Assignment 1: Conflict Management

So far, you have completed self-assessment and evaluations to discover your own preferences, behaviors, and strengths and weaknesses related to conflict management. You have completed work on various case studies and scenarios, and you have also created a working model for conflict resolution. For this discussion assignment, complete the following tasks:

• Reflect on a variety of conflicts you have experienced in the past. Select those behaviors or characteristics that are highly correlated with managing and/or resolving conflict. Provide a rationale as to why you selected these behaviors or characteristics.
• Conduct a careful analysis of your approach, insight, and self-knowledge resulting from completing the case studies.
• Determine whether there are patterns, postures, or perspectives that informed you as to how you approach and complete the case studies (or conflict situations).

This assignment will provide you with practice in reflexivity—a term taken from qualitative research. It involves identifying one's position and voice when answering "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?" This process requires honest descriptions and appraisals of a person's values and perspectives in an ongoing experience with his or her ideas and/or actions. This process allows the writer to use rich descriptions, meaningful sequencing, selected quotes, and elaborations on keen insight being experienced. The individual, being reflective, writes in first person, active voice. Description and interpretation are expected to happen. At the same time, a person's recognition of his or her bias or particular stance to a set of ideas must be included. Quality, rather than quantity, of work is expected.

Module 7 Overview

Teams, Diversity, Stakeholders, and Organizational Conflict

In Module 7, you will further self-reflect in your pursuit of self-knowledge. The importance of fostering internal and external stakeholder relationships and how maintaining these relationships can aid in managing organizational conflicts will be discussed. You will be introduced to the ethics of negotiations and the importance of ethical practices in negotiating. You will also consider how trust, honesty, and fairness are all part of ethical practice and essential to fostering and maintaining organizational relationships. For further reading and information, visit Client Relationships

The first assignment places you again in the role of a self-searcher. This process of searching for self-knowledge, that is, introspection, is a wonderfully unique and powerful human endeavor. The results of introspection are to facilitate the conceptualization of a set of beliefs about one's perceptions and actions in terms of a particular focus or topic.

The second assignment is a LASA, where you will explore teams and conflict from the following perspectives: political, legal, social, cultural, economic, technological, and environmental. This begins with a literature review of the role of leadership in managing conflict during times of change, particularly during downsizing. Then, you will analyze the external factors that impact organizational conflict and evaluate the role of team leadership and its effectiveness in preventing conflict. Finally, you will assess the importance of maintaining relationships with stakeholders and recommend strategies for an organization depicted in a scenario. In completing the module assignments, you should also be mindful of critical thinking as well as conduct self-reflection and introspection to create a set of conclusions regarding your knowledge, feelings, and questions acquired during this course

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Importance of Stakeholders

Importance of Fostering Client, Customer, and Vendor Relationships

Dealing with all of the stakeholders of an organization is vital to sustaining the organization and keeping the organization in a position for their support. Clients, customers, and vendors must all be considered when making organizational decisions. Keeping these individuals engaged in organizational activities and decision making can assist in developing an ethical environment to help resolve conflict. Not only does a committed workforce help the organization achieve its objective, but also it can assist in preventing conflict from becoming a publicity problem. Of course, an ongoing situation that can cause conflict is the perspectives of customers and shareholders, where customers want the lowest price and shareholders want to generate a profit on their investments. Therefore, it is essential that organizational leaders manage the client and vendor relationships and perceptions in order to stem, as much as possible, any potential conflicts from erupting or escalating.

Refer to the Developing the Global Leader of Tomorrow to read more about how to build and foster client relationships in times of conflict and mistrust.

Preventing Destructive Conflicts with External Stakeholders

Conflict with stakeholders can often exist because organizations might have to make decisions in order to keep costs down or to reduce costs, which stakeholders may not understand. To prevent destructive conflicts, organizations have to do a good job in communicating with stakeholders to try and inform them of the long-term value of having to make certain operational decisions. Because of the long-range commitment to sustainability, it may be a difficult issue for stakeholders and shareholders to understand. As organizations must become more efficient in this downturn economy, there may exist more external conflicts between organizations and stakeholders because organizations will attempt to sustain their operations by cutting budgets, resources, services, or personnel.

Ethics of Negotiations

The ethics of negotiation can be very challenging, especially when you are dealing with conflicts or the value of products and services. Negotiation is a combined decision-making process through which parties accommodate their conflicting interests into a mutual settlement. Negotiation is far more than just a pure conflict resolution or problem-solving process; negotiators look for a joint optimal outcome. Therefore, ethics in negotiation is all about trust, honesty, and being fair. When negotiations are reduced to confrontations of power, parties may resort to false promises and threats to attempt to establish a balance of power. Ethics in negotiation is important because through the negotiating process, parties can have the opportunity to become partners rather than adversaries. Leaders who are ethical are people oriented, and they realize that their decisions impact others. So they attempt to make ethical decisions for the greater good.

Refer to the following links to learn more about negotiation.

Ethical Negotiations
Negotiation Ethics
Slide Share: The Nature of Negotiation

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