Organizational

behaviour
Conflict, negotiation and
individual differences
Conflict
Conflict

• 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
(interparty disagreements)
• Conflicts in organization can take place due to: incompatibility of goals, difference
over interpretations of facts, disagreements based on behavioural expectations
• Traditional view: belief that all conflict is harmful and can be avoided (violence,
destruction, irrationality)
• Interactionist view: conflict is not only a positive force in a group but also an
absolute necessary for the group to perform effectively
• Functional: conflict that supports goals of the group and improves performances
• Dysfunctional: conflict that hinders group performance (the difference lies in the
type and locus of conflict)
Types & loci of conflict

• Type
• Task: conflict over content and goals of the work (for enhanced performance, positively
associated with higher management than lower where relationship is negative/ openness and
emotional stability makes it positive)
• Relationship: based on interpersonal relationships (psychologically exhaustive, revolve around
personality)
• Process: based on how work gets done (conflicts over roles, delegation of responsibility, can
turn into relationship conflict)

• Loci
• Loci of conflict can be dyadic (two people), intragroup (within group) and intergroup
(between group) – types of conflict generally fall in intragroup (can be intergroup like in a
cricket match, between the sales and finance team)

• Relationship between types (what it is about) and loci (with whom it is

occurring)
 The conflict process
Stage II
Cognition and
personalization
Stage V
Outcome
Stage III
Stage I Intentions
Potential Stage IV
opposition or Behaviour
incompatibility
Perceived
conflict
Increased
Conflict handing group
Antecedent conditions intentions performance
• Communication Overt conflict
• Structure • • Party’s
Competing
• Personal variables • Collaborating behaviour
• • Other’s
Compromising
• Avoiding reaction
• Accommodating
Felt conflict Decreased
group
performance
Stage 1

• Causes of opportunity for conflict to arise

• Communication: semantic difficulties, misunderstandings and noise, jargons,
insufficient/ too little/ too much information
• Structure: personally best friends but structurally at loggerheads, larger
group-specialized activity-more conflict, less tenure-high turnover-more
conflict, ambiguity of responsibility, jurisdictional ambiguities, diversity of
goals, reward system conflicts, interdependence lead one group to gain over
the other
• Personal variables: have you ever met someone you immediately disliked?
Values, attire, voice, behaviour, conversation unbearable
Stage 2

• Latent, perceived, felt, manifest, aftermath.

• 2 prominent stages are
• Perceived conflict: awareness of one or more parties of the existence of
conditions that create opportunities for conflict to arise (although conflict,
none are tensed because affection and relationships are not affected)
• Felt conflict: emotionally involved that they experience anxiety, tension,
frustration or hostility (also dependent on the involvement in the relationship)

• Conflicts are defined here, what it is about

• Positive and negative feelings in terms of mood takes an important
place in this stage
Stage 3

• Decisions to act in a given way based on perception, emotions and

overt behaviour
• Others intent needs to be inferred correctly else may lead to conflict
• Midway is compromising (each party in a conflict is willing to give
up something)
Cooperative
Unassertive Assertive
Uncooperative Avoiding (desire to Competing (desire to
withdraw or ignore) satisfy oneself irrespective
Assertive of the impact on others)

Cooperative Accommodating Collaborative

(willing to place opponent’s (parties in conflict each
interest above one’s interest desire to fully satisfy the
or reservations) concerns of all parties)
Stage 4

• Here conflicts are visible with statements, actions and reactions

• Conflict intensity continuum: no conflict, minor disagreements,
overt questioning or challenging, assertive verbal attacks, threats
and ultimatums, aggressive physical attack, overt effort to destroy
the other party, annihilatory conflicts
• Conflict management: use of resolution and stimulation techniques
to achieve the desired level of conflict
 Stage 5

• Action-reaction interplay create consequences, may be functional or

dysfunctional based on its impact on performance

Conflict resolution/ management techniques Conflict stimulation techniques

Problem solving: face to face discussion Communication: using ambiguous or threatening message
Superordinate goals: creating shared goals which require cooperation
from conflicting groups Bringing in outsiders: adding employees whose background, values etc.
Expansion of resources: expanding the scarce resource like money, office differ from present members
space
Avoidance: withdrawal or suppression Restructuring the organization: for disrupting statuesque, altering rules,
Smoothing: emphasizing common interest re-aligning workgroups, altering rules
Compromise: each give up something of value
Authoritative command: formal authority to resolve and then Appointing devil’s advocate: purposefully designing a critic to argue in
communicate opposition
Altering human variable: behavioural change techniques and trainings to
change conflict related behaviours
Altering structural variable: changing the organizational structure
through redesign, transfer etc.
Negotiation
Negotiation

• Negotiation: two or more parties decide to allocate scarce resource

by exchanging goods and services and in the process attempting to
agree on a exchange rate for them
• Distributive bargain: identifying feature is that it operates under
zero sum condition (my gain is somebody’s loss) which a fixed pie
of resources are divided among the parties leading to a win-lose
situation (bargaining for things/ labour-management over wages)/
target point(highest aspiration/ resistant point/ settlement range)/
giving deadlines to finish deals fast
• Fixed pie: there is only a set amount of goods and services to be
divided between the parties.
 Preparation and
planning (anticipate the
opposition- BATNA: best alternative
to negotiated agreement)/ strategy

Definition of ground
rules (who will do, when, where,
issues)

The negotiation process

Clarification and
justification (explain, amplify,
justify, clarify, produce documents)

Bargaining and problem

solving (give and take)

Closure and
implementation (formalizing
agreement, developing procedures,
implementing and monitoring)
Individual differences
Individual differences in negotiation effectiveness

• Personality (big five traits) – sort of

• Agreeableness (cooperative, compliant, warm, empathetic) / extravert may do less well by giving
out information

• Emotion-
• Anger with power/ disappointment / anxiety (lower outcome)

• Culture
• More effective within cultures/ openness/ Chinese (Angry), India (confident), U.S. (anxious),
German (positive)

• Gender
• Women (cooperative, pleasant), men (assertive, self-interested); men may take cooperative
behaviour of woman as an advantage and assertive as negative
• Woman as competitive and men cooperative are not violating expectations/ women who exhibited
feminine charm did better in negotiation / best to diffuse stereotype/ women are better when they
are bargaining for someone else than themselves
• Third-party negotiation
• Mediator: facilitates negotiated solution by using reasoning, persuasion and
suggestion for alternatives/ effective under moderate level of conflict /
should be perceived as neutral and non-coercive
• Arbitrator: authority to dictate an agreement/ arbitrator can be voluntary
(requested by party) or compulsory (forced on the party by law) / results in
settlements
• Conciliator: trusted third party who provides informal communication link
between negotiator and the opponent/ job is fact-finding, interpret messages,
persuade disputants to develop agreements