aimed at resolving
the issues in an amicable manner such that the cognitive things are also cleared from the individual’s
mind. The negotiation forming an integral part of conflict management would be required not only to
resolve the issue in place but also it must be effective enough to make that conflict into a positive one
which could motivate the teams to perform better.

3. Types of Conflict
Conflicts can be resolved and negotiated between the teams or individuals only if one is able to identify
the type of conflict. Each conflict would have a different approach in solving it. The manager needs to
understand this aspect and act accordingly in order to resolve it. The conflicts can be classified as
follows:

Goal conflict

This conflict arises when an individual selects or is assigned goals that are incompatible with each other.
Goal incompatibility refers to the extent to which an individual’s or group’s goals are at odds with one
another. Several types of goal conflicts have been identified. It can occur when an externally imposed

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goal conflicts with one’s personal goal, when people are asked to achieve multiple targets, when there is
a trade off between several types of tasks.

Affective conflict

The conflict arises due to incompatibility of the feelings and emotions within the individual or between
individuals. Interpersonal conflicts as well as conflict between groups or departments can be of affective
conflicts. Most of the affective conflicts are due to personal factors like anger or grudge on specified
individuals. This occurs primarily due to lack of fairness, dissatisfaction of social needs, emotional
states and perceptions.

Procedural conflict

This conflict exists when the group members disagree about the procedures to be followed in
accomplishing the group goal. Often these conflicts would occur in terms of deciding the process of
operating or the approach towards a goal. Sometimes there could be difference of opinion on the
activities that one needs to carry out for the goal. These could be resolved by negotiations or a new
procedure can be formulated.

Cognitive conflict

It occurs within an individual or between individuals. The effects of a cognitive conflict would usually
be positive. It could lead to better decision quality, higher productivity and more creativity. This type of
conflict primarily involves critiquing the ideas of the team in order to evaluate it better. These could also
be a reflection of some other conflict that has been evaluated cognitively based on various factors of that
conflict.

It is of at most importance to understand the type of conflict and the factors that caused it in order to
resolve the conflict through negotiations. The above mention conflicts are a reflection of the various
factors of conflict. These include the following factors which must be kept in mind before one could
resolve the conflict.

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Behavioural aspect – It includes the individual’s motives, abilities and personality. The overall aspect
of this would be reflected in the interaction or conversation of this individual which would lead to a
conflict with the other individual.

Social pressure – It arises mainly from the cultural values, organizational work group norms, interests,
the beliefs of the manager and the impact of various other external factors.

Incentive structure – It is considered one of the most driving factors of a conflict. The conflict of
interest on competitive issues, the unequal incentive patterns of organization, the higher incentive of one
individual and other common problems with respect to the incentives. This could also include the
difference in salaries between the work groups or individuals.

Rules and procedures – This parameter includes decision making rules, negotiation and other
procedures which are constrains as well as those which shape up the entire conflict.

4. Relation between conflict and performance

The entire task of analyzing the conflicts and resolving them is to make sure that it does not hinder the
performance of the employees. It is the role of the management to make sure that there is effective
conflict management. There needs to be efficient HR managers and line managers who should be able to
ensure that the performance and productivity are not hindered by the conflicts. This relationship is
extremely important to understand the issue and resolve it. As mentioned earlier conflict as such is not
bad, there needs be some amount of conflicts but it has to be in a controlled manner. Based on this
important factor, the performance and conflict are related as under.

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1 – Under Load (Low Level)

2 – Optimum (Optimum Level)

3 – Overload (High Level)

Under Load (Low Level)

When the conflict level is low, the behaviour of the employees is observed to be apathetic, stagnant and
non responsive. An extremely low level of conflict can result in poor performance due to lack of
innovation and competition. If the group falls in the low level then there is a need to infuse some conflict
in order to move the group to the optimum zone.

Optimum (Optimum Level)

This level of conflict is considered as the functional level. This zone of conflicts would lead to higher
productivity and better performance which would be the desired one for the management. This level is
considered to be optimum as the low conflict level does not contribute to the performance and higher
conflict level distorts performance. The tolerance level of conflicts must be decided and the necessary
measures must be made.

Over Load (High Level)

If the level of conflict is allowed to lapse into extremely high levels, then individual or the team
becomes dysfunctional. It is expressed in terms of uncooperative behaviuor, chaotic situation and
sometimes makes a permanent damage. It is extremely difficult to retrieve back to the effective zone.
The effective way of managing conflicts would be not to allow any individual or team into the high level
of conflict. This would largely depend on the HR managers and line managers.

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 5. Interpersonal Conflicts
The interpersonal conflicts are the most vital ones at it would lead to a very chaotic atmosphere within
the team or department. Therefore it is of at most importance to identify the conflict and carry out
necessary negotiation processes. This would begin with analyzing the stage of the interpersonal conflict.

Stages of interpersonal conflict:

Developing Conflict – This is the initial level of conflict. It includes common characteristics like
frustration, conflict awareness and latent conflict. Frustration is visible from the physical signs,
negativism, withdrawal and sensitivity. Conflict awareness is characterized by complaints, gestures,
stress and difference of opinions. Latent conflict is indicated by isolation, self centered behaviour,
avoidance and denial.

Recognizable Conflict – These are recognized by tension, friction and disagreement. Tension is
characterized by distrust, anxiety silence, poor communication and unpredictable behaviour. Friction is
one of the most obvious expressions of interpersonal conflict that can be recognized by nervous,
uncooperative, anger, no communication and passive or aggressive behaviour.

Aggressive Conflict – This is the most risky stage which includes verbal abuse, threats and assault. The
highest priority has to be applied to resolve the matter but could prove to be highly difficult. Verbal
abuse could be in terms of name calling, taunting, interrupting and shouting. Threats mainly pertain to
physical ones like postures, clenched fists and interfering in other’s space.

6. Negotiation
Negotiation is an important factor in the entire conflict management process. Negotiation is a process
where two or more individuals working together arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. The factors,
models, types of conflicts discussed above are all necessary for negotiation. One needs to make
sufficient analysis about the conflict and decide the mode, time and method of negotiation.

The different types of negotiations are as follows:

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Distributive Negotiation – It is a competitive negotiation strategy that is used to decide on how to
distribute resources such as money or labour or work place.

Integrative Negotiation – It is a cooperative approach to negotiation. The negotiations would take the
importance of all the stakeholders into consideration and leads to win-win situation for all the
stakeholders.

Attitudinal Structuring – It is a process by which the individuals or teams seek to establish desired
attitudes and relationships. A mediator facilitates the expression of different attitudes like hostility,
competitiveness or cooperativeness.

Intra group Negotiations – In this each negotiation tries to build consensus for agreement and resolve
intra group conflicts before dealing with the other group’s negotiators.

7. Negotiation Process
The negotiation should follow a particular process so that none of the steps are missed out and no
additional steps are included. The following steps would be optimum for negotiation.

 Preparation
 Developing and choosing strategy
 Opening Moves
 Bargaining and Problem Solving
 Closure and Implementation

8. CASE on Conflicts
The above concepts and solutions by way negotiations are depicted by a real time case study. The Cocoa
Research Institute of Savana (CRIS) was originally established as the Central Cocoa Research Station of
the Department of Agriculture. The institute has five divisions.

The letter from the plant pathology department was very strong. It concluded by observing:

"If this is the attitude of the biochemistry department, we shall have no research in collaboration with
them as of now. Not only do they lack a healthy attitude towards collaborative work, they have often

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refused to share achievements. Now they want to stifle our work on cocoa swollen shoot virus,
notwithstanding the fact that we have been working on it for over a decade. We would of course
continue our work in this area, but without the biochemistry department."

Dr (Mrs) Swanson, Executive Director, CRIS, had known that there was trouble between the
biochemistry and plant pathology departments, or rather between two senior scientists of these
departments. There had been several instances of conflicts between the scientists and their divisions, but
the conflicts had never reached boiling point. This time the conflict arose over the allocation of land for
an experiment to be conducted separately by the biochemistry and plant pathology departments. They
were now fighting over the allocation of the same land.

Scientists designed their experiments in consultation with the statistician. They would then apply for a
plot of land, providing a drawing of the area for laying out the experiment. The request would be
considered by the plots committee, consisting of the heads of the research divisions and head of the
plantation division. Objections were often raised by scientists when an area proposed for use in an
experiment was considered by them to be unsuitable or scientists asked for a larger area than was
necessary for their experiments. In those cases, the statistician - who was a permanent invitee to the
meetings of the plots committee - was asked to review the experimental design with the scientists.

The conflict between the plant pathology and biochemistry departments was different from the other
conflicts like allocation of funds, participation in international conferences, sharing of scientific material
and equipment. It was a conflict between two departments which had always collaborated in the past. It
was a conflict between two senior scientists who had worked together on the same problem over a
decade, and had jointly published their work in respected journals. In the process, they had vitiated to
some extent the research environment of the institute which has not only delayed the experiment but has
also filled the department with a conflict environment.

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 9. Ideal Solution
Dr. Swanson should sort out the conflict between the department heads as it is more of a affective
conflict.

The two department heads have already worked on several other issues and so negotiation must go about
to portray the previous successful projects by the two departments.

There is already a fair way of allocating resources which needs to be put across to he two departments.

Since the conflict is on resources, a distributive negotiation must be planned.

Finally the important factor of the impacts of their personal grudges on the department and the
organization must be shown to them.

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