Exam 11: Conflict and Negotiation in the Workplace

Managers should arbitrate decisions when employees cannot resolve their differences alone.

In a purely win-lose situation, the bargaining zone states that:

NewTel, Inc.NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions internally through promotions, rather than hiring from outside.Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people into senior executive positions from the engineering areas.Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago in junior engineering positions.There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more marketing and service-oriented.As a result, four people were hired last year from consumer products and retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service management.The external hires were necessary because current employees were not sufficiently qualified.Now there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities.The four new hires have been frustrated in their attempts to have the company put more money into marketing and customer services instead of technology investment and blame the senior executives for being hard-headed.The conflict episodes are viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve the problem.The marketing executives and the other executives operate independently.However, they share the resources and money in the organization.This kind of interdependence is referred to as:

The most recent perspective on conflict is that an optimal level exists which is beneficial to the organization.

The process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party is called:

Resource scarcity is a potential source of conflict in organizations.

When people experience relationship conflict, they tend to increase their reliance on communication with the other party.

The lowest risk of conflict tends to occur in reciprocal interdependence situations.

People are more motivated to communicate and engage in exchanges when there is a perception of conflict.

Charlotte International Employees at Charlotte International have been frustrated with the management on just about everything.The conflict episodes are viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve problems.Both sides have decided to seek third-party dispute resolution.Management prefers a third-party intervention that has high process and decision control while employees prefer a high level of process control and not decision control.Employees at Charlotte International prefer which of the following types of third-party intervention?

What is the relationship between emotional intelligence and relationship conflicts?

The bargaining zone model states that:

Constructive conflict:

The problem-solving interpersonal style of conflict has:

Third-party dispute resolution activities are classified in terms of their:

The five interpersonal conflict management styles are distinguished by the level of interdependence between the conflicting parties.

According to the bargaining zone model, the parties should begin negotiations by describing their resistance point to each other.

Frank and Jorge are employees from different departments.They are evaluated on different performance criteria and compensated based on different reward systems.They are likely to experience conflict due to goal incompatibility.

Arbitration has a high level of process control but a low level of decision control.

Which of the following conflict management styles may be necessary when it is apparent that the other party will take advantage of information sharing and other cooperative strategies?