Page 256 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Notes Within a society, these practices may not only be legal but ethical. Only when cultures with
different value systems object, they become ethical issues. An example of change caused by
ethical value conflict is the formation of a coalition of major Western European and American
sporting goods manufactures and child advocacy groups to combat the sale of soccer balls
stitched by children in Pakistan.
Because of impoverishment, Pakistani parents in the Sialkot region of Punjab province force
their children into soccer ball stitching as early as 6 years of age. According to one estimate,
“Close to 10,000 Pakistani children under the age of 14 work up to 10 hours a day stitching the
leather balls, often for the equivalent of $1.20 a day” (Greenhouse 1997). In Western Europe and
the United States, where children play with these soccer balls, child labour is illegal and unethical.
To avoid the experience of other efforts aimed at eliminating child labour that resulted in the
unemployed children entering other occupations, including making bricks and prostitution, the
coalition proposed to educate the children and to place parents and older siblings in jobs or
provide small loans for them to start their own business.

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Case Study The Negotiation Problem

This case study shows how two parties can find a successful negotiation resolution by tackling the
issues in a creative and mutually beneficial manner.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks encountered by a negotiator is to clearly understand
the real issues as the root cause and basis for the negotiation in the first place. All too many
times, negotiators take insufficient time to clearly identify and frame the problem or
issues to be resolved and negotiated. This is the crucial first step to any negotiation. If this
first phase of the negotiation process is not addressed properly, than it is quite likely that
the rest the whole negotiation process will unravel because the core issues were not
properly understood at the outset.
Let’s look at an example case study which emphasizes the need to define and identify the
problem. In this example, a substantial electronics firm faces considerable difficulties in
one of their subassemblies. The root core of the problem revolved around certain types of
fittings and pins that were becoming bent and distorted by the operation of the machinery.
Units which were being produced were damaged and had to be rejected because of
imperfections. These rejected components were put aside and then re-worked later on in
the month.
This duplication of effort resulted in increased costs as workers had to work overtime to
meet their quotas. These extra costs for the extra work performed had not been considered
in the manufacturing budget. The manager of this subassembly line did not want be
charged with these overhead expenses because he felt it was not their responsibility.
Likewise, the manager who was the overseer of the final assembly department also refused
to accept the increased costs to his budget. He argued that the extra costs were a direct
result of the poor work of the personnel in the subassembly department as this was where
the problem originated.
The subassembly department manager countered this argument by claiming that the
parts were in good condition before they left his department and that the damage must
have occurred in the final assembly manager’s department instead. Both parties had reached
am impasse.
Contd....

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