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Conflict Management and Negotiation Skills




                      Notes         Conflict has occupied the thinking  of man more than any other theme. It has always been
                                    widespread in society but in recent year it has generated a lot of interest and has become the
                                    focus of research and study. We are living in the age of conflict. Everyday the choices available
                                    to us regarding any decision are increasing in number. You may have wanted to become a
                                    manager, an entrepreneur or a computer scientist. On the other hand, your father might have
                                    wanted you to become a doctor, a lawyer or a chartered accountant. Thus you faced a conflict not
                                    only at an intrapersonal level, in terms of the various choices confronting you, but also at an
                                    interpersonal level- your choice vs. your father’s choice of a career for you.
                                    Management today  is faced  with the  awesome responsibility of ensuring  optimum level of
                                    growth and productivity in an environment that is full of conflicting situations. A survey suggests
                                    that the modern man spends over 20 per cent of his time handling one form of conflict or the
                                    other. Top and middle level managers in the same survey have pointed out the importance of
                                    conflict management skills. We hope that the knowledge you will gain from this unit will equip
                                    you better to manage conflict situations more deeply at your workplace.
                                    1.1 Conflict is Everywhere


                                    Conflict is not confined at the individual level alone but is manifesting itself more and more in
                                    organizations. Employees have become more vociferous in their demands for a better  deal.
                                    Various departments in an organization face a situation full of conflicts due to  a number of
                                    reasons like goal diversity, scarcity or resources or task over-dependence etc.

                                    From organizations that are divided by their strategies and roles to local communities that are
                                    divided by race, economics, religion, or politics; from homes torn apart by chronic feuds between
                                    parents and children, siblings, or in-laws to countries that are torn apart by civil strife. At a
                                    superficial level, conflicts can be categorized into ‘hot’ (strong emotions, loud voices, visible
                                    tension) and cold (suppressed emotions, tense silence, invisible stress). Although hot and cold
                                    conflicts are as different as summer and winter, they  both have destructive consequences  if
                                    handled  poorly.  They  produce  chronic  inefficiency  in  our  organizations,  strife  in  our
                                    communities, and turmoil in our lives. Even if we went to live alone, like a hermit on a mountain
                                    top in total self-sufficiency, we would still carry in our memory all the previous experiences of
                                    conflict.
                                    These conflicts are real. They are unavoidable. And they are not going away. So the question
                                    each of us faces is, “How to deal with it?” In our day-to-day life conflicts are only increasing and
                                    becoming more complex and intractable.

                                    Just  as differences  are  deepening  in the  communities  where  we live,  so  they  are  in  the
                                    organizations where we work. Today more than sixty-three thousand trans-national companies
                                    operate globally with over eight  hundred thousand  subsidiaries spanning the planet.  They
                                    employ more than 90 million people and produce 25 per cent of the world’s Gross National
                                    Product (GNP). Unlike forty years ago, when 60 per cent of the world’s top global companies
                                    were American, now only a third is. In less than a generation, the number of business people
                                    working across geographic borders has skyrocketed.
                                    “The borders are coming down,” In Unipolar globe “It’s an irreversible trend, whether they are
                                    tariff borders, monetary borders,  political borders, ethnic borders – they are coming down.”
                                    And as the world is changing, leadership must change too.
                                    But these differences between nations and cultures are only one part of the picture. For many
                                    leaders today, the more immediate challenge is the differences within their own organizations.
                                    Gone are the days when senior executives in the private sector were responsible to a wide range
                                    of stakeholders who  are often  scattered all  over the  world. They are juggling cross-border
                                    consistencies including employees, multiple suppliers, customers, governments (with different




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