Chapter Seventeen: Managing Conflict, Politics, and Negotiation
Chapter Seventeen: Managing Conflict, Politics, and Negotiation
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Contemporary Management, 5/e
Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Learning Objectives
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Learning Objectives
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Organizational Conflict
• Organizational Conflict
– The discord that arises when goals,
interests or values of different individuals or
groups are
incompatible
and those people
block or thwart
each other’s efforts
to achieve their
objectives.
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Organizational Conflict
• Organizational Conflict
– Conflict is inevitable given the wide range of
goals for the different stakeholder in the
organization.
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The Effect of Conflict on Organization
Performance
• Interpersonal Conflict
– Conflict between individuals due to
differences in their goals or values.
• Intragroup Conflict
– Conflict within a
group or team.
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Types of Conflict
• Intergroup Conflict
– Conflict between two or more teams, groups
or departments.
– Managers play a key role in resolution of
this conflict
• Interorganizational Conflict
– Conflict that arises across organizations.
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Sources of Conflict
Figure 17.3
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Sources of Conflict
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Sources of Conflict
• Task Interdependencies
– One member of a group or a group fails to
finish a task that another member or group
depends on, causing the waiting worker or
group to fall behind.
• Different Evaluation or Reward
Systems
– A group is rewarded for achieving a goal, but
another interdependent group is rewarded
for achieving a goal that conflicts with the
first group.
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Sources of Conflict
• Scarce Resources
– Managers can come into conflict over the
allocation of scare resources.
• Status Inconsistencies
– Some individuals and groups have a
higher organizational status than
others, leading to conflict with lower
status groups.
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Conflict Management Strategies
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Conflict Management Strategies
• Compromise
– each party is concerned about their goal
accomplishment and is willing to engage in
give-and-take exchange to reach a
reasonable solution.
• Collaboration
– parties try to handle the conflict without
making concessions by coming up with a
new way to resolve their differences that
leaves them both better off.
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Conflict Management Strategies
• Accommodation
– one party simply gives in to the other party
• Avoidance
– two parties try to ignore the problem and do
nothing to resolve the disagreement
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Conflict Management Strategies
• Competition
– each party tries to maximize its own gain
and has little interest in understanding the
other’s position
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Strategies Focused on Individuals
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Strategies Focused on the Whole
Organization
• Changing an
organization’s
structure or
culture
• Altering the
source of conflict
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Negotiation
• Negotiation
– Parties to a conflict try to come up with a
solution acceptable to themselves by
considering various alternative ways to
allocate resources to each other
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Negotiation
• Third-party negotiator
– an impartial individual with expertise in
handling conflicts
– helps parties in conflict reach an acceptable
solution
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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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Distributive Negotiation
• Distributive negotiation
– Parties perceive that they have a “fixed pie”
of resources that they need to divide
– Take a competitive adversarial stance
– See no need to interact in the future
– Do not care if their interpersonal relationship
is damaged by their competitive negotiation
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Integrative Bargaining
• Integrative bargaining
– Parties perceive that they might be able to
increase the resource pie by trying to come
up with a creative solution to the conflict
– View the conflict as a win-win situation in
which both parties can gain
– Handled through collaboration or
compromise
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Strategies to Encourage
Integrative Bargaining
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Organizational Politics
• Organizational Politics
– The activities managers engage in to
increase their power and to use power
effectively to achieve their goals or
overcome resistance or opposition.
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Organizational Politics
• Political strategies
– Specific tactics used to increase power and
use it effectively to influence and gain the
support of other people while overcoming
resistance
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The Importance of Organizational
Politics
• Politics
– Can be viewed negatively when managers
act in self-interested ways for their own
benefit.
– Is also a positive force that can bring about
needed change when political activity allows
a manager to gain support for needed
changes that will advance the organization.
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Political
Strategies
for
Increasing
Power
Figure 17.4
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Political Strategies for Gaining and
Maintaining Power
Strategies
Controlling Uncertainty Reduce uncertainty for others in the firm
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Political
Strategies
for
Exercising
Power
Figure 17.5
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Strategies for Exercising Power
Strategies
Relying on Objective Providing impartial information causes
Information others to feel the manager’s course of
action is correct.
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