Page 277 - DMGT519_Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills

Unit 13: Fairness and Trust in Negotiation

Make sure that a proper investigation is carried out to establish the reason for the poor work Notes
performance, and establish what steps the employer must take to enable the employee to reach
the required standard. Formal disciplinary processes must be followed prior to dismissal.

Task Elucidate the following statements:

1. It is important that negotiators remember the intangible factors while negotiating
and remain aware of their potential effects.
2. Trust can be defined as “an expression of confidence in another person.”

13.5 Substantive Fairness – Incapacity – Ill Health

 Establish whether the employee’s state of health allows him to perform the tasks that he
was employed to carry out.

 Establish the extent to which he is able to carry out those tasks.
 Establish the extent to which these tasks may be modified or adapted to enable the employee
to carry out the tasks and still achieve company standards of quality and quantity.

 Determine the availability of any suitable alternative work.
If nothing can be done in any of the above areas, dismissal on grounds of incapacity – ill
health – would be justified.

13.6 Incapacity – Ill Health – Additional Notes on Procedural Fairness

 With the employee’s consent, conduct a full investigation into the nature of and extent of
the illness, injury or cause of incapacity.
 Establish the prognosis – this would entail discussions with the employee’s medical
advisor.
 Investigate alternative to dismissal – perhaps extended unpaid leave?
 Consider the nature of the job.

 Can the job be done by a temp until the employee’s health improves?
 Remember the employee has the right to be heard and to be represented.

13.7 Appropriate or Inappropriate Negotiating Tactics

Negotiation has a long history, perhaps even a pre-history, as the early humans found forms of
co-operation that signaled the beginning of an ever widening difference between them and the
animals. But long as its history is, negotiation has only recently come into its own as an appropriate
method with a potential for use in almost every sphere of human contact. It is no accident that
the number of international agreements is growing each year, that new professions of mediators,
conciliators, arbiters and consultant negotiations are growing in numbers, that more and more
legal firms are turning to negotiating settlements rather than merely litigating their claims, that
there is a growing interest in the theory and practice of negotiation. The age of negotiation
coincides with the spread of pluralistic democracy and growing international economic and
political integration.

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