CONFLICT AND NEGOTIATION

For the Module 3 SLP you will be applying the concepts you learned in the background materials regarding conflict and negotiation to a situation from your own personal experiences. Carefully review the background materials regarding types of conflict, causes of conflict, negotiation stages, and conflict management styles. It is important to first understand these comments from the background readings before starting this assignment.

Once you have thoroughly reviewed the background materials, think of a situation in the workplace where a conflict erupted and management had to intervene and some type of negotiation was involved. Then write a three page paper addressing the following four questions, and make sure to cite at least one of the required background readings for each of your four answers :

1. Was this conflict functional or dysfunctional?
2. What was the cause of the conflict? Use the terms from the background materials in your answer—for example, was the conflict a result of interpersonal issues, a specific task involved, due to inter-organizational issues, etc.
3. Of the five approaches to conflict management outlined in Shearouse (2011) or Bauer and Erdogan (2011), which approach most closely describes the approach used by management to resolve this conflict?
4. Did the negotiations involve integrative or distributive bargaining? What stages of negotiation did management go through, and did these stages match the five stages discussed in Bauer and Erdogan (2011)?

SLP Assignment Expectations

• SLP assignments are to be prepared in Microsoft Word and should be 2 to 3 pages in length, in addition to a cover page (course name and number, module number, session name, student name, and date prepared) and a reference list. The paper should be double-spaced, using 12 pt. type in the Times New Roman font. It should consist of a 2- or 3-sentence introduction, a body, and a 2- or 3-sentence conclusion and use Trident University International’s cover page. The reference list page must be in APA format.
• Assignment content should include a brief introduction to the assignment, background information about the organization being studied, and discussion in terms of the concepts or theories being applied in the assignment.
• Use headings and subheadings to improve presentation values.
• Include both a References page and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 11-14 on in-text citations. Attention is to be given to citing sources of information in text as well as in the References page at the end of the paper. Citation and reference style instructions are available at https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/ or at APAstyle.org.
• Submit your report in the SLP dropbox for this module on or before the date due, as indicated on the TLC Homepage.
• Since you are engaging in research, be sure to cite and reference the sources in APA format. The paper should be written in the third person; this means words like “I,” “we,” and “you” are not appropriate. For more information, see Differences Between First and Third Person.

Submit the presentation through the appropriate Dropbox by the due date. Your submission will be graded with the assignment’s grading rubric.

277

Chapter Nine

Stress and Conflict
Learning Objectives

• Define the meaning of stress.

• Identify the extraorganizational, organizational, and group stressors.

• Examine individual dispositions of stress.

• Describe intraindividual and interactive conflict.

• Discuss the effects of stress and conflict.

• Present strategies for coping/managing stress and negotiation skills for conflict
resolution.

Traditionally, the field of organizational behavior has treated stress and conflict separately.
Even though they are conceptually similar, and individuals, groups, and organizations in
interaction are more associated with conflict, at the individual (intraindividual) level, they
can be treated together. Therefore, this chapter combines stress and conflict. Conceptually,
going from micro to macro, the discussion starts off with the meaning of stress and then
examines the causes of stress. This is followed by both the intraindividual and the interac-
tive levels of conflict. Next, the effects of stress and conflict are examined, and the final part
presents the ways of coping/managing stress and conflict with particular emphasis given to
effective negotiation skills for resolving conflict.

THE EMERGENCE OF STRESS

A leading expert on stress, cardiologist Robert Eliot gives the following prescription for
dealing with stress: “Rule No. 1 is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule No. 2 is, it’s all small
stuff. And if you can’t fight and you can’t flee, flow.” What is happening in today’s organi-
zations, however, is that the “small stuff ” is getting to employees, and they are not going
with the “flow.” Stress has become a major buzzword and legitimate concern of the times.

Contemporary Environment Demands
There is considerable evidence that most managers and employees report feeling work-
related stress,1 and the recent environment is making things worse. For example, global-
ization and strategic alliances have led to a dramatic increase in executive travel stress2

and relocation,3 then there is 24/7 technology (i.e., BlackBerrys, laptops, and cell phones)
keeping people constantly leashed to their job, and of course the specter of massive job
losses in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. For example, on
stress scales, people rank losing their job the eighth most stressful life experience, behind
the death of a spouse (No. 1), or going to jail (No. 4), but ahead of the death of a close
friend (No. 17), foreclosure on a mortgage or loan (No. 21) or in-law troubles (No. 24).4

Besides these external pressures, much of the stress comes from within. As one expert

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278 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

notes, “Too much stress from heavy demands, poorly defined priorities, and little on-the-
job flexibility can add to health issues. By leaving stress unaddressed, employers invite an
increase in unscheduled time off, absence rates, and health care costs.”5

Increased work hours resulting from 24/7 technology and competitive pressures are also
taking a toll on today’s employees. Recent surveys indicate that a vast majority of employees
work frequently after regular hours and reported their employer does not allow them to balance
their work and personal life.6 A growing number meet the definition of a “workaholic”—a
compulsive need to work at the expense of everything else in one’s life.7 The estimated
costs of such workaholism, in terms of lost productivity, increased health care costs, and
potential legal ramifications (disabilities and wage-and-hour claims) is $150 billion a year,
and the warning signs of such problems have been identified as follows:8

• Sending e-mails from home in the evenings or later;

• Being the last one in the office;

• Having difficulty delegating;

• Exhibiting excessive perfectionism;

• Skipping lunch;

• Looking tired; and

• Having an attitude consistent with depression or exhaustion.

This stressful workplace is highly variable around the world, with some countries better
and some worse than the United States. For example, a recent Gallup world poll found about
half of those in the United States described themselves as “thriving” compared to 83 percent
in Denmark and only 2 percent in Cambodia.9 In the competitive global economy workplace
stress is common in the major economic powers, but may take different forms. For example,
a recent cross-cultural study comparing U.S. and Chinese employees found the Americans
reported significantly more lack of job control, direct interpersonal conflict, anger, frustration,
feeling overwhelmed, and stomach problems, but their Chinese counterparts had relatively
more stress from job evaluations, work mistakes, indirect conflict, employment conditions,
and lack of training.10 Even the French are feeling the pressure. At the big automaker Renault
outside of Paris, in a recent five-month period three of its engineers killed themselves. “In the
suicide notes and conversations with their families before taking their lives, the three men
voiced anxiety about unreasonable workloads, high pressure management tactics, exhaustion,
and humiliating criticism in front of colleagues during performance reviews.”11 In other
words, there seems to be a worldwide stress epidemic and seems to be getting worse.

What Stress Is, and Is Not
Stress is usually thought of in negative terms. It is thought to be caused by something bad
(for example, a college student is placed on scholastic probation, a loved one is seriously
ill, or the boss gives a formal reprimand for poor performance). This is a form of distress.
But there is also a positive, pleasant side of stress caused by good things (for example, a
college student makes the dean’s list; an attractive, respected acquaintance asks for a date;
an employee is offered a job promotion at another location). This is a form of eustress. This
latter term was coined by the pioneers of stress research from the Greek eu, which means
“good.” Applied to the workplace, a large study by researchers at Cornell University of
1,800 managers identified examples of “bad” stress as office politics, red tape, and a stalled
career and “good” stress as challenges that come with increased job responsibility, time
pressure, and high-quality assignments.12 A recent meta-analysis found that hindrance
stressors (organizational politics, red tape, role ambiguity, and in general those demands
unnecessarily thwarting personal growth and goal attainment) had a negative effect on
motivation and performance. On the other hand, so-called challenge stressors (high workload,

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 279

time pressure, high responsibility, and in general those demands that are viewed as obsta-
cles to be overcome in order to learn and achieve) were found to have a positive effect on
motivation and performance.13

Another interesting delineation involves two types of energy—“tense energy,” which is a
stress-driven state characterized by a constant sense of pressure and anxiety, and “calm
energy,” which is a stress-free “flow” state characterized by low muscle tension, an alert
presence of mind, peaceful body feelings, increased creative intelligence, physical vitality,
and a deep sense of well-being.14 On-the-job stress may enhance such energy levels. For
example, a recent survey found over two-thirds of U.S. and international employees reported
being either neutral or energized. Based on this evidence, one stress expert observed, “The
number of employees who indicated a level of comfort and even positive energy in response
to work-related stress confirms that challenging work helps employees remain focused and
interested throughout their daily routines and more eager to contribute.”15

In other words, a completely stress-free workplace is not the ideal. Stress can be viewed
in a number of different ways and has been described as the most imprecise word in the sci-
entific dictionary. The word stress has also been compared with the word sin: “Both are
short, emotionally charged words used to refer to something that otherwise would take
many words to say.”16 Although there are numerous definitions and much debate about the
meaning of job stress,17 Ivancevich and Matteson define stress simply as “the interaction of
the individual with the environment,” but then they go on to give a more detailed working
definition, as follows: “an adaptive response, mediated by individual differences and/or
psychological processes, that is a consequence of any external (environmental) action, sit-
uation, or event that places excessive psychological and/or physical demands on a per-
son.”18 Note the three critical components of this definition: (1) it refers to a reaction to a
situation or event, not the situation or event itself; (2) it emphasizes that stress can be
impacted by individual differences; and (3) it highlights the phrase “excessive psychologi-
cal and/or physical demands,” because only special or unusual situations (as opposed to
minor life adjustments) can really be said to produce stress.19

In another definition, Beehr and Newman define job stress as “a condition arising from
the interaction of people and their jobs and characterized by changes within people that
force them to deviate from their normal functioning.”20 Taking these two definitions and
simplifying them for the purpose of this chapter, stress is defined as an adaptive response
to an external situation that results in physical, psychological, and/or behavioral deviations
for organizational participants.

It is also important to point out what stress is not:

1. Stress is not simply anxiety. Anxiety operates solely in the emotional and psychologi-
cal sphere, whereas stress operates there and also in the physiological sphere. Thus,
stress may be accompanied by anxiety, but the two should not be equated.

2. Stress is not simply nervous tension. Like anxiety, nervous tension may result from
stress, but the two are not the same. Unconscious people have exhibited stress, and some
people may keep it “bottled up” and not reveal it through nervous tension.

3. Stress is not necessarily something damaging, bad, or to be avoided. Eustress is not
damaging or bad and is something people should seek out rather than avoid. The key, of
course, is how the person handles the stress. Stress is inevitable; distress may be pre-
vented or can be effectively controlled.21

What about Burnout?
As far as the increasingly popular term “burnout” is concerned, some stress researchers
contend that burnout is a type of stress22 and others treat it as having a number of compo-
nents.23 One stress and trauma support coordinator makes the distinction between stress

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280 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

and burnout as follows, “Stress is normal and often quite healthy. However, when the abil-
ity to cope with stress begins to let us down, then we may be on the road to burnout.”24 John
Izzo, a former HR professional in the occupational development area, suggests that
burnout may be the consequence of “losing a sense of the basic purpose and fulfillment of
your work.” He goes on to say that “Getting more balance or getting more personal time
will help you with stress—but it will often not help you with burnout.”25 Research in this
area shows that burnout is not necessarily the result of individual problems such as charac-
ter or behavior flaws in which organizations can simply change people or get rid of them.
In fact, Christina Maslach, a well-known stress researcher, says the opposite is probably
true. She concludes that “as a result of extensive study, it is believed that burnout is not a
problem of the people themselves but of the social environment in which people work.”26

She believes that burnout creates a sense of isolation and a feeling of lost control, causing
the burned-out employee to relate differently to others and to their work.27 Burnout is also
most closely associated with the so-called helping professions such as nursing, education,
and social work. So, even though technically burnout may be somewhat different from
stress, the two terms will be treated the same here and used interchangeably.

Finally, conceptually similar to stress is conflict. Although there is some overlap in ana-
lyzing the causes and effects and managing stress and conflict, they are both covered in
this chapter. The major difference, except for intraindividual conflict, is that conflict in the
field of organizational behavior is more associated with disagreement or opposition at the
interpersonal or intergroup level. After examining stressors, these levels of conflict are
given attention.

THE CAUSES OF STRESS

The antecedents of stress, or the so-called stressors, affecting today’s employees are summa-
rized in Figure 9.1. As shown, these causes come from both outside and inside the organiza-
tion, from the groups that employees are influenced by and from employees themselves.

Extraorganizational
Stressors

Organizational Stressors

Group Stressors

Individual
Stressors

JOB
STRESS

FIGURE 9.1
Categories of
Stressors Affecting
Occupational Stress

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 281

Extraorganizational Stressors
Although most analyses of job stress ignore the importance of outside forces and events,
it is becoming increasingly clear that these have a tremendous impact. Taking an open-
systems perspective of an organization (that is, the organization is greatly affected by the
external environment), it is clear that job stress is not limited just to things that happen
inside the organization, during working hours. In fact, one research study found that stres-
sors outside the workplace were related to negative affect and feelings on the job.28

Extraorganizational stressors include things such as societal/technological change, global-
ization, the family, relocation, economic and financial conditions, race and gender, and res-
idential or community conditions.

The phenomenal rate of change and economic turbulence, which is given detailed
attention in the introductory chapters, has had a great effect on people’s lifestyles, and
this of course is carried over into their jobs. Although medical science has increased the
life spans of people and has eradicated or reduced the threat of many diseases, the pace
of modern living has increased stress and decreased personal wellness. The concept of
wellness has been defined as “a harmonious and productive balance of physical, mental,
and social well-being brought about by the acceptance of one’s personal responsibility
for developing and adhering to a health promotion program.”29 Because people tend to
get caught up in the rush-rush, mobile, urbanized, crowded, on-the-go lifestyle of today,
their anxiety30 and wellness in general has deteriorated; the potential for stress on the job
has increased. There is considerable evidence that “Balancing concern for one’s health
with effortful striving is essential to sustained, long-term achievement. Conversely, the
failure to attend to one’s health places an executive at risk of failure, and in the extreme,
of death.”31

It is generally recognized that a person’s family has a big impact on one’s stress level. A
family situation—either a brief crisis, such as a squabble or the illness of a family member,
or long-term strained relations with parents, spouse, or children—can act as a significant
stressor for employees. Also, recent trends have made it increasingly difficult for employ-
ees to adequately balance the responsibilities of their jobs and their families. As employees
are working longer hours and bringing more work home at night,32 more and more pressure
is being placed on work-family relationships33 and more emphasis on the coordination of
work and vacation schedules, and the search for elder and child care options has become
prominent and very stressful.34

Relocating the family because of a transfer or a promotion can also lead to stress. For
example, under globalization, expatriate managers (those with an assignment outside their
home country) may undergo cultural shock and then when repatriated (relocated to the
home country) may experience isolation; both are significant stressors.35 For most people
in recent years, their financial situation has also proved to be a stressor. Many people have
been forced to take a second job (“moonlight”), or the spouse has had to enter the work-
force in order to make ends meet. This situation reduces time for recreational and family
activities. The overall effect on employees is more stress on their primary jobs.

Life’s changes may be slow (getting older) or sudden (the death of a spouse). These sud-
den changes have been portrayed in novels and movies as having a dramatic effect on peo-
ple, and medical researchers have verified that especially sudden life changes do in fact
have a very stressful impact on people.36 They found a definite relationship between the
degree of life changes and the subsequent health of the person. The more change, the
poorer the subsequent health. These life changes can also directly influence job perfor-
mance. One psychologist, Faye Crosby, reports that divorce greatly interferes with work.
She says, “During the first three months after a spouse walks out, the other spouse—male
or female—usually is incapable of focusing on work.”37

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282 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

Sociological-demographic variables such as race and gender can also become stressors.
As the workforce becomes increasingly diverse (see Chapter 2), potential stress-related
issues include differences in beliefs and values, differences in opportunities for rewards or
promotions, and perceptions by minority employees of either discrimination or lack of fit
between themselves and the organization.38 Researchers have noted over the years that
minorities may have more stressors than whites.39 Although a review of up-to-date evi-
dence concludes that women experience more stress than men,40 an earlier meta-analysis
performed on 15 studies found no significant sex differences in experienced and perceived
work stress.41 There continues to be evidence that women perceive more job demands than
men in both the male-dominated and female-dominated occupations.42 Also, people in the
middle and upper classes may have particular or common stressors. The same is true of the
local community or region that one comes from. For example, one researcher identified
the condition of housing, convenience of services and shopping, neighborliness, and
degree of noise and air pollution as likely stressors.43 With globalization adding to the
cultural diversity of recent times, there is also recent research evidence suggesting that
identical conflict episodes are perceived differently across cultures (in this case the United
States and Japan).44 Thus, not only must race and gender be considered in analyzing extra-
organizational stressors, but also the country culture and economic system.45

Organizational Stressors
Besides the potential stressors that occur outside the organization, there are also those
associated with the organization itself. Although the organization is made up of groups
of individuals, there are also more macrolevel dimensions, unique to the organization,
that contain potential stressors.46 Figure 9.2 shows that these macrolevel stressors can be
categorized into administrative policies and strategies, organizational structure and
design, organizational processes, and working conditions. Some specific examples of
more specific job stressors especially related to performance includes role ambiguity,
conflict and overload, job insecurity, work-family conflict, environmental uncertainty,
and situational constraints. A recent meta-analysis found each of these to be negatively
related to job performance.47

As organizations dramatically change to meet the environmental challenges outlined in
the introductory chapters (globalization, economic turbulence, and diversity), there are more
and more accompanying stressors for individual employees in their jobs. As recently
described, organizations today must be fast, agile, and responsive; they must quickly
respond to an ever-changing environment, constantly reinventing themselves.48 For exam-
ple, a study by Deloitte and Touche found that 84 percent of U.S. companies were undergo-
ing at least one major change intervention in their business strategy in order to compete in
today’s environment. Programs such as reengineering, restructuring, and downsizing have
become commonplace as the result of intense pressures to outperform the competition.
Downsizing, in particular, has taken and continues to take its toll on employees.49 The actual
loss of jobs, or even the mere threat of being laid off, can be extremely stressful for employ-
ees. Additionally, the “survivors” of downsizing “often experience tremendous pressure
from the fear of future cuts, the loss of friends and colleagues, and an increase in work-
load.”50 In other words, downsizing often translates to longer hours and more stress for the
surviors.51 Research indicates that such chronic occupational demands can lead to stress.52

Group Stressors
Chapter 10 indicates the tremendous influence that the group has on behavior. The group or
team can also be a potential source of stress. Here is how one member recently described
her team’s typical meeting:

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 283

The people are loyal and competent but very slow to make proactive changes. They also have
a hard time with conflict so that issues go unaddressed for years. When I sit in staff meetings,
we may be talking about a budget issue or a marketing topic but the real underlying issue
seems to be two warring managers or an old conflict being rehashed.53

Unfortunately, sometimes these interpersonal conflicts in a group end up in a “bullying”
problem. This is only a recently recognized problem. Different from sexual harassment or
incivility, bullying is defined as “repeated, health-harming mistreatment that could involve
verbal abuse, threatening, humiliating, or offensive behavior or actions; or work interfer-
ence.”54 Obviously, bullying leads to tremendous stress for a victim and even those who
witness this problem. More generally, group stressors can be categorized into two areas:

1. Lack of group cohesiveness. Since the historically famous Hawthorne studies, dis-
cussed in Chapter 1, it has become very clear that cohesiveness, or “togetherness,” is
very important to employees, especially at the lower levels of organizations. If an
employee is denied the opportunity for this cohesiveness because of the task design,
because the supervisor does things to prohibit or limit it, or because the other members
of the group shut the person out, the resulting lack of cohesiveness can be very stress
producing.

Downsizing
Competitive pressures
Merit pay plans
Rotating work shifts
Bureaucratic rules
Advanced technology

ADMINISTRATIVE POLICIES AND STRATEGIES

Centralization and formalization
Line-staff conflicts
Specialization
Role ambiguity and conflict
No opportunity for advancement
Restrictive, untrusting culture

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND DESIGN

Tight controls
Only downward communication
Little performance feedback
Centralized decision making
Lack of participation in decisions
Punitive appraisal systems

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES

Crowded work area
Noise, heat, or cold
Polluted air
Strong odor
Unsafe, dangerous conditions
Poor lighting
Physical or mental strain
Toxic chemicals or radiation

WORKING CONDITIONS

JOB
STRESS

FIGURE 9.2
Macrolevel

Organizational

Stressors

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284 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

2. Lack of social support. Employees are greatly affected by the support of one or more
members of a cohesive group. By sharing their problems and joys with others, they are
much better off. If this type of social support is lacking for an individual, the situation
can be very stressful. There is even research evidence indicating that the lack of social
support is so stressful that it accounts for some health care costs.55

In addition to the group per se, group-level dynamics may become stressors. For example,
one study found that organizational politics was a potential source of stress in the work
environment56 and another study found social stressors such as conflicts with coworkers
and supervisors and social dislikes or ill will of all kinds, over time, can lead to depressive
symptoms for the employees involved.57

Individual Stressors: The Role of Dispositions
In a sense, the stressors discussed so far (extraorganizational, organizational, and group) all
eventually get down to the individual level. There is also more research and agreement on pos-
sible situational dimensions and individual dispositions that may affect stress outcomes. For
example, individual dispositions such as Type A personality patterns, personal control, learned
helplessness, and psychological hardiness may all affect the level of stress someone experi-
ences. In addition, the intraindividual level of conflict stemming from frustration, goals, and
roles, covered next under conflict, definitely has implications as individual stressors.

Type A Characteristics
The discussion of personality in Chapter 5 points out the complexity of, and individual dif-
ferences in, personality dispositions and traits. Personality traits such as authoritarianism,
rigidity, extroversion, supportiveness, spontaneity, emotionality, tolerance for ambiguity,
anxiety, and the need for achievement have been uncovered by research as being particu-
larly relevant to individual stress.58 Most attention over the years, however, has centered on
the so-called Type A personality.

Although heart researchers have been working on the use of personality types and the
resulting behavior patterns in order to predict heart attacks since the 1950s, in the late
1960s Friedman and Rosenman popularized the use of Type A and opposing Type B per-
sonalities in the study of stress. These types were portrayed as relatively stable characteris-
tics, and initially Friedman and Rosenman’s extensive studies found the Type A profile
correlated highly with experienced stress and dangerous physical consequences.59 In more
recent years, however, there is increasing evidence that Type As face no higher risk of heart
disease than anyone else.

Table 9.1 gives the reader a chance to see whether he or she tends to be a Type A or a
Type B personality. A majority of Americans are Type A, and an even higher percentage of
managers are Type A; one study found that 60 percent of the managers sampled were
clearly Type A and that only 12 percent were Type B.60

Friedman and Rosenman define the Type A personality as “an action-emotion complex
that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant
struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the
opposing efforts of other things or other persons.”61 Table 9.2 briefly summarizes the Type
A and Type B profiles. Obviously Type A employees (managers, salespersons, staff spe-
cialists, secretaries, or rank-and-file operating employees) experience considerable stress.
They are the ones who:

1. Work long, hard hours under constant deadline pressures and conditions for overload.

2. Often take work home at night or on weekends and are unable to relax.

3. Constantly compete with themselves, setting high standards of productivity that they
seem driven to maintain.

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 285

4. Tend to become frustrated by the work situation, to be irritated with the work efforts of
others, and to be misunderstood by supervisors.62

Here is how one obviously Type A manager recently described her activities:

350 e-mails a day in my inbox. BlackBerry, cell phone, and laptop constantly in tow. Check
my Outlook calendar and see that I’m double- or triple-booked in meetings every hour, plus a
7 A.M. global conference call. Being told by management that we cannot hire additional head
count because of a hiring freeze, despite the hefty increase in responsibility for my team.63

By contrast, as shown in Table 9.2, Type B personalities are very laid back, are patient, and
take a very relaxed, low-key approach to life and their job.

TABLE 9.1
Type A and Type B
Self-Test

Source: Adapted from R. W.
Bortner, “A Short Rating Scale
as a Potential Measure of
Pattern A Behavior,” Journal of
Chronic Diseases, Vol. 22,
1966, pp. 87–91.

To determine your Type A or Type B profile, circle the number on the continuum (the verbal
descriptions represent endpoints) that best represents your behavior for each dimension.

Am casual about appointments 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Am never late
Am not competitive 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Am very competitive
Never feel rushed, even under 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Always feel rushed

pressure
Take things one at a time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Try to do many things at once;

think about what I am going
to do next

Do things slowly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Do things fast (eating,
walking, etc.)

Express feelings 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 “Sit” on feelings
Have many interests 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Have few interests outside

work
Total your score: _____________ Multiply it by 3: _____________. The interpretation of

your score is as follows:

Type of
Number of points personality

Less than 90 B
90 to 99 B�

100 to 105 A�
106 to 119 A
120 or more A�

TABLE 9.2
Profiles of Type A and
Type B Personalities

Type A Profile Type B Profile

Is always moving Is not concerned about time
Walks rapidly Is patient
Eats rapidly Doesn’t brag
Talks rapidly Plays for fun, not to win
Is impatient Relaxes without guilt
Does two things at once Has no pressing deadlines
Can’t cope with leisure time Is mild-mannered
Is obsessed with numbers It never in a hurry
Measures success by quantity
Is aggressive
Is competitive
Constantly feels under time pressure

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286 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

It is now accepted that Type As per se do not predict heart problems, and in fact Type
As may release and better cope with their stress than do Type Bs. The more recent stud-
ies indicate that it is not so much the impatience that is closely associated with Type As
that leads to heart problems, but rather anger and hostility.64 A leading medical
researcher noted that the term “Type A” probably has outlived its usefulness. He stated:
“Being a workaholic, being in a hurry, interrupting people, are not necessarily bad for
your heart. What is bad is if you have high levels of hostility and anger, and you don’t
bother to hide it when dealing with other people.”65 This conclusion was supported by an
organizational psychiatrist who, after extensive study of the causes of stress in Japanese,
German, and American workers, concluded that “how workers handle their own aggres-
sion is the key factor in determining whether they will experience the kind of stress that
can lead to heart attacks, high blood pressure and other health problems.”66 However,
before the relationship of Type A to severe physical outcomes is completely dismissed, it
should be noted that anger, hostility, and aggression sometimes go along with a Type A
personality.

Besides the debate surrounding the impact of Type A personality on health is the ques-
tion of the performance and success of Type As versus Type Bs. It is pretty clear that Type
As perform better67 and are typically on a “fast track” to the top. They are more successful
than Type Bs. However, at the very top they do not tend to be as successful as Type Bs, who
are not overly ambitious, are more patient, and take a broader view of things.68 The key
may be to shift from Type A to Type B behavior, but, of course, most Type As are unable and
unwilling to make the shift and/or to cope with their Type A characteristics.

Personal Control
Besides Type A personality patterns, another important disposition is an individual’s
perception of control. As mentioned in Chapter 5’s discussion on job satisfaction, peo-
ple’s feelings about their ability to control a situation are important in determining their
level of stress. In particular, if employees feel that they have little control over the work
environment and over their own job, they will experience stress.69 Studies have shown
that if employees are given a sense of control over their work environment, such as being
given a chance to be involved in the decision-making process that affects them, this will
reduce their work stress.70 A large study by Cornell University medical researchers
found that those workers who experience a loss of control, especially in relatively low-
level jobs, have triple the risk of developing high blood pressure. The researchers con-
cluded that lack of control turns stress into physical problems. They also found that if a
high-stress job included latitude to control the situation, there was no increase in blood
pressure.71 A study in a hospital setting also found that employee perceptions of the
amount of control they experience at work relate to stress, which in turn affects physio-
logical outcomes such as blood pressure as well as psychological outcomes such as job
satisfaction.72 A recent study also found that job control has an impact on stress and
strain if the employee perceives organizational justice.73 In other words, it may not be
job control per se, but the employee’s perception of fairness that has the resulting impact
on stress.

Learned Helplessness
The feeling of loss of control goes back to some of the classic research on learned help-
lessness conducted by Seligman.74 Chapter 7 introduced this concept in relation to opti-
mism. In conducting experiments on dogs who could not escape shock, Seligman found
that they eventually accepted it and did not even try to escape. Later, when the dogs could
learn to escape easily, they did not—they had learned to be helpless. Other studies found

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 287

that people, too, can learn to be helpless,75 which helps explain why some employees just
seem to have given up and seem to accept stressors in their work environment, even when
a change for the better is possible.

More recently, Seligman and his colleagues have concentrated on people’s attributions
for their lack of control. Specifically, they suggest that people are most apt to experience
helplessness when they perceive the causes of the lack of control:

1. To be related to something about their own personal characteristics (as opposed to out-
side, environmental forces)

2. As stable and enduring (rather than just temporary)

3. To be global and universal (cutting across many situations, rather than in just one sphere
of life)76

Further study and research on the sense of control in general and learned helplessness in
particular will provide much insight into stress and how to cope with it.

Psychological Hardiness
Everyone has observed individual differences of people faced with stressors. Some people
seem to go to pieces at the slightest provocation, whereas others seem unflappable in the
face of extremely stressful situations. Those able to cope successfully with extreme stres-
sors seem to have a “hardiness” disposition.

Kobasa and her colleagues studied executives under considerable stress who were
both measurably hardy and nonhardy. She found that the hardy executives had a lower
rate of stress-related illness and were characterized as having commitment (they became
very involved in what they were doing); welcoming challenge (they believed that
change rather than stability was normal); and feeling in control (they felt they could
influence the events around them).77 She suggests that the predisposition of psycholog-
ical hardiness helps those with it to resist stress by providing buffers between them-
selves and stressors.

Such buffering drawn from hardiness may be an important quality as organizations
now and in the future demand more and more from their employees at all levels. As has
been noted:

Why does the job seem so demanding? It isn’t just long hours or clumsy direction from
above, though there’s plenty of that. All sorts of pressure, from the stress of participatory
management techniques to the hyperkinesia of two-career marriages to the dismay of find-
ing your workload increasing as you near 50, just when you thought you could adopt a more
dignified pace, are working together to squeeze the oomph from heretofore steely-eyed
achievers.78

Kobasa’s research would say that those with hardiness will be able to survive and even
thrive in such an environment, but those who do not possess hardiness may suffer the harm-
ful outcomes of stress and conflict. As concluded by the closely related “toughness”
researchers in positive psychology, “once an individual becomes tough and thereby experi-
ences the sustained energy (with minimal tension) necessary for successful coping, that
person is likely to experience a greater variety of situations as challenging rather than
threatening.”79 Also from the positive organizational behavior literature, in Chapter 7 it was
mentioned that Avey, Luthans, and Jensen recently found that there was a significant nega-
tive relationship between employees’ psychological capital and their reported levels of
stress.80 In other words, employees may be able to draw from their positive psychological
resources (i.e., efficacy, hope, optimism, resiliency, and overall psychological capital) in
order to combat the stressors that they face at work.

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288 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

INTRAINDIVIDUAL CONFLICT

Although stress and conflict are treated differently, they are combined in this one chapter
mainly because of the conceptual similarity between individual dispositional stressors and
intraindividual conflict. After presenting the intraindividual forms of conflict in terms of
frustration, goals, and roles, some more macro interactive conflict models are briefly
reviewed as shown in Figure 9.3.

Conflict Due to

Frustration

Frustration occurs when a motivated drive is blocked before a person reaches a desired
goal. Figure 9.4 illustrates what happens. The barrier may be either overt (outward, or phys-
ical) or covert (inward, or mental-sociopsychological). The frustration model can be useful
in the analysis of not only behavior in general but also specific aspects of on-the-job behav-
ior. Theft of company property and even violence on the job may be a form of an aggres-
sive outcome to job frustration. For example, a summary article on violence in the
workplace noted that even though on-the-job killings have dropped over the last 15 years,
this is because of fewer homicides in places like taxis and convenience stores. Workplace
homicides by “associates”—current and former coworkers, customers, and clients—are

Organizational

Intergroup

Interpersonal

Intra-
individual

CONFLICT
Micro

MacroFIGURE 9.3
Level of Conflict in
Organizational
Behavior

Defense mechanisms
(1) Aggression
(2) Withdrawal
(3) Fixation
(4) Compromise

Frustration

Drive
(deficiency
with direction)

Goal/
incentive
(reduction of
the drives and
fulfillment of
deficiencies)

Barrier
(1) Overt
(2) Covert

Need
(deficiency)

FIGURE 9.4
A Model of
Frustration

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 289

actually on the upswing since 1997.81 In addition, employee crimes, as a form of displaced
aggression (e.g., fictitious sales transactions, illegal kickbacks, and theft of office equip-
ment and retail items meant for sales to customers), is also on the rise.82

There is increasing concern and research on aggression and violence in the workplace.
Although self-reported incidences of workplace aggression are a reaction to frustration,
there is research evidence that individual differences (e.g., trait anger, attribution style,
negative affectivity, attitudes toward revenge, self-control, and previous exposure to
aggressive cultures) account for this aggression,83 but so do situational factors such as
interactional justice and/or abusive supervision.84 Another study also found personality
variables such as stress reaction and control correlated with workplace aggression, and the
incidence of aggression depended on the perception of being victimized by others.85 The
form of aggression may depend on the perception of organizational justice (i.e., the judged
fairness),86 and there is a recent study that violent crime rates in the community of the
workplace predicted the amount of reported aggression at that workplace.87 Implementing
a violence-prevention policy and providing training to supervisors and employees in
workplace-violence awareness seems to decrease the incidence rate for employee-on-
employee violence.88

In addition to aggression and violence, the withdrawal reaction to frustration may be a
major explanation for the “motivational problem” of employees. They may be apathetic or
have “retired on the job” because they are frustrated, not because they have no motivation.
Many employees’ motives have been blocked by dead-end jobs, high degrees of job spe-
cialization, or supervisors who put up barriers. Similar to aggression there is research evi-
dence that both perceived organizational support89 and personality variables90 affect what
manner and what type of withdrawal behaviors employees exhibit. The fixation reaction to
frustration may be used to explain irrational bureaucratic behavior. (The rules become the
ends in themselves, and the frustrated employee pathetically adapts to the barriers.)
Compromise can help explain midcareer changes (frustrated employees go around the bar-
riers) or “living outside the job” (frustrated employees cannot achieve motivated goals on
the job, so they seek fulfillment outside the job). These reactions to frustration often cost
organizations a great deal because of the dysfunctions associated with aggression, with-
drawal, and fixation. In the case of compromise, the employee’s motivation is forced out-
side the organization. Although the discussion so far indicates the dysfunctional nature of
frustration, such negativity should not be automatically assumed.

In some cases frustration may actually result in a positive impact on individual per-
formance and organizational goals. An example is the worker or manager who has high
needs for competence and achievement and/or who has high self-efficacy (see Chapter 7’s
discussion) in being able to do a job well. A person of this type who is frustrated on the job
may react in a traditional defensive manner, but the frustration may result in improved per-
formance. The person may try harder to overcome the barrier or may overcompensate, or
the new direction or goal sought may be more compatible with the organization’s goals. In
addition, one research study found stress and strain levels were lower for participants with
high self-efficacy than for those with lower self-efficacy.91

Once again, it should be remembered that defense mechanisms per se are not bad for the
individual. They play an important role in the psychological adjustment process and are
unhealthy only when they dominate the individual’s personality. Also, those who have suc-
cessfully overcome frustration in the past by learning that it is possible to surmount barriers
or find substitute goals are more tolerant of frustration than those who have never experi-
enced it, or than those who have experienced excesses in frustration. There is also evidence
that “venting” (an emotional reaction of expressing one’s negative feelings to others) has
an adverse affect on performance and amplified the negativity.92 However, in general,

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290 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

a major goal of management should be to eliminate the barriers (imagined, real, or poten-
tial) that are or will be frustrating to employees. This goal may be accomplished through
job redesign efforts (see Chapter 6) that are more compatible with employee motivation or
leadership skills that get the frustrating barriers out of people’s way.

Goal Conflict
Another common source of conflict for an individual is a goal that has both positive and
negative features, or two or more competing goals. Whereas in frustration motives are
blocked before the goal is reached, in goal conflict two or more motives block one another.
For ease of analysis, three separate types of goal conflict are generally identified:

1. Approach-approach conflict, where the individual is motivated to approach two or more
positive but mutually exclusive goals.

2. Approach-avoidance conflict, where the individual is motivated to approach a goal and
at the same time is motivated to avoid it. The single goal contains both positive and neg-
ative characteristics for the individual.

3. Avoidance-avoidance conflict, where the individual is motivated to avoid two or more
negative but mutually exclusive goals.

To varying degrees, each of these forms of goal conflict exists in the modern organization,
but approach-avoidance is most relevant to the analysis of conflict.

Approach-avoidance conflict results from organizational goals having both positive and
negative aspects for organizational participants. Basic research in psychology suggests that
the positive aspects of a given organizational goal are stronger and more salient at a dis-
tance (in time and/or space) than the negative aspects. On the other hand, as a person gets
nearer to the goal, the negative aspects become more pronounced, and at some point the
individual may hesitate or fail to progress any further at the point where approach equals
avoidance. For example, managers engaged in long-range planning typically are very con-
fident of a goal (a strategic plan) they have developed for the future. Yet, as the time gets
near to commit resources and implement the plan, the negative consequences seem to
appear much greater than they did in the developing stage. Managers in such a situation
may reach the point where approach equals avoidance. The result is a great deal of internal
conflict and stress, which may cause indecision, physical reactions, or even depression.

Such approach-avoidance conflict and its aftermath are very common among decision
makers and people in responsible positions in today’s organizations described in the intro-
ductory comments. As noted in a cover story of Fortune, “To the survivors, the revolution
feels something like this: scary, guilty, painful, liberating, disorienting, exhilarating,
empowering, frustrating, fulfilling, confusing, challenging.”93 In other words, as these
terms indicate, many managers in recent years have been experiencing very mixed feelings,
or approach-avoidance reactions. The accompanying OB in Action: Dealing with
Conflicting Goals gives some real-world examples.

Role Conflict and Ambiguity
Closely related to the concept of norms (the “oughts” of behavior), role is defined as a posi-
tion that has expectations evolving from established norms. People living in contemporary
society assume a succession of roles throughout life. A typical sequence of social roles
would be that of child, son or daughter, teenager, college student, boyfriend or girlfriend,
spouse, parent, and grandparent. Each of these roles has recognized expectations that are
acted out like a role in a play.

Besides progressing through a succession of roles such as those just mentioned, the
adult in modern society fills numerous other roles at the same time. It is not uncommon for

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291

the adult middle-class male to be simultaneously playing the roles of husband, father,
provider, son (to elderly parents), worker or manager, student (in a night program), coach
of a Little League baseball team, church member, member of a social club, bridge partner,
poker club member, officer of a community group, and weekend golfer. Women, of course,
also have numerous, often conflicting, roles.94 Although all the roles that men and women
bring into the organization are relevant to their behavior, in the study of organizational
behavior the organizational role is the most important. Roles such as software developer,
clerk, team leader, salesperson, engineer, systems analyst, department head, vice president,
and chairperson of the board often carry conflicting demands and expectations. There is
recent research evidence that such conflict can have a negative impact on well-being95 and
performance and may be affected by cultural differences.96 For example, in a study of
CEOs in international joint ventures, it was found that role conflict was lower when the for-
eign partner was dominant in the venture, but higher when the local parent was dominant.
Role conflict was inversely related to cultural distance.97

There are three major types of role conflict. One type is the conflict between the person
and the role. There may be conflict between the person’s personality and the expectations
of the role. For example, a production worker and member of the union is appointed to head
up a new production team. This new team leader may not really believe in keeping close
control over the workers, and it goes against this individual’s personality to be hard-nosed,
but that is what the head of production expects. A second type is intrarole conflict created
by contradictory expectations about how a given role should be played. Should the new
team leader be autocratic or democratic in dealing with the team members? Finally,
interrole conflict results from the differing requirements of two or more roles that must be

OB in Action: Dealing with Conflicting Goals

How can managers deal with conflicting goals? One way
is by recognizing that conflict exists in every organiza-
tion and cannot be avoided. For example, many man-
agement experts argue that in order to bring about
change, top executives have to be out front rallying the
personnel and showing that they support the change.
On the other hand, these same experts point out that
change has to have a broad cadre of leaders at the mid-
dle and lower levels who are willing to carry the banner
of change. So what is a leader to do: Get out front or
encourage the personnel to assume this responsibility?
The two approaches seem to be in conflict.

Or consider the independence versus interdepen-
dence conflict. Organizations demand that their man-
agers act independently and assume personal initiative
and responsibility for their units. However, when a man-
ager initiates an action that steps on another unit’s toes,
the first manager often is called on the carpet and
encouraged to “be more of a team player.”

Another conflict is that of revenue growth versus cost
containment. If managers spend all their time trying to
grow the business, they face the criticism of not control-
ling their costs. If they put the primary focus on keeping
expenses under control, they are asked why they are not
increasing their revenue base.

What can managers do to deal with these conflicts?
One way is to realize that conflict often forms into a
central dilemma: empowerment versus alignment.
Successful managers explore both approaches and bal-
ance their emphasis accordingly. For example, at
General Motors there long has been a conflict between
achieving low cost per unit through economies of scale
(large-size enterprise) and responding to customer
demands by reducing time to market. At IBM there has
been an ongoing conflict between growing the busi-
ness (raising revenues) and increasing profit (lowering
costs). At Mercedes there has been a continual clash
between factions in the firm who want to design and
build quality cars (engineering emphasis) and those
who argue that many people are unwilling to pay a
premium for the car because they neither want nor
appreciate such innovation (marketing emphasis). The
successful manager often is the one who best can bal-
ance the conflicting demands while not losing sight of
the organization’s overall objectives. Through effective
conflict management, the efforts of all concerned can
be directed toward common goals that hopefully will
be beneficial to both the people involved and the over-
all organization.

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292 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

played at the same time. Work roles and nonwork roles are often in such conflict. For exam-
ple, a successful executive working for a computer company said that she often worked
from 7:30 A.M. to 11:30 P.M. Her long hours led to the breakup of a relationship. When she
got word that her mother was seriously ill, she remembered: “I had about five minutes to be
upset before the phone started ringing again. You get so far into it, you don’t even realize
your life has gotten away from you completely.”98

The production team leader and the fast-climbing executive obviously represent the
extreme cases of organizational role conflict. Yet to varying degrees, depending on the indi-
vidual and the situation, people in every other position in the modern organization also
experience one or all three types of role conflict. Staff engineers are not sure of their real
authority. The clerk in the front office does not know whether to respond to a union-organizing
drive. The examples are endless. The question is not whether role conflict and ambiguity
exist—they do, and they seem inevitable.99 Rather, the key becomes a matter of determining
how role conflict can be resolved or managed.100

INTERACTIVE CONFLICT

Besides the intraindividual aspects of conflict that are closely related to stress, the interac-
tive aspects of conflict are also an important dynamic of organizational behavior. This sec-
tion is specifically concerned with analyzing the interactive conflict that can result at the
interpersonal and intergroup levels in today’s organizations.

Interpersonal Conflict
Those who have interpersonal conflict most often attribute the cause to a personality prob-
lem or defect in the other party. For example, as discussed in Chapter 6, research from attri-
bution theory on the so-called fundamental attribution error suggests that people attribute
others’ behavior to personal factors such as intelligence, ability, motivation, attitudes, or
personality. Whetten and Cameron, however, go beyond this surface explanation and pro-
pose that there are four major sources of interpersonal conflict.101 These can be summa-
rized as follows:

1. Personal differences. Everyone has a unique background because of his or her
upbringing, cultural and family traditions, and socialization processes. Because no one
has the same family background, education, and values, the differences can be a major
source of conflict. Disagreements stemming from the differences “often become highly
emotional and take on moral overtones. A disagreement about who is factually correct
easily turns into a bitter argument over who is morally right.”102

2. Information deficiency. This source of conflict results from communication breakdown
in the organization. It may be that the two people in conflict are using different informa-
tion or that one or both have misinformation. Unlike personal differences, this source of
conflict is not emotionally charged and once corrected, there is little resentment.

3. Role incompatibility. This type of interpersonal conflict draws from both intraindivid-
ual role conflict (discussed in the previous section) and intergroup conflict (discussed in
the next section). Specifically, in today’s horizontal organizations, managers have func-
tions and tasks that are highly interdependent. However, the individual roles of these
managers may be incompatible. For example, the production manager and the sales
manager have interdependent functions: one supports the other. However, a major role
of the production manager is to cut costs, and one way to do this is to keep inventories
low. The sales manager, on the other hand, has a dominant role of increasing revenues
through increased sales. The sales manager may make delivery promises to customers

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 293

that are incompatible with the low inventory levels maintained by production. The
resulting conflict from role incompatibility may have to be resolved by higher-level
management or systems development through advanced information technology.

4. Environmental stress. These types of conflict can be amplified by a stressful environ-
ment. In environments characterized by scarce or shrinking resources, downsizing, com-
petitive pressures, or high degrees of uncertainty, conflict of all kinds will be more
probable. “For example, when a major pet-food manufacturing facility announced that
one-third of its managers would have to support a new third shift, the feared disruption
of personal and family routines prompted many managers to think about sending out
their résumés. In addition, the uncertainty of who was going to be required to work at
night was so great that even routine management work was disrupted by posturing and
infighting.”103

In addition to identifying some of the major sources of interpersonal conflict as in the
preceding, it is useful to analyze the dynamics of individuals interacting with one another.
One way to analyze their confronting others is through the response categories of (1) forc-
ing (assertive, uncooperative); (2) accommodating (unassertive, cooperative); (3) avoiding
(uncooperative, unassertive); (4) compromising (between assertiveness and cooperative-
ness); and (5) collaborating (cooperative, assertive).104 Like role conflict, there is research
indicating the complexity of interindividual and intragroup conflict,105 and it is not always
bad. For example, one study found the following profile of high-performing teams: (1) low
but increasing levels of process conflict; (2) low levels of relationship conflict, with a rise
near project deadlines; and (3) moderate levels of task conflict at the midpoint of group
interaction.106

Intergroup Behavior and Conflict
In addition to interpersonal (which includes intragroup) conflict, social psychologists have
been concerned about intergroup conflict for a number of years. Intergroup behavior is
even specifically identified as follows: “Intergroup behavior occurs whenever individuals
belonging to one group interact, collectively or individually, with another group or its
members in terms of their reference group identification.”107

Several antecedent conditions have been identified for explaining intergroup conflict.
These can be summarized as follows:108

1. Competition for resources. Most organizations today have very limited resources.
Groups within the organization vie for budget funds, space, supplies, personnel, and
support services.

2. Task interdependence. If two groups in the organization depend on one another in a
mutual way or even a one-way direction (as in a sequential technological process), there
tends to be more conflict than if groups are independent of one another. The more
diverse the objectives, priorities, and personnel of the interdependent groups (for exam-
ple, research and operations), the more conflict there tends to be.

3. Jurisdictional ambiguity. This may involve “turf ” problems or overlapping respon
sibilities. For example, conflict might occur when one group attempts to assume more
control or take credit for desirable activities, or give up its part and any responsibility for
undesirable activities.

4. Status struggles. This conflict occurs when one group attempts to improve its status and
another group views this as a threat to its place in the status hierarchy. One group may
also feel it is being inequitably treated in comparison with another group of equal status
in terms of rewards, job assignments, working conditions, privileges, or status symbols.

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294 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

Human resources departments justifiably often feel they are treated inequitably in rela-
tion to marketing, finance, and operations departments.

Groups in conflict behave differently from smoothly cooperating groups. Here is a real-
world example:

A division of Litton Industries needed to integrate West and East Coast operations in order to
provide customers a full spectrum of services. The West Coast group had been running call
centers for 30-some years, were hard working, but resistant to change. The East Coast opera-
tion was cobbled together through recent acquisitions and specialized in enterprise-wide
process consulting. This East Coast group was freewheeling, risk-taking and could care less
about Litton culture and tradition. The resulting conflict left virtually no communication or
unified sense of direction between the two groups. Covert sabotage was routinely waged by
both sides to dilute one another’s effectiveness.109

There is recent research evidence that such groups in conflict change both internally and in
their intergroup perceptions. For example, one study of 70 top management teams found
internally that the degree of trust moderated the relationship between task conflict (the per-
ception of disagreements about decisions made by the group) and relationship conflict (an
emotional perception of interpersonal incompatibility).110 Another study found that low
intragroup cohesiveness and negative relationships across groups were significantly related
to higher perceptions of intergroup conflict.111 Overall, most experts today emphasize the
importance of making a cost-benefit analysis of the conflict situation at any level and then
setting up dispute resolution systems112 and, most recently, setting up systems through
advanced information technology that eliminate conflict inherent in traditional (i.e., hierar-
chical and functional specializations) organization designs.

THE EFFECTS OF STRESS AND INTRAINDIVIDUAL CONFLICT

As has been pointed out, stress and conflict are not automatically bad for individual
employees or their organizational performance. In fact, it is generally recognized that low
levels of stress and conflict can even enhance job performance. For example, one study
found that mild stress, such as getting a new supervisor or being involuntarily transferred,
may have the positive result of an increased search for information in the job.113 This may
lead employees to new and better ways of doing their jobs. Also, mild stress may get
employees’ “juices” flowing and lead to increased activity, change, and overall better per-
formance. People in certain jobs, such as in sales or creative fields (for example, newspa-
per journalists and television announcers who work under time pressures), would seem to
benefit from a mild level of stress. People in other jobs, such as police officers or physi-
cians, may not benefit from constant mild stress.

Research is also emerging that indicates that the level of difficulty, the nature of the
task being performed, personal dispositions (such as Type A, personal control and learned
helplessness, and psychological hardiness, and psychological capital, discussed in previ-
ous sections), other psychological dispositions (such as negative affectivity114), and neu-
roticism115 may affect the relationship between stress and performance. However, it is still
safe to conclude that:

1. The performance of many tasks is in fact strongly affected by stress.

2. Performance usually drops off sharply when stress rises to very high levels.116

It is the dysfunctional effects of high levels of stress and conflict that should be and are
a major concern for contemporary society in general and for effective human resource

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 295

management in particular. The problems due to high levels of stress and conflict can be
exhibited physically, psychologically, or behaviorally by the individual.

Physical Problems Due to Stress and Conflict
Most of the attention and basic research over the years have been devoted to the impact that
stress has on physical health. Specific physical health concerns that have been linked to
stress include the following: (1) immune system problems, where there is a lessened abil-
ity to fight off illness and infection; (2) cardiovascular system problems, such as high blood
pressure and heart disease; (3) musculoskeletal system problems, such as tension
headaches and back pain; and (4) gastrointestinal system problems, such as diarrhea and
constipation.117 For example, heart attacks are a way of life (or death in this case) on stress-
packed Wall Street. For the 5,000 people who work at the stock exchange, the heart attack
death rate is 60 percent higher than the national rate for men between 18 and 65, and it was
one of the first employers to install a defibrillator (used to restart the heart by electric
shock).118 The situation on Wall Street has even worsened in recent years because of the
threat of terrorism, the corporate scandals, and the extreme volatility of the market.

Obviously, serious physical ailments from stress have a drastic effect on the individual;
not always so obvious, but just as serious, are the effects that physical problems such as
heart disease can have on the organization. Ivancevich and Matteson have provided the fol-
lowing worksheet for computing the costs of replacing employees lost to heart disease in a
company employing 4,000 people.119

1. Number of employees 4,000
2. Men in age range 45 to 65 (0.25 � line 1) 1,000
3. Estimated deaths due to heart disease per year (0.006 � line 2) 6
4. Estimated premature retirement due to heart problems per year

(0.003 � line 2) 3
5. Company’s annual personnel losses due to heart disorders

(sum of lines 3 and 4) 9
6. Annual replacement cost: the average cost of hiring and training

replacements for experienced employees (line 5 � $50,000) $450,000
7. Number of employees who will eventually die of heart disease if

present rate continues (0.5 � line 1) 2,000

These figures are just estimates, but they dramatically illustrate how heart disease alone
can affect costs and sheer numbers of employees in a typical organization. Obviously, not
all heart disease can be directly linked to stress; environmental conditions and the person’s
general state of health, heredity, and medical history also certainly contribute. However,
there seems to be enough evidence that stress can and does contribute to this dreaded dis-
ease and to other physical problems as well.

Psychological Problems Due to Stress and Conflict
Although considerable attention has been given to the relationship between stress and phys-
ical health, especially within the medical community, not as much has been given to the
impact of stress on mental health. Yet, at least indirectly if not directly, the psychological
problems resulting from stress may be just as important, if not more important, to day-to-
day job performance as the physical problems.

High levels of stress may be accompanied by anger, anxiety, depression, nervousness,
irritability, tension, and boredom. One study found that stress had the strongest impact on
aggressive actions, such as sabotage, interpersonal aggression, hostility, and complaints.120

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These types of psychological problems from stress, in turn, are especially relevant to poor
job performance, lowered self-esteem,121 resentment of supervision, inability to concen-
trate and make decisions, and job dissatisfaction.122 These outcomes of stress can have a
direct cost effect on the organization. For example, the National Centers for Disease
Control reported that psychological stress is the source of numerous job-related insurance
claims.123 Court cases have also brought stress-related problems stemming from employ-
ment under the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance.124 Experts are predicting that
if the number of stress-related workers’ compensation claims continues to grow at current
rates, these claims will lead all other claims,125 in an era when health care benefits for psy-
chological problems have plummeted.126

Of even greater significance, the outcomes of stress can have a subtle, but very real,
effect on the styles and effectiveness of managers in key positions. For example, managers
who are under constant stress may become very moody, and their subordinates soon learn
not to disturb them, even with important information, because they will just “bite your
head off.” Such managers may also realize, at times, that they are acting this way; they
may feel that they are not living up to the expectations of their important position and suf-
fer a loss of self-esteem. In this state they may also procrastinate and continue to put
things off and not make needed decisions. And, finally, they may resent their boss for try-
ing to get them back on track and begin to hate the job in general. Coworkers, subordi-
nates, and bosses may become very disgusted with such a manager and explain the
behavior away as being the result of a “rotten personality,” when in fact the problems are
the result of stress and conflict. If the manager had a heart attack, everyone would feel
sorry and say that he or she was under too much stress, but a manager’s moodiness, low
self-esteem, inability to make a decision, and dissatisfaction with the boss and the job
cause people to get angry and say that the manager is “no darned good” or “can’t get along
with anyone.” Both a heart attack and a psychological problem may have the same cause
(too much stress and conflict), and although people may react to them differently, the neg-
ative effect on performance is the same in the case of a psychological problem, or perhaps
even worse.

Behavioral Problems Due to Stress and Conflict
As has been the case with other topics covered in this text, the behavioral unit of analysis
may be most helpful—in this case, in analyzing the effects of job stress and conflict. Direct
behaviors that may accompany high levels of stress include undereating or overeating,
sleeplessness, increased smoking and drinking, and drug abuse. When it is realized that
6 percent of the population are alcoholics, that another estimated 10 percent are problem
drinkers, and that several billion doses of amphetamines and barbiturates are consumed
annually,127the potential problems for employee behavior caused by alcohol and drug abuse
become dramatically clear. For example, one company had such a problem with on-the-job
drinking that it bought a breath-alcohol meter to test its employees. The president of the
union in this firm stated: “There were a couple of people who came to work drunk every
day.”128 Although the meter has not been used yet, one worker was overheard to say, “I
guess I’ll have to stop going to the bar at unchtime.”129 Besides being dangerous, as in this
company, which used a lot of dangerous equipment, these problems may be manifested in
tardiness, absenteeism, and turnover.

There is research evidence over the years indicating a relationship between stress and
especially absenteeism and turnover.130 For example, workers may experience stress and
react by getting drunk and staying home from work the next day with a hangover. They then
feel bad about this drinking. They may feel that they are letting everyone down “the morn-
ing after” and eventually quit or are fired from the job. In the meantime the absenteeism rate

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climbs, and subsequently the turnover rate increases, both of which are very costly to the
organization in terms of filling in for absent workers and replacing those who have left.
Staying away from a job that is causing stress or quitting the job is a “flight” reaction to the
situation. Actually, this may be a healthier reaction than a “fight” reaction, in which the per-
son may stay on the stress-producing job and become angry and/or aggressive.

Like the psychological problems resulting from stress and conflict, the behavioral prob-
lems are often not attributed to stress by coworkers or supervisors and generate little sym-
pathy. But, also like the psychological and the physical symptoms of stress, the behavioral
problems can be controlled, more effectively managed, and even prevented by the individ-
ual and the organization. These coping strategies are discussed next.

COPING STRATEGIES FOR STRESS AND CONFLICT

Much of the discussion so far in this chapter and, at least indirectly, a lot of the material in
previous and subsequent chapters (for example, discussions of job design, goal setting,
organizational behavior modification, group dynamics, political strategies, leadership
styles, organization processes and design, control techniques, management of change, and
organization development techniques) suggest ways to manage and cope more effectively
with stress and conflict. There are even overall theories being developed on coping with
stress,131 basic research on the role that personality132 and trust133 can play in coping with
stress and conflict in organizations, and practical guidelines for converting stress into suc-
cess.134 The accompanying OB in Action: Taking Time to Manage Time suggests some
simple techniques, such as time management, that can be used to cope with stress, and
there are many lists of steps to take in order to avoid stress and burnout found in the prac-
titioner literature.135

OB in Action: Taking Time to Manage Time

One of the major causes of stress for managers comes
from time pressures. No matter how fast some managers
work and how much time they put in, they are still
unable to get all their work done. One of the most effec-
tive ways of dealing with this problem is the use of time
management techniques. Today many organizations
from Chase Manhattan to Exxon to Xerox are training
their managers in how to get more done in less time.
Some of the most helpful guidelines for effective time
management are the following:

1. Make out a “to-do” list that identifies everything
that must be done during the day. This helps keep
track of work progress.

2. Delegate as much minor work as possible to subor-
dinates.

3. Determine when you do the best work—morning or
afternoon—and schedule the most difficult assign-
ments for this time period.

4. Set time aside during the day, preferably at least one
hour, when visitors or other interruptions are not
permitted.

5. Have the secretary screen all incoming calls in order
to turn away those that are minor or do not require
your personal attention.

6. Eat lunch in the office one or two days a week in
order to save time and give yourself the opportunity
to catch up on paperwork.

7. Discourage drop-in visitors by turning your desk so
that you do not have eye contact with the door or
hallway.

8. Read standing up. The average person reads faster
and more accurately when in a slightly uncomfort-
able position.

9. Make telephone calls between 4:30 and 5:00 P.M.
People tend to keep these conversations brief so
that they can go home.

10. Do not feel guilty about those things that have not
been accomplished today. Put them on the top of
the “to-do” list for tomorrow.

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Interactive behavior at both the interpersonal and intergroup levels resulting in conflict
rather than stress per se has its own solutions for coping and managing. For example, a win-
win strategy of conflict resolution or types of strategies such as avoidance, defusion, con-
tainment, or confrontation136 are well known in conflict management and there is emerging
basic research indicating how conflict management can influence the success of global vir-
tual teams in today’s organizations.137 There continue to be many practitioner-oriented
books138 on resolving conflict in the workplace, but the more academic, research-based
approach has concentrated on negotiation skills. After a summary of both the individual
and organizational coping strategies for stress, the negotiation skills of conflict resolution
conclude the chapter.

Individual Coping Strategies
Today, self-help remedies, do-it-yourself approaches, weight-loss clinics and diets, health
foods, and physical exercise are being given much attention in the mass media. People are
actually taking responsibility, or know they should be taking responsibility, for their own
wellness. Individual coping strategies for dealing with stress make sense. In other words, as
described in the accompanying OB in Action: Making it Work by Not Doing it All, most
people don’t have to be convinced of the value of taking charge and actually making a
change in their lives. Today, this coping responsibility goes beyond physical well-being to
also include psychological well-being, spiritual vitality, and ethics.139

Some specific techniques that individuals can use to eliminate or more effectively man-
age inevitable, prolonged stress are the following:

1. Exercise. Today, it is not whether you win or lose, but whether you get some good
exercise that counts. People of all ages are walking, jogging, swimming, riding bicycles,
or playing softball, tennis, or racquetball in order to get some exercise to combat stress.
Although this seems to make a great deal of sense and many laypeople and physicians
swear by it, there still is no conclusive evidence that exercise will always reduce the
chances of heart disease or stroke. But there seems little doubt that it can help people
better cope with stress, even if only as a result of the side effects, such as relaxation,
enhanced self-esteem, and simply getting one’s mind off work for a while, and thus per-
form better in their daily tasks in the workplace.140

2. Relaxation. Whether a person simply takes it easy once in a while or uses specific
relaxation techniques such as biofeedback or meditation, the intent is to eliminate the
immediately stressful situation or manage a prolonged stressful situation more effec-
tively. Taking it easy may mean curling up with a good book in front of a fireplace or
watching something “light” (not a violent program or a sports program) on television.
There is even some recent research evidence that those who do expressive writing about
stressful events in their lives experience health benefits.141 Meditation involves muscle
and mental relaxation; the person slowly repeats a peaceful phrase or word or concen-
trates on a mental picture in a quiet location. There is growing research evidence that
such meditation can have a desirable physical142 and mental143 impact on people.
Lyubomirsky notes, “An avalanche of studies have shown that meditation has multiple
positive effects on a person’s happiness and positive emotions, on physiology, stress,
cognitive abilities, and physical health, as well as other harder-to-assess attributes, like
‘self-actualization’ and moral maturity.”144 However, whether it can have a practical
impact on job stress is yet to be determined. Nevertheless, a number of firms are using
it. For example, a stockbroker who regularly uses meditation stated: “It’s widely known
that this industry has a lot of stress. So where a lot of people drink alcohol, we meditate.
It’s not that we don’t feel stress. It just doesn’t hit us as much.”

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3. Behavioral self-control. Chapter 12 gives specific attention to behavior management.
By deliberately managing the antecedents and the consequences of their own behavior,
people can achieve self-control. For example, sales managers who have a steady stream
of customer complaints all day could change the antecedent by having an assistant
screen all complaints and allow only exceptions to reach them. They could also manage
the consequences by rewarding themselves with an extra break when they remain calm
and collected after interacting with a particularly angry customer. Besides managing

OB in Action: Making it Work by Not Doing it All

When Sophie Vandebroek was appointed head of Xerox
Corp.’s Canadian research and development operations
several years ago, she didn’t move to its headquarters in
Mississauga, Ontario. Instead, for a year and a half she
would get in her car Monday morning at her Penfield
(N.Y.) home, drive the 2 hours and 42 minutes it took to
get there, and work until 11:00 at night. After a que-
sadilla dinner and a night’s rest at the nearby Holiday
Inn, she would work until 4 on Tuesday afternoon, then
head home. Wednesdays were spent in Xerox research
facilities in Webster, N.Y., near her home. Thursday and
Friday was another round trip to Mississauga.

This was no one-time exercise in extreme commuting
for Vandebroek, who has lived in the same home for the
past 14 years. She has traveled by plane to jobs in
Stamford and Hartford, Conn. When she was pregnant
with her second child, she worked seven hours away, liv-
ing in an apartment during the week while her toddler
daughter, Elena, was home with her husband, Bart, an
engineer.

But Vandebroek would be the first to disabuse any-
one of the idea that she’s a kind of superwoman. To
some degree, she’s simply done what she had to do. Ten
years ago her husband died of a severe asthma attack
while they were camping in the Adirondack Mountains,
leaving Vandebroek to raise their three children an
ocean away from family in Europe. Since then, she’s
made her life work not by trying to do it all, but by
focusing on what’s most important.

An ability to prioritize is part of why Vandebroek, 44,
is such a successful executive. On Jan.1 the 14-year Xerox
veteran became chief technology officer, overseeing its
600 researchers and engineers and directing the $760
million plus the copier maker spends each year on R&D.
“Sophie is one in a million on a level of skill, knowledge,
and intellect,” says Bernard S. Meyerson, CTO for IBM
Systems and Technology Group and a friend of
Vandebroek’s since the early 1990s, when they worked
together in IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center.
“But she maintains her modesty.”

These days, the commute is a relaxing 12 minutes from
her door to Xerox’ Webster campus, but Vandebroek’s
latest job will be a big challenge.

Optimism seems a prerequisite for a job where tak-
ing the wrong path can easily cost millions. So is a lot of
hard work. Vandebroek’s typical workday, when she’s in
Webster, starts at 6:40 A.M., making breakfast for Elena,
17, Arno, 15, and Jonas, 13. At 7:15 they’re on the school
bus, and she’s working out on her rowing machine while
listening to the BBC news on satellite radio. At the
office, the day is usually packed with meetings, many
with participants piped in from one of the four other
research centers she oversees around the world. On a
January day, Vandebroek, dressed in a stylish pants suit
with a silk scarf and high-heeled suede boots, rushed
from one meeting to the next, often stepping aside to
clear the e-mail from her BlackBerry or sip from her ever-
present 1-liter bottle of lime seltzer. She tries to be home
by 6:30 to dine with her kids. Then she spends most
nights reading printouts of e-mails she couldn’t get to
earlier in the day.

A master of efficiency, Vandebroek had to teach her-
self not to be all business at work. In her early days as a
manager she was so focused on getting the job done
that she assumed everyone would buy her arguments on
logic alone. An executive coach assigned to her as part
of Xerox’ talent-development program advised her to
open up, talk about herself. Vandebroek laughs remem-
bering the surprise of her staff when she opened a
Monday morning meeting with a discussion of her
weekend ski trip. Soon she was coordinating Thursday
evening team outings for chicken wings and beer. The
only rule: No talk about work. “It’s about the human
fabric of the organization,” she says, “taking the time to
listen to [employees’] concerns.”

Still, for years many at Xerox didn’t even know she
was a widow. After her husband’s death, Vandebroek
plowed herself into work. In speeches, she often quotes
a Chinese proverb that has guided her: “In crisis there is
opportunity.” Beyond the good that her focus on work
has done for her career, Vandebroek sees ways in which
her family has grown stronger since the tragedy. They
are a close bunch, and she describes her children as
“compassionate,” a rare trait in any teenager.

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their own behavior to reduce stress, people can also become more aware of their limits
and of “red flags” that signal trouble ahead. They can avoid people or situations that they
know will put them under stress. In other words, this strategy involves individuals’ con-
trolling the situation instead of letting the situation control them.

4. Cognitive therapy. Besides behavioral self-control techniques, a number of clinical
psychologists have entered the stress field with cognitive therapy techniques. Techniques
such as Ellis’s rational emotive model and cognitive behavior modification have been
used as an individual strategy for reducing job stress. Building self-efficacy (confidence,
see Chapter 7) through Bandura’s social cognitive theory has also been used.145 Research
has shown that those of low self-efficacy are stressed both emotionally and physiologi-
cally, but those with high self-efficacy are unfazed by heavy workloads.146 Thus, the goal
is to gain or enhance one’s sense of efficacy over stressful situations, as an individual cop-
ing strategy for stress reduction, through successful performance experience, vicarious
experience, social persuasion, and/or controlling physiological and emotional states.147

5. Networking. One clear finding that has come out of social psychology research over
the years is that people need and will benefit from social support.148 Applied as a strat-
egy to reduce job stress, this would entail forming close associations with trusted empa-
thetic coworkers and colleagues who are good listeners and confidence builders. These
friends are there when needed and provide support to get the person through stressful
situations. Today, such alliances, especially if deliberately sought out and developed, are
called networks and now social capital.149 Although the specific relationship between
social support and stress reduction appears complicated,150 there is some research evi-
dence that a networking strategy may be able to help people cope better with job
stress151 and be more effective152 and successful managers.153

Organizational Coping Strategies
Organizational coping strategies are designed by management to eliminate or control
organizational-level stressors in order to prevent or reduce job stress for individual employees.
Earlier in the chapter, the organizational stressors were categorized in terms of overall poli-
cies and strategies, structure and design processes/functions, and working conditions (see
Figure 9.2). A major challenge facing the management of conflict at this organization level
is to answer questions such as: “How do you ensure that relevant information gets trans-
ferred between two parts of an organization that have different cultures? How do you
encourage people from units competing for scare corporate resources to work together?”154

It logically follows that each of these areas would be the focus of attention in developing
organizational coping strategies. In other words, each of the specific stressors would be
worked on in order to eliminate or reduce job stress. For example, in the policy area, atten-
tion would be given to making performance reviews and pay plans as equitable and as fair
as possible. In the structural area, steps would be taken to back away from high degrees of
formalization and specialization. The same would be done in the areas of physical condi-
tions (for example, safety hazards would be removed, and lighting, noise, and temperature
would be improved) and processes/functions (for example, communication and informa-
tion sharing would be improved, and ambiguous or conflicting goals would be clarified or
resolved). With increased globalization, the coping strategies to manage the stress of expa-
triates has received increased attention. For example, one study found that the effectiveness
of problem-focused coping strategies of expatriate adjustment is moderated by cultural dis-
tance and position level but not by time on the assignment.155

Today, firms such as Hewlett-Packard and the large software firm SAS realize they are
putting tremendous pressure on employees in competitive battles and are giving considerable

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 301

effort to de-stressing the organization. For example, H-P requires employees to have personal/
leisure goals (e.g., weight loss, exercise, take time off for the family) as well as job goals.
If employees fall short of their personal/leisure goals, supervisors are held responsible.
When a milestone is reached, for example, leaving at 2:00 P.M. to take a daughter in-line
skating, coworkers are encouraged to applaud with the same gusto as landing a big sales
order. At SAS they not only have all the usual benefits but also nutrition counseling, youth
day camps, and medical facilities on-site. The firm’s 4,000 employees bring 700 children
to the day care facility and will soon enroll them in SAS kindergarten.

The Association for Fitness in Business estimates that thousands of companies today offer
stress-coping programs ranging from counseling services, lunchtime stress-management
seminars, and wellness publications to elaborate company-run fitness centers where employ-
ees can sweat out the tension. There is evidence that these stress management programs are
increasing and are being evaluated more rigorously.156 Some are getting quite creative. For
example, Pixar (the movie maker) created Pixar University (PU), an in-house operation with
free classes for employees in data programming, tai chi, gesture drawing, improvisational
acting, and juggling.

In general, most firms today are trying to reduce stress and conflict through work-family
initiatives. These involve both reorganization initiatives (e.g., restructuring of jobs and job
duties, telecommuting, part-time work and job sharing, and flexible scheduling) and work
and life benefit policies and programs (e.g., on-site child care and/or elder care, paid family
and medical leave, release time for personal/family events, and limits on frequency and
distance of business travel).

Employee assistance programs (EAPs) have also become a very valuable organizational
response to help employees cope with stress. EAPs are currently implemented in over half
of U.S. organizations with 50 or more employees and have been found to consistently
reduce absenteeism, health care costs, and disciplinary action.157 EAPs typically provide
employees with services such as confidential counseling and/or follow-up on issues of per-
sonal or work-related concerns. They also provide family workshops and consultations
(related to marriage, single parenting, working parents), stress management workshops,
relaxation seminars, and other kinds of support. Often, the mere presence of mind that
EAPs provide—knowing that there is support available—can help ease some of the stress
that employees face in today’s environment.158

Besides work-family programs and EAPs, because of the stress resulting from downsiz-
ing in recent years, growing concern is also being given to both those who are let go and
those who survive. For example, theoretical models159 are being created and basic
research160 is being done on coping with job loss. One stream of research has examined the
role that procedural justice (perceptions of fairness) plays on those affected by downsizing.
In three studies (of those already laid off, survivors of a firm that had downsized, and those
scheduled to be laid off), it was found that fair procedural justice had a positive impact.161

A summary of these studies noted:

All three studies showed that the negative effects of layoffs can be blunted by the way com-
pany managers deal with the downsizing. Employees were more hostile when they thought
procedures leading to the layoffs were not handled fairly, with sufficient notice and fair treat-
ment of employees during downsizing. When procedures were seen as fair, employees still
supported and trusted their firms even after the layoffs had occurred.162

Organizations experiencing downsizing need to be sure that those let go are as positive
as possible so that there are not negative repercussions (e.g., in the community or even with
customers). However, of even more concern are those suffering from what was described
earlier as “survivor syndrome.” As one survivor from a downsized firm describes this

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modern-day malady: “Just when we begin to think our jobs are safe, they change the rules
on us. We don’t know who’s in charge, who we can trust or what we’re supposed to be
doing. The more unsettling it gets around here, the less productive we are.”163 The key issue
is not only whether these survivors are stressed-out, but also whether stress is affecting
their performance.

Some guidelines to help downsized organizations combat the problems of survivor syn-
drome include the following:164

1. Be proactive. Before Compaq Computer in Houston laid off 2,000 employees, the cor-
porate human resources department developed a comprehensive communication cam-
paign and trained all managers not only in how to outplace people but also in how to
help survivors.

2. Acknowledge survivors’ emotions. The state of Oregon, which had cut back 1,000
employees, held workshops for survivors that allowed them to vent their frustrations
and develop skills that would allow them to think of change as an opportunity for
growth.

3. Communicate after the downsizing. After laying off 20 percent of its workforce,
Patagonia Inc., an outdoor apparel manufacturer in California, implemented a monthly
(then twice-monthly) open forum during which employees can meet with the CEO dur-
ing work hours to have their questions answered and hear about the firm’s progress. In
the jobholders’ meetings at Pitney Bowes Inc., management gives an employee $50 for
the toughest question asked.

4. Clarify new roles. Not only is there a need for communication of the big picture; it
also is important to explain how each employee’s job has changed, if at all, and relate
how each individual contributes to the new big picture in the downsized organization.

NEGOTIATION SKILLS: GOING BEYOND
CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

In recent years negotiation has moved from the industrial relations field to the forefront of
necessary managerial skills. As Neale and Bazerman noted: “Everyone negotiates. In its
various forms, negotiation is a common mechanism for resolving differences and allocat-
ing resources.” They then define negotiation as “a decision-making process among interde-
pendent parties who do not share identical preferences. It is through negotiation that the
parties decide what each will give and take in their relationship.”165

Although some organizational behavior scholars note that there are similarities between
negotiation strategies and conflict management,166 negotiation can go beyond just resolv-
ing conflict and become a managerial skill for personal and organizational success. For
example, a manager can successfully negotiate a salary raise or a good price for supplies.
After note is taken of some of the biases or errors that negotiators commonly make and the
traditional negotiation techniques that have been used, the remainder of the chapter is
devoted to the newly emerging skills needed for effective negotiation for conflict resolution
and successful careers.

Traditional Negotiation Approaches
When negotiating, people in general and managers in particular tend to have certain biases
and make certain errors, which prevents them from negotiating rationally and getting the
most they can out of a situation. To compound the problem, there is recent research indicating

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 303

that negotiators tend to repeat their mistakes.167 The research on these common mistakes
can be summarized as follows:

1. Negotiators tend to be overly affected by the frame, or form of presentation, of infor-
mation in a negotiation.

2. Negotiators tend to nonrationally escalate commitment to a previously selected course
of action when it is no longer the most reasonable alternative.

3. Negotiators tend to assume that their gain must come at the expense of the other party
and thereby miss opportunities for mutually beneficial trade-offs between the parties.

4. Negotiator judgments tend to be anchored on irrelevant information, such as an initial
offer.

5. Negotiators tend to rely on readily available information.

6. Negotiators tend to fail to consider information that is available by focusing on the
opponent’s perspective.

7. Negotiators tend to be overconfident concerning the likelihood of attaining outcomes
that favor the individual(s) involved.168

Besides these common bias problems, negotiators traditionally have taken either a dis-
tributive or a positional bargaining approach. Distributive bargaining assumes a “fixed pie”
and focuses on how to get the biggest share, or “slice of the pie.” With teams so popular in
today’s organizations, there is growing research on the effectiveness of teams in distributive
bargaining. One study found that teams, more than individuals, developed mutually bene-
ficial trade-offs among issues in the negotiation and discovered compatible interests.
However, the common belief that teams have a relative advantage over individual opponents
in negotiations was not supported by actual outcomes.169 The conflict management strate-
gies of compromising, forcing, accommodating, and avoiding, mentioned earlier, all tend to
be associated with a distributive negotiation strategy. As noted by Whetten and Cameron:

Compromise occurs when both parties make sacrifices in order to find a common ground.
Compromisers are generally more interested in finding an expedient solution. . . . Forcing
and accommodating demand that one party give up its position in order for the conflict to be
resolved. When parties to a conflict avoid resolution, they do so because they assume that
the costs of resolving the conflict are so high that they are better off not even attempting
resolution.170

Closely related to distributed bargaining is the commonly used positional bargaining
approach. This approach to negotiation involves successively taking, and then giving up, a
sequence of positions. In its simplest form, this is what happens when one haggles in an
open market. However, positional bargaining also happens in international diplomacy.
Fisher and Ury note that such positional bargaining can serve a useful purpose: “It tells the
other side what you want; it provides an anchor in an uncertain and pressured situation; and
it can eventually produce the terms of an acceptable agreement.”171

Both distributed and positional bargaining have simplistic strategies such as “tough per-
son,” or “hard”; “easy touch,” or “soft”; or even “split the difference.” Characteristics of the
“hard” strategy include the following: the goal is victory, distrust others, dig in to your
position, make threats, try to win a contest of will, and apply pressure. By contrast, the
“soft” strategy includes these characteristics: the goal is agreement, trust others, change
your position easily, make offers, try to avoid a contest of will, and yield to pressure.172 The
hard bargainer typically dominates and has intuitive appeal. However, both research173 and
everyday practice are beginning to reveal that more effective negotiation approaches than
these traditional strategies are possible.

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Contemporary Negotiation Skills
There are now recognized alternative approaches to traditionally recognized distributed
and positional bargaining and the hard versus soft strategies in negotiation. Whetten and
Cameron suggest an integrative approach that takes an “expanding the pie” perspective
that uses problem-solving techniques to find win-win outcomes.174 Based on a collabo-
rating (rather than a compromising, forcing, accommodating, or avoiding) strategy, the
integrative approach requires the effective negotiator to use skills such as (1) establish-
ing superordinate goals; (2) separating the people from the problem; (3) focusing on
interests, not on positions; (4) inventing options for mutual gain; and (5) using objective
criteria.175

Recent practical guidelines for effective negotiations have grouped the techniques into
degrees of risk to the user as follows:

1. Low-risk negotiation techniques
a. Flattery—subtle flattery usually works best, but the standards may differ by age, sex,

and cultural factors.
b. Addressing the easy point first—this helps build trust and momentum for the tougher

issues.
c. Silence—this can be effective in gaining concessions, but one must be careful not to

provoke anger or frustration in opponents.
d. Inflated opening position—this may elicit a counteroffer that shows the opponent’s

position or may shift the point of compromise.
e. “Oh, poor me”—this may lead to sympathy but could also bring out the killer instinct

in opponents.
2. High-risk negotiation techniques

a. Unexpected temper losses—erupting in anger can break an impasse and get one’s
point across, but it can also be viewed as immature or manipulative and lead oppo-
nents to harden their position.

b. High-balling—this is used to gain trust by appearing to give in to the opponent’s
position, but when overturned by a higher authority, concessions are gained based on
the trust.

c. Boulwarism (“take it or leave it”)—named after a former vice president of GE who
would make only one offer in labor negotiations, this is a highly aggressive strategy
that may also produce anger and frustration in opponents.

d. Waiting until the last moment—after using stall tactics and knowing that a deadline
is near, a reasonable but favorable offer is made, leaving the opponent with little
choice but to accept.176

Besides these low- and high-risk strategies, there are also a number of other negotiation
techniques, such as a two-person team using “good cop–bad cop” (one is tough, followed
by one who is kind), and various psychological ploys, such as insisting that meetings be
held on one’s home turf, scheduling meetings at inconvenient times, or interrupting meet-
ings with phone calls or side meetings.177 There are even guidelines of if, when, and how
to use alcohol in negotiations. As the president of Saber Enterprises notes, when the
Japanese come over to negotiate, it is assumed that you go out to dinner and have several
drinks and toast with sake.178 Because of globalization and the resulting increase of nego-
tiations between parties of different countries, there is emerging research on the dynamics
and strategies of negotiations across cultures.179

In addition to the preceding guidelines for effective negotiation skills, there is an alter-
native to positional bargaining and soft versus hard strategies that has been developed by
the Harvard Negotiation Project. This alternative to traditional negotiation is called the

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 305

principled negotiation, or negotiation on the merits, approach. There are four basic ele-
ments in this alternative approach to negotiation. Very simply, they are:

1. People. Separate the people from the problem.

2. Interests. Focus on interests, not positions.

3. Options. Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do.

4. Criteria. Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.180

The principled skills go beyond hard versus soft and change the game to negotiation on
the basis of merits. For example, in soft bargaining the participants are friends, in hard bar-
gaining they are adversaries, but in the principled approach they are problem solvers; in
soft bargaining the approach is to trust others, in hard bargaining there is distrust of others,
but in the principled approach the negotiator proceeds independent of trust; and in the soft
approach negotiators make offers, in the hard approach they make threats, but in the prin-
cipled approach they explore common interests.181 These principled negotiation skills can
result in a wise agreement. As noted by Fisher and Ury:

The method permits you to reach a gradual consensus on a joint decision efficiently without
all the transactional costs of digging in to positions only to have to dig yourself out of them.
And separating the people from the problem allows you to deal directly and empathetically
with the other negotiator as a human being, thus making possible an amicable agreement.182

Along with social, emotional, behavioral, leadership, team, and communication skills,
these negotiation skills are becoming increasingly recognized as important to management
of not only conflict but also effective management in general.

Summary This chapter examines both stress and conflict. Although not always bad for the person (for
example, the father of stress studies, Hans Selye, feels that complete freedom from stress is
death) or the organization (low levels of stress may lead to performance improvement),
stress is still one of the most important and serious problems facing the field of organiza-
tional behavior. Stress can be comprehensively defined as an adaptive response to an exter-
nal situation that results in physical, psychological, and/or behavioral deviations for
organizational participants. The causes of stress can be categorized into extraorganiza-
tional, organizational, and group stressors, as well as individual stressors and dispositions.
In combination or singly, they represent a tremendous amount of potential stress impinging
on today’s jobholder—at every level and in every type of organization.

In addition to stress, the dynamics of interactive behavior at interpersonal and group lev-
els, and the resulting conflict, play an increasingly important role in the analysis and study
of organizational behavior. Conflict and stress are conceptually and practically similar,
especially at the individual level. Conflict at the intraindividual level involves frustration,
goal conflict, and role conflict and ambiguity. Frustration occurs when goal-directed behav-
ior is blocked. Goal conflict can come about from approach-approach, approach-avoidance,
or avoidance-avoidance situations. Role conflict and ambiguity result from a clash in the
expectations of the various roles possessed by an individual and can take the forms of role
conflict, intrarole conflict, or interrole conflict.

Interpersonal conflict is first examined in terms of its sources (personal differences,
information deficiency, role incompatibility, and environmental stress). Then the analysis
of interpersonal conflict is made through the response categories of forcing, accommodat-
ing, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating. Intergroup conflict has also become
important. The antecedents to intergroup conflict are identified as competition for
resources, task interdependence, jurisdictional ambiguity, and status struggles.

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306 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

The effects of stress and intraindividual conflict can create physical problems (heart dis-
ease, ulcers, arthritis), psychological problems (mood changes, lowered self-esteem,
resentment of supervision, inability to make decisions, and job dissatisfaction), and/or
behavioral problems (tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and accidents). A number of indi-
vidual and organizational strategies have been developed to cope with these stress-induced
problems. Exercise, relaxation, behavioral self-control techniques, cognitive therapy tech-
niques, and networking are some potentially useful coping strategies that individuals can
apply to help combat existing stress. Taking a more proactive approach, management of
organizations tries to eliminate stressors, reduce work-family conflict, and implement
employee assistance programs (EAPs). A special concern for organizations today is to deal
with the stress resulting from downsizing that affects both those laid off and the survivors.
To manage this stress, downsizing organizations must fully communicate and display fair
procedural justice for those let go. To counter survivor syndrome, downsized organizations
can follow such guidelines as being proactive, acknowledging survivors’ emotions, com-
municating after the cuts, and clarifying new roles. In any case, whether on an individual or
an organizational level, steps need to be taken to prevent or reduce the increasing job stress
facing today’s employees.

The last part of the chapter is concerned with negotiation skills. Going beyond industrial
relations and conflict management, negotiation skills are becoming increasingly recog-
nized as important to effective management and personal success. Traditionally, negotia-
tors have depended on distributed and positional bargaining. Relying on simplistic hard or
soft strategies, this traditional approach is now being challenged by more effective alterna-
tive negotiation skills. Practical low-risk strategies include flattery, addressing the easy
points first, silence, inflated opening position, and “oh, poor me.” High-risk strategies
include unexpected temper losses, high-balling, Boulwarism, and waiting until the last
moment. In addition, alternatives to traditional distributed and positional bargaining are the
integrative approach, which uses a problem-solving, collaborative strategy, and the princi-
pled, or negotiation on the merits, approach, which emphasizes people, interests, options,
and criteria. These negotiation skills go beyond hard versus soft strategies and change the
game, leading to a win-win, wise agreement.

Ending with Meta-Analytic Research Findings
OB PRINCIPLE FOR EVIDENCED-BASED PRACTICE
Employees who work abnormally long hours per week will experience more health problems.

Meta-Analysis Results:
[21 studies; 37,623 participants; d = .26] On average, there is a 57 percent probability that
employees who work over 48 hours per week will experience more health problems than
those who work fewer hours. Further analysis also points out that longer working hours are
often associated with poor lifestyle behaviors such as heavy smoking, inadequate diet, and
lack of exercise, which further leads to health problems.

Conclusion:
Due to increasing workloads, job insecurity, and pressures to perform, many individuals are
working longer hours. As a result, there is much concern that stress and fatigue levels are

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 307

on the rise, which leads to negative organizational outcomes such as absenteeism,
decreased performance, and escalating medical expenses. Employees who become dis-
tressed mentally and physically due to working long hours experience work overload.
Overload combined with prolonged exposure to other workplace stressors may result in
health problems such as work-related injuries, accidents, and cardiovascular disease, along
with mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. However, as this chapter on stress
shows, individuals and organizations can buffer the ill effects of stress by enhancing cop-
ing strategies. Exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, and taking time to relax are some
ways individuals can reduce stress. Organizations, too, can help by establishing a support-
ive climate, having well-designed jobs, and reducing role conflict and role ambiguity.

Source: Adapted from Kate Sparks, Cary Cooper, Yitzhak Fried, and Arie Shirom, “The Effects of Hours
of Work on Health: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,
Vol. 70, 1997, pp. 391–408.

OB PRINCIPLE: FOR EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE
Type A personalities experience greater heart rate reactivity than Type Bs.

Meta-Analysis Results:
[78 studies; 3,008 participants; d = .22] On average, there is a 56 percent probability that
Type A personalities will experience greater heart rate reactivity (heart rate and blood
pressure) than Type Bs. Moderator analyses indicated that Type As showed especially
greater cardiovascular reactivity in situations characterized as having positive or negative
feedback and verbal harassment or criticism. Importantly, this study does not indicate that
Type As necessarily have more heart attacks, just greater heart reactivity.

Conclusion:
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among adults in Western industrialized
countries. The role that stress and personality/behavior types such as A and B have with
heart problems has received much attention. Because Type A behavior has the most obvi-
ous link with cardiovascular disease, identifying Type A characteristics and impact has
been closely studied. As this chapter indicates, Type A personalities are hurried and com-
petitive whereas Type Bs are more relaxed and related. Type A behavior would seem to be
desired by organizations, and research has revealed that most managers are in fact Type As,
except at the very top where Type Bs dominate, and in general perform better. However as
this chapter on conflict and stress indicates, Type As may not necessarily need to change
their personalities, which is likely an impossibility, but will need to learn to better cope
with stressful situations that lead to emotional reactions such as anger in order to prevent
physical problems such as heart disease. The key problem is anger, not just hyperactivity.

Source: Adapted from Scott A. Lyness, “Predictors of Differences between Type A and B Individuals in
Heart Rate and Blood Pressure Reactivity,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 114, No 2, 1988, pp. 266–295.

1. How is stress defined? Is it always bad for the individual? Explain.

2. What are the general categories of stressors that can affect job stress? Give some exam-
ples of each.

3. What are some of the dispositions that may influence an individual’s reaction to stress?
Give an example of each.

Questions for
Discussion and
Review

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308 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

4. What is frustration? What are some of its manifestations? How can the frustration
model be used to analyze organizational behavior?

5. Explain approach-avoidance conflict. Give a realistic organizational example of where
it may occur.

6. What are some of the major sources of interpersonal conflict? Which do you think is
most relevant in today’s organizations?

7. How do groups or teams in conflict behave? What are some antecedent conditions of
intergroup conflict?

8. Job stress can have physiological, psychological, and behavioral effects. Give an exam-
ple of each and cite some research findings on the relationship between job stress and
these outcomes.

9. Coping strategies for job stress exist for both the individual and the organizational lev-
els. Summarize and evaluate these various strategies for preventing and/or more effec-
tively managing stress.

10. A modern-day malady is survivor syndrome. What does this refer to, and how can
organizations help combat it?

11. Compare and contrast the traditional versus the new negotiation skills. Why do you
think the new skills lead to better agreements?

Visit the Web sites http://www.mhhe.com/business/management/buildyour
managementskills/typesStress/exercise.html, http://www.stress.org, and http://
www.stresstips.com. These sites provide information on the negative effects of stress in
the workplace. They also have useful tips on how to manage stress in your personal life.
While browsing through, consider the following:

1. What events in the workplace do you think cause the most stress? Does this match up
with what is contained on the Web sites? Give some specific examples.

2. What things can an organization do to help manage stress? Which approach do you feel
would be most effective? Are there any problems or a downside to any of these?

Internet
Exercise:
Managing
Stress in
Organizations

Real Case: When Workers Just Can’t Cope
Until Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities
Act (ADA) in 1990, most companies decided how to
handle such problems on a case-by-case basis, often
depending on such factors as just how challenged the
employee was and how sympathetically the supervisor
responded. And even the ADA didn’t help employers
much with deciding how far to go to accommodate peo-
ple challenged with a disability. The law requires
employers to make all “reasonable” accommodations
for people with disabilities, including mental ones. But
given how subjective and personal psychiatric issues
can be, employers have struggled to develop clear poli-
cies about what to do in such cases.

In the past few years, the courts have begun to delin-
eate how companies must act. The good news for

employers is that the guidelines are surprisingly sym-
pathetic to the dilemmas they face when someone
shows signs of mental illness. If a worker becomes
depressed or suicidal, the employer must try to find a
way to help, by, for example, granting a short leave of
absence or changing his or her work schedule. But
companies don’t have to lower work standards, tolerate
misconduct, or give someone a make-work job—steps
some employers have taken out of fear of a lawsuit,
experts say. A key U.S. Supreme Court case further
clarified the law by specifying that an employee suffer-
ing from mental illness isn’t disabled if medication
allows the person to function like anyone else. “Most
courts are taking a narrow view of who is covered
under the ADA,” says Peggy Mastroianni, an associate

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 309

Real Case: Round-the-Clock Stress
Many employees feel that on-the-job stress is difficult
to control, but at least when they get home they can
relax. However, as the nature of work changes, the
home is no longer the sanctuary it once was. With
advanced information technology and customer
demands for 24-hour service, an increasing number of
employees are on call at all times or working the
“graveyard” shift that used to exist only for factory
workers. For example, today there are numerous Wal-
Mart stores, Walgreens drugstores, and supermarkets
that never close. And consider the Heartland Golf Park
in Deer Park, Long Island. A golfer who wants a late
evening tee-off time can get one up to 3:00 A.M. The
strategy has proven so popular that within 90 days of
the time it was introduced, the wait time at midnight
had grown to two and a half hours. Avid golfers do not
mind, however, as the course is well lit and they can
play as if it were high noon.

All around the country, businesses are realizing that
there is a great deal of profit that can be added to the
bottom line if they remain open outside of “normal”

hours. One research firm estimates that this strategy can
add 5 percent to overall profits, a hefty sum given that
more and more businesses are finding their profit mar-
gins being narrowed by the competition.

In some cases, the decision to expand working
hours has been a result of customer needs. Kinko’s
Inc. moved to a 24-hour schedule when people liter-
ally started banging on their doors after regular busi-
ness hours and asking them to let them come in for
desperately needed photocopies. As a news article
recently put it, “The company’s . . . stores are magnets
for ambassadors of the night: everyone from dreamers
pursuing secret schemes and second careers to execu-
tives putting the final touches on tomorrow’s presenta-
tion.” In Chicago, Kinko’s set up an office in the lobby
of the Stouffer Renaissance Hotel, a favorite spot of
international executives. Customers from different
time zones had been coming down at odd hours to ask
the hotel to fax materials abroad and to help them
with their desktop publishing. The hotel was not
equipped to provide these services, so it asked Kinko’s

legal counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC).

Any signposts are welcome, because mental illness
has posed one of the most difficult challenges to
employers—and the courts—since the ADA took
effect in mid-1992. Each year, clinical depression
alone causes a loss of some 200 million working days
in the United States, according to a report released by
the International Labor Organization. Psychiatric
claims filed with the EEOC doubled in a recent five-
year period. This made them the single largest type of
ADA claim.

A Supreme Court decision went even further. The
case involved two sisters who didn’t qualify to be
pilots at United Airlines Inc. because of poor vision.
The Court ruled that the sisters couldn’t sue for dis-
crimination under the ADA because their disability
was correctable (with glasses or contacts). Since then,
lower courts have applied the ruling to say that
employers can consider the mitigating effects of inter-
ventions such as medication. In other words, if an anti-
depressant drug enables a depressed person to function

normally, he or she isn’t considered disabled and can’t
claim discrimination.

The new guidelines should help employers avoid
being pushed into unreasonable actions. It’s now clear
that companies don’t need to lower their standards to
help a troubled employee, says K. Tia Burke, a
Philadelphia management attorney who had one client
company that did just that. Nor do employers have to
invent light-duty jobs, as other clients have done, says
Burke. “Many employers are so loath to get involved in
these cases that they bend over backwards and provide
more than what is reasonable,” she says.

1. What responsibility do you think an employer has
when an employee has mental illness? Do you agree
with the current legal climate described in the case?

2. How can an employer manage to accommodate those
with mental illness?

3. Can anything be learned from the study and manage-
ment of stress and conflict that can be effectively
applied to mental illness in the workplace?

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310 Part Three Dynamics of Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior Case: Sorry, No Seats Are Left;
Have a Nice Flight

Jim Miller has been a ticket agent for Friendly Airlines
for the past three years. This job is really getting to be
a hassle. In order to try to reduce the mounting losses
that Friendly has suffered in recent months, manage-
ment have decided to do two things: (1) overbook their
flights so that every seat possible will be filled and (2)
increase their service to their customers and live up to
their name. Jim, of course, is at the point of applica-
tion of this new policy. When checking in passengers,
he is supposed to be very courteous and friendly, and
he has been instructed to end every transaction with
the statement, “Have a nice flight.” The problem, of
course, is that sometimes there are more passengers
holding confirmed reservations checking in than there
are seats on the plane. Rightfully, these people become
extremely upset with Jim and sometimes scream at

him and even threaten him. During these confronta-
tions Jim becomes “unglued.” He breaks into a sweat,
and his face turns bright red. The company guidelines
on what to do in these situations are very vague. When
Jim called his supervisor for advice, he was simply
told to try to book passengers on another flight, but be
friendly.

1. Is Jim headed for trouble? What would be some
physical, psychological, and behavioral outcomes of
this type of job stress?

2. What could the company do to help reduce the stress
in Jim’s job?

3. What individual coping strategies could Jim try in
this situation?

to help out. The guests are delighted with the new
service, and the hotel is happy to be able to accommo-
date them thanks to their profitable arrangement with
Kinko’s.

Banks have also begun to offer 24-hour service. In
addition to their ATM machines, which can be found
just about everywhere, some banks now offer round-
the-clock service: customers can call in and find out
within 10 minutes whether they qualify for a new-car
loan. A growing number of banks also offer after-hours
customer services ranging from safe deposit boxes to
$1,000 credit lines to overdraft protection. All the cus-
tomer has to do is call in at any hour and provide the
necessary information.

Some critics are concerned that this development
will result in increasing costs to business and added
stress to employees. After all, when people work late at
night or put in a 15-hour day, they are likely not only to
make far more mistakes than if they were on a 9-to-5
schedule but also to become fatigued and burned out.
Nevertheless, at the present time approximately two-
thirds of all U.S. workers, around 75 million people, do
not work traditional 9-to-5 hours—and the number is

definitely growing. Additionally, organizations that are
engaged in international business, such as brokerage
firms, are finding that their operations in Europe and
Asia require them to keep odd hours. A U.S.-based bro-
ker must be up or on call in the wee hours of the morn-
ing because Europe’s stock exchanges are doing
business. By the time the broker wraps up trading on the
Pacific Stock Exchange in the early evening (Eastern
Standard Time), there are only a few hours before the
Asian stock exchanges open. Simply put, in an increas-
ing number of businesses, it is possible to work round-
the-clock—and, of course, to pick up the stress that goes
along with this lifestyle.

1. How would a Type A personality feel if his or her
organization suddenly announced that everyone was
to be on call 24 hours a day because the company was
moving to round-the-clock customer service?

2. How would psychological hardiness help people deal
with these emerging round-the-clock operations?

3. What are some ways employees and their organiza-
tions could cope with the stress caused by these new
round-the-clock developments?

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Chapter 9 Stress and Conflict 311

Organizational Behavior Case: A Gnawing Stomachache
Sandy Celeste was 40 years old when her divorce
became final. She was forced to go to work to support
her two children. Sandy got married right after graduat-
ing from college and had never really held a full-time
job outside the home. Nevertheless, because of her
enthusiasm, education, and maturity, she impressed the
human resources manager at Devon’s Department Store
and was immediately hired. The position involves super-
vising three departments of men’s and women’s cloth-
ing. Sandy’s training consisted of approximately two
months at another store in the Devon chain. She spent
this training period both selling merchandise and learn-
ing the supervisor’s responsibilities. On the first day of
her supervisory job, Sandy learned that, because of size
constraints at the store, six clothing departments are all
located in the same area. In addition to Sandy, there are
two other supervisors in the other departments. These
three supervisors share the service of 28 full- and part-
time salespeople. Because the various departments are
so jammed together, all the salespeople are expected to
know each department’s merchandise. Devon’s mer-
chandising philosophy is that it will not finish one

department or storewide sale without starting another.
Both the clerks and the supervisors, who work on a
commission and salary basis, are kept busy marking and
remarking the merchandise as one sale stops and
another starts. To make matters worse, Devon’s expects
the employees to re-mark each item just prior to closing
time the night after a big sale. The pressure is intense,
and customers are often neglected and irritated.
However, all the salespeople realize that when the cus-
tomer suffers, so do their commissions. As a supervisor,
Sandy is expected to enforce the company’s policy
rigidly. Soon after taking the position as supervisor,
Sandy began to experience severe headaches and a
gnawing stomachache. She would like to quit her job,
but realistically she can’t because the pay is good and
she needs to support her children.

1. To what do you attribute Sandy’s health problems?
What are some possible extraorganizational, organi-
zational, group, and individual stressors?

2. Is there anything that this company could do to alle-
viate stress for its supervisors? What individual cop-
ing strategies could Sandy try?

Organizational Behavior Case: Drinking Up the Paycheck
James Emery is the father of four children. He was
raised in a hardworking immigrant family. His needs for
achievement and power were developed while he was
growing up. Now he finds himself in a low-paying,
dead-end assembly line job with a large manufacturing
firm. It is all he can do to get through the day, so he has
started daydreaming on the job. On payday he often
goes to the tavern across the street and generally spends
a lot of money. The next day he is not only hungover but
also very depressed because he knows that his wife can-
not make ends meet and his children often go without
the essentials.

Now he cannot take it any longer. At first he thought
of going to his boss for some help and advice, but he
really does not understand himself well enough, and he
certainly does not know or trust his boss enough to dis-
cuss his problems openly with him. Instead, he went to his
union steward and told him about his financial problems

and how much he hated his job. The steward told James
exactly what he wanted to hear. “This darn company is
the source of all your problems. The working conditions
are not suited for a slave, let alone us. The pay also
stinks. We are all going to have to stick together when
our present contract runs out and get what we deserve—
better working conditions and more money.”

1. Explain James’s behavior in terms of the frustration
model.

2. Cite a specific example of role conflict in this case.

3. What type of conflict resolution strategy is the union
steward suggesting? Do you think the real problems
facing James are working conditions and pay? Why
or why not?

4. What, if anything, can be done to help the James
Emerys of the world? Keep your answer related to
human resources management

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Th

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Chapter 10

Conflict and Negotiations

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

1. Understand the different types of conflict.
2. Understand the causes of conflict.
3. Understand the consequences of conflict.
4. Understand how to manage conflict effectively.
5. Understand the stages of the negotiation process.
6. Understand how to avoid common negotiation mistakes.
7. Engage in conflict management and negotiation ethically.
8. Understand cross-cultural differences in conflict and negotiation.

423

Negotiation Failure: The Case of PointCast

Figure 10.1

Many “dot-com” start-ups of the 1990s consisted of little more than a few employees and a room full of servers.

© 2010 Jupiterimages Corporation

In 1997, a company called PointCast Network Inc. was the hottest start-up in
Silicon Valley. Its founder and CEO, Christopher Hassett, was “the most famous
guy on the Internet,” said Hassett’s former attorney, Allen Morgan. Hassett was
named CNet’s newsmaker of the year—an honor previously bestowed on giants
such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry Ellison of Oracle. The “push
technology” that PointCast pioneered was making headlines as well as being
featured on the cover of Wired as “The Radical Future of the Media beyond the
Web.”

All the attention around PointCast motivated one of the world’s largest
communications companies—Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation—to make
them an offer of $450 million. Negotiations were intense and lasted weeks. With
media speculation that PointCast—a company with almost no
revenue—deserved to be valued at $750 million, some people say Hassett
started believing the hype and with the support of his board asked for more
money. “People involved in the company thought they’d be the next Netscape.
They hung out for more,” Murdoch said. The Murdochs, instead, lowered their

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initial offer to $400 million, but added incentive clauses that brought the offer
close to the original $450 million if PointCast met its financial projections.

PointCast also rejected that offer and News Corp walked away from the
bargaining table. The timing couldn’t have been worse for PointCast, as “push”
technology became old news thanks to the maturing of alternatives such as
Yahoo. By the time PointCast decided to go public in 1998, the company was
valued at half of News Corp’s last offer. Worse, the process of filing an initial
public offering (IPO) requires the company to disclose all potential dangers to
investors. PointCast’s disclosures—such as news that customers had left
because of poor performance—scared off so many investors that PointCast
ultimately withdrew its IPO. By that time Hassett had been forced out by the
board, but the company never fully recovered. In the end, PointCast was
acquired in 1999 by Idealab for $7 million. In this case, stalled negotiations cost
the firm a steep price of $443 million.

Referring to the missed opportunity, an industry expert said, “It may go down
as one of the biggest mistakes in Internet history.” According to Steve Lippin,
writing in the Wall Street Journal, “Merger professionals point to these
euphemistically called ‘social issues’—ego and corporate pride, that is—as
among the most difficult aspects of negotiating multibillion-dollar mergers
these days. Although financial issues can be vexing too, these social issues can
be deal-breakers.”

In a similar and more recent situation in 2008, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was
ousted by the Board of Directors following failed deals with Microsoft and
Google. Yang’s behavior during negotiations indicated that he wasn’t interested
in bargaining as much as playing “hard to get.” He “kept saying we should get
more money, we should get more money, and [he was] not realizing how
precarious their position was,” says high-tech analyst Rob Enderle. In other
words, even deals that look great financially can fall apart if participants fail to
pay attention to organizational behavior issues such as perception, groupthink,
and power and influence.

Sources: Arnoldy. B. (2008, November 19). Why Yahoo’s Jerry Yang stepped
down. Retrieved January 20, 2009, from the Christian Science Monitor Web site:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1119/p02s01-usec.html; Auletta, K. (1998,
November 19). The last sure thing. New Yorker; Lipin, S. (1996, August 22). In
many merger deals, ego and pride play big roles in which way talks go. Wall

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1119/p02s01-usec.html

Street Journal, Eastern edition, p. C1; Wired News Report. (1999, May 11).
PointCast fire sale. Wired. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/05/19618.

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http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1999/05/19618

10.1 Understanding Conflict

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define conflict.
2. Understand different types of conflict.
3. Address whether conflict is always negative.

Let’s take a closer look at these social issues such as conflict to understand how they
can derail companies and individuals alike—and what to do to prevent such
consequences from happening to you. In this chapter, you’ll see that managing
conflict and engaging in effective negotiation are both key for effective
organizational behavior within organizations as well as daily life. Conflicts range
from minor annoyances to outright violence. For example, one million workers
(18,000 people per week) are assaulted on the job in the United States
alone.National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. (1997). Violence in the
workplace. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/
violfs.html. One of the major ways to avoid conflicts escalating to these levels is
through understanding the causes of conflict and developing methods for managing
potential negative outcomes. Negotiation is one of the most effective ways to
decrease conflict and will also be examined in depth in this chapter.

Similar to how conflicts can range from minor to major, negotiations vary in terms
of their consequences. A high-stakes negotiation at work might mean the difference
between a company’s survival and its demise. On the other end of the spectrum, we
deal with minor negotiations on a regular basis, such as negotiating with a
coworker about which movie to see. Maybe you make a concession: “OK, we’ll watch
what you want but I get to pick where we eat.” Maybe you hold tough: “I don’t want
to watch anything except a comedy.” Perhaps you even look for a third option that
would mutually satisfy both parties. Regardless of the level, conflict management
and negotiation tactics are important skills that can be learned. First, let’s take a
deeper look at conflict.

Conflict1 is a process that involves people disagreeing. Researchers have noted that
conflict is like the common cold. Everyone knows what it is, but understanding its
causes and how to treat it is much more challenging.Wall, J. A., & Callister, R. R.
(1995). Conflict and its management. Journal of Management, 21, 515–558. As we noted
earlier, conflict can range from minor disagreements to workplace violence. In

1. A process that involves people
disagreeing.

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http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/violfs.html

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/violfs.html

Figure 10.2

Of the conflict between Michael
Dell (shown here) and Steve Jobs,
David Yoffie, a professor at the
Harvard Business School who
closely follows the computer
industry, notes that the conflict
may stem from their differences

addition, there are three types of conflict that can arise within organizations. Let’s
take a look at each of them in turn.

Types of Conflict
Intrapersonal Conflict

Intrapersonal conflict2 arises within a person. For example, when you’re uncertain
about what is expected or wanted, or you have a sense of being inadequate to
perform a task, you are experiencing intrapersonal conflict. Intrapersonal conflict
can arise because of differences in roles. A manager may want to oversee a
subordinate’s work, believing that such oversight is a necessary part of the job. The
subordinate, on the other hand, may consider such extensive oversight to be
micromanagement or evidence of a lack of trust. Role conflict, another type of
intrapersonal conflict, includes having two different job descriptions that seem
mutually exclusive. This type of conflict can arise if you’re the head of one team but
also a member of another team. A third type of intrapersonal conflict involves role
ambiguity. Perhaps you’ve been given the task of finding a trainer for a company’s
business writing training program. You may feel unsure about what kind of person
to hire—a well-known but expensive trainer or a local, unknown but low-priced
trainer. If you haven’t been given guidelines about what’s expected, you may be
wrestling with several options.

Interpersonal Conflict

Interpersonal conflict3 is among individuals such as
coworkers, a manager and an employee, or CEOs and
their staff. For example, in 2006 the CEO of Airbus S.A.S.,
Christian Streiff, resigned because of his conflict with
the board of directors over issues such as how to
restructure the company.Michaels, D., Power, S., &
Gauthier-Villars, D. (2006, October 10). Airbus CEO’s
resignation reflects company’s deep structural woes.
Wall Street Journal, pp. A1–A10. This example may reflect
a well-known trend among CEOs. According to one
estimate, 31.9% of CEOs resigned from their jobs because
they had conflict with the board of
directors.Whitehouse, K. (2008, January 14). Why CEOs
need to be honest with their boards. Wall Street Journal,
Eastern edition, pp. R1–R3. CEOs of competing
companies might also have public conflicts. In 1997,
Michael Dell was asked what he would do about Apple
Computer. “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give
the money back to shareholders.” Ten years later, Steve

2. Conflict that arises within a
person.

3. A type of conflict between two
people.

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in terms of being from different
generations and having different
management styles.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/
Image:Michael_Dell,_square_cro
p .

Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc., indicated he had clearly held
a grudge as he shot back at Dell in an e-mail to his
employees, stating, “Team, it turned out Michael Dell
wasn’t perfect in predicting the future. Based on today’s
stock market close, Apple is worth more than
Dell.”Haddad, C. (2001, April 18). Why Jobs and Dell are
always sparring. Business Week Online. Retrieved May 1,
2008, from http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/
dnflash/apr2001/nf20010418_461.htm; Markoff, J. (2006,
January 16). Michael Dell should eat his words, Apple
chief suggests. New York Times. Retrieved January 19,
2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/
technology/16apple.html. In part, their long-time disagreements stem from their
differences. Interpersonal conflict often arises because of competition, as the Dell/
Apple example shows, or because of personality or values differences. For example,
one person’s style may be to “go with the gut” on decisions, while another person
wants to make decisions based on facts. Those differences will lead to conflict if the
individuals reach different conclusions. Many companies suffer because of
interpersonal conflicts. Keeping conflicts centered around ideas rather than
individual differences is important in avoiding a conflict escalation.

Intergroup Conflict

Figure 10.3

Conflicts such as the Air Canada pilot strike can have ripple effects. For example, Air Canada’s parent company
threatened to cancel a $6.1 billion contract with Boeing for new planes if they were unable to negotiate an
agreement with the pilots who would fly them. Conflict consequences such as these could affect those working at
this Boeing Factory in Seattle, Washington.

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Boeing_Factory_2002 .

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Michael_Dell,_square_crop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Michael_Dell,_square_crop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Michael_Dell,_square_crop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Michael_Dell,_square_crop

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2001/nf20010418_461.htm

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2001/nf20010418_461.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16apple.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16apple.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Boeing_Factory_2002

Intergroup conflict4 is conflict that takes place among different groups. Types of
groups may include different departments or divisions in a company, and employee
union and management, or competing companies that supply the same customers.
Departments may conflict over budget allocations; unions and management may
disagree over work rules; suppliers may conflict with each other on the quality of
parts. Merging two groups together can lead to friction between the
groups—especially if there are scarce resources to be divided among the group. For
example, in what has been called “the most difficult and hard-fought labor issue in
an airline merger,” Canadian Air and Air Canada pilots were locked into years of
personal and legal conflict when the two airlines’ seniority lists were combined
following the merger.Stoykewych, R. E. (2003, March 7). A note on the seniority
resolutions arising out of the merger of Air Canada and Canadian Airlines. Paper
presented at the American Bar Association Midwinter Meeting, Laguna Beach, CA.
Seniority is a valuable and scarce resource for pilots, because it helps to determine
who flies the newest and biggest planes, who receives the best flight routes, and
who is paid the most. In response to the loss of seniority, former Canadian Air pilots
picketed at shareholder meetings, threatened to call in sick, and had ongoing
conflicts with pilots from Air Canada. The conflicts with pilots continue to this day.
The history of past conflicts among organizations and employees makes new deals
challenging.

Is Conflict Always Bad?

Most people are uncomfortable with conflict, but is conflict always bad? Conflict
can be dysfunctional if it paralyzes an organization, leads to less than optimal
performance, or, in the worst case, leads to workplace violence. Surprisingly, a
moderate amount of conflict can actually be a healthy (and necessary) part of
organizational life.Amason, A. C. (1996). Distinguishing the effects of functional and
dysfunctional conflict on strategic decision making: Resolving a paradox for top
management teams. Academy of Management Journal, 39, 123–148. To understand how
to get to a positive level of conflict, we need to understand its root causes,
consequences, and tools to help manage it. The impact of too much or too little
conflict can disrupt performance. If conflict is too low, then performance is low. If
conflict is too high, then performance also tends to be low. The goal is to hold
conflict levels in the middle of this range. While it might seem strange to want a
particular level of conflict, a medium level of task-related conflict is often viewed as
optimal, because it represents a situation in which a healthy debate of ideas takes
place.

4. Conflict that takes place among
different groups, such as
different departments or
divisions in a company, or
between union and
management, or between
companies, such as companies
who supply the same customer.

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Figure 10.4 The Inverted U Relationship Between Performance and Conflict

Task conflict can be good in certain circumstances, such as in the early stages of
decision making, because it stimulates creativity. However, it can interfere with
complex tasks in the long run.De Dreu, C. K. W., & Weingart, L. R. (2003). Task
versus relationship conflict: Team performance, and team member satisfaction: A
meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 741–749. Personal conflicts, such as
personal attacks, are never healthy because they cause stress and distress, which
undermines performance. The worst cases of personal conflicts can lead to
workplace bullying. At Intel Corporation, all new employees go through a 4-hour
training module to learn “constructive confrontation.” The content of the training
program includes dealing with others in a positive manner, using facts rather than
opinion to persuade others, and focusing on the problem at hand rather than the
people involved. “We don’t spend time being defensive or taking things personally.
We cut through all of that and get to the issues,” notes a trainer from Intel
University.Dahle, C. (2001, June). Is the Internet second nature? Fast Company, 48,
144. The success of the training remains unclear, but the presence of this program
indicates that Intel understands the potentially positive effect of a moderate level
of conflict. Research focusing on effective teams across time found that they were
characterized by low but increasing levels of process conflict (how do we get things
done?), low levels of relationship conflict with a rise toward the end of the project
(personal disagreements among team members), and moderate levels of task
conflict in the middle of the task time line.Jehn, K. A., & Mannix, E. A. (2001). The
dynamic nature of conflict: A longitudinal study of intergroup conflict and group
performance. Academy of Management Journal, 44, 238–251.

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K E Y T A K E A W A Y

Conflict can be a problem for individuals and organizations. There are
several different types of conflict, including intrapersonal, interpersonal,
and intergroup conflict. Moderate conflict can be a healthy and necessary
part of organizational life.

E X E R C I S E S

1. What are the types of conflicts that individuals may have at work?
Which type have you experienced the most?

2. What are some primary causes of conflict at work?
3. Explain how miscommunication might be related to a conflict at work.

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10.2 Causes and

Outcomes of Conflict

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Understand different causes of conflict.
2. Understand jobs at risk for conflict.
3. Learn the outcomes of conflict.

There are many potential root causes of conflict at work. We’ll go over six of them
here. Remember, anything that leads to a disagreement can be a cause of conflict.
Although conflict is common to organizations, some organizations have more than
others.

Figure 10.5 Potential Causes of Conflict

Causes of Conflict
Organizational Structure

Conflict tends to take different forms, depending upon the organizational
structure.Jaffe, D. (2000). Organizational theory: Tension and change. New York:
McGraw Hill. For example, if a company uses a matrix structure as its
organizational form, it will have decisional conflict built in, because the structure
specifies that each manager report to two bosses. For example, global company ABB
Inc. is organized around a matrix structure based on the dimensions of country and
industry. This structure can lead to confusion as the company is divided
geographically into 1,200 different units and by industry into 50 different

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units.Taylor, W. (1991, March–April). The logic of global business: An interview with
ABB’s Percy Barnevik. Harvard Business Review, 69, 90–105.

Limited Resources

Resources such as money, time, and equipment are often scarce.

Competition

among people or departments for limited resources is a frequent cause for conflict.
For example, cutting-edge laptops and gadgets such as a BlackBerry or iPhone are
expensive resources that may be allocated to employees on a need-to-have basis in
some companies. When a group of employees have access to such resources while
others do not, conflict may arise among employees or between employees and
management. While technical employees may feel that these devices are crucial to
their productivity, employees with customer contact such as sales representatives
may make the point that these devices are important for them to make a good
impression to clients. Because important resources are often limited, this is one
source of conflict many companies have to live with.

Task Interdependence

Another cause of conflict is task interdependence; that is, when accomplishment of
your goal requires reliance on others to perform their tasks. For example, if you’re
tasked with creating advertising for your product, you’re dependent on the creative
team to design the words and layout, the photographer or videographer to create
the visuals, the media buyer to purchase the advertising space, and so on. The
completion of your goal (airing or publishing your ad) is dependent on others.

Incompatible Goals

Sometimes conflict arises when two parties think that their goals are mutually
exclusive. Within an organization, incompatible goals often arise because of the
different ways department managers are compensated. For example, a sales
manager’s bonus may be tied to how many sales are made for the company. As a
result, the individual might be tempted to offer customers “freebies” such as
expedited delivery in order to make the sale. In contrast, a transportation
manager’s compensation may be based on how much money the company saves on
transit. In this case, the goal might be to eliminate expedited delivery because it
adds expense. The two will butt heads until the company resolves the conflict by
changing the compensation scheme. For example, if the company assigns the bonus
based on profitability of a sale, not just the dollar amount, the cost of the expediting
would be subtracted from the value of the sale. It might still make sense to expedite
the order if the sale is large enough, in which case both parties would support it. On
the other hand, if the expediting negates the value of the sale, neither party would
be in favor of the added expense.

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Personality Differences

Personality differences among coworkers are common. By understanding some
fundamental differences among the way people think and act, we can better
understand how others see the world. Knowing that these differences are natural
and normal lets us anticipate and mitigate interpersonal conflict—it’s often not
about “you” but simply a different way of seeing and behaving. For example, Type A
individuals have been found to have more conflicts with their coworkers than Type
B individuals.Baron, R. A. (1989). Personality and organizational conflict: Type A
behavior pattern and self-monitoring. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
Processes, 44, 281–297.

Communication Problems

Sometimes conflict arises simply out of a small, unintentional communication
problem, such as lost e-mails or dealing with people who don’t return phone calls.
Giving feedback is also a case in which the best intentions can quickly escalate into
a conflict situation. When communicating, be sure to focus on behavior and its
effects, not on the person. For example, say that Jeff always arrives late to all your
meetings. You think he has a bad attitude, but you don’t really know what Jeff’s
attitude is. You do know, however, the effect that Jeff’s behavior has on you. You
could say, “Jeff, when you come late to the meeting, I feel like my time is wasted.”
Jeff can’t argue with that statement, because it is a fact of the impact of his behavior
on you. It’s indisputable, because it is your reality. What Jeff can say is that he did
not intend such an effect, and then you can have a discussion regarding the
behavior.

In another example, the Hershey Company was engaged in talks behind closed
doors with Cadbury Schweppes about a possible merger. No information about this
deal was shared with Hershey’s major stakeholder, the Hershey Trust. When Robert
Vowler, CEO of the Hershey Trust, discovered that talks were underway without
anyone consulting the Trust, tensions between the major stakeholders began to
rise. As Hershey’s continued to underperform, steps were taken in what is now
called the “Sunday night massacre,” in which several board members were forced
to resign and Richard Lenny, Hershey’s then current CEO, retired.Jargon, J.,
Karnitschnig, M., & Lublin, J. S. (2008, February 23). How Hershey went sour. Wall
Street Journal, pp. B1, B5. This example shows how a lack of communication can lead
to an escalation of conflict. Time will tell what the lasting effects of this conflict will
be, but in the short term, effective communication will be the key. Now, let’s turn
our attention to the outcomes of conflict.

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Outcomes of Conflict

One of the most common outcomes of conflict is that it upsets parties in the short
run.Bergman, T. J., & Volkema, R. J. (1989). Understanding and managing
interpersonal conflict at work: Its issues, interactive processes and consequences. In
D. M. Kolb & J. M. Kolb (Eds.), Hidden conflict in organizations (pp. 7–19). Newbury
Park, CA: Sage. However, conflict can have both positive and negative outcomes. On
the positive side, conflict can result in greater creativity or better decisions. For
example, as a result of a disagreement over a policy, a manager may learn from an
employee that newer technologies help solve problems in an unanticipated new
way.

Positive outcomes include the following:

• Consideration of a broader range of ideas, resulting in a better,
stronger idea

• Surfacing of assumptions that may be inaccurate
• Increased participation and creativity
• Clarification of individual views that build learning

On the other hand, conflict can be dysfunctional if it is excessive or involves
personal attacks or underhanded tactics.

Examples of negative outcomes include the following:

• Increased stress and anxiety among individuals, which decreases
productivity and satisfaction

• Feelings of being defeated and demeaned, which lowers individuals’
morale and may increase turnover

• A climate of mistrust, which hinders the teamwork and cooperation
necessary to get work done

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Is Your Job at Risk for Workplace Violence?

You may be at increased risk for workplace violence if your job involves the
following:

• Dealing With People

◦ Caring for others either emotionally or physically, such as at a
nursing home.

◦ Interacting with frustrated customers, such as with retail sales.
◦ Supervising others, such as being a manager.
◦ Denying requests others make of you, such as with customer

service.

• Being in High-Risk Situations

◦ Dealing with valuables or exchanging money, such as in banking.
◦ Handling weapons, such as in law enforcement.
◦ Working with drugs, alcohol, or those under the influence of them,

such as bartending.
◦ Working nights or weekends, such as gas station attendants.

Sources: Adapted from information in LeBlanc, M. M., & Kelloway, E. K. (2002).
Predictors and outcomes of workplace violence and aggression. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 87, 444–453; National Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health. (1997). Violence in the workplace. Retrieved November 12, 2008, from
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/violfs.html; National Institute for Occupational
Safety and Health. (2006). Workplace prevention strategies and research needs.
Retrieved November 12, 2008, from http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2006-144/.

Given these negative outcomes, how can conflict be managed so that it does not
become dysfunctional or even dangerous? We’ll explore this in the next section.

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http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/violfs.html

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2006-144/

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

Conflict has many causes, including organizational structures, limitations on
resources, task interdependence, goal incompatibility, personality
differences, and communication challenges. Outcomes of well-managed
conflict include increased participation and creativity, while negatives of
poorly managed conflict include increased stress and anxiety. Jobs that deal
with people are at higher risk for conflict.

E X E R C I S E S

1. What are some primary causes of conflict at work?
2. What are the outcomes of workplace conflict? Which types of job are the

most at risk for workplace violence? Why do you think that is?
3. What outcomes have you observed from conflict?

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10.3 Conflict Management

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Understand different ways to manage conflict.
2. Understand your own communication style.
3. Learn to stimulate conflict if needed.

There are a number of different ways of managing organizational conflict, which
are highlighted in this section. Conflict management5 refers to resolving
disagreements effectively.

Ways to Manage Conflict
Change the Structure

When structure is a cause of dysfunctional conflict, structural change can be the
solution to resolving the conflict. Consider this situation. Vanessa, the lead
engineer in charge of new product development, has submitted her components list
to Tom, the procurement officer, for purchasing. Tom, as usual, has rejected two of
the key components, refusing the expenditure on the purchase. Vanessa is furious,
saying, “Every time I give you a request to buy a new part, you fight me on it. Why
can’t you ever trust my judgment and honor my request?”

Tom counters, “You’re always choosing the newest, leading-edge parts—they’re
hard to find and expensive to purchase. I’m supposed to keep costs down, and your
requests always break my budget.”

“But when you don’t order the parts we need for a new product, you delay the
whole project,” Vanessa says.

Sharon, the business unit’s vice president, hits upon a structural solution by stating,
“From now on, both of you will be evaluated on the total cost and the overall
performance of the product. You need to work together to keep component costs
low while minimizing quality issues later on.” If the conflict is at an intergroup
level, such as between two departments, a structural solution could be to have
those two departments report to the same executive, who could align their
previously incompatible goals.

5. Resolving disagreements
effectively.

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Change the Composition of the Team

If the conflict is between team members, the easiest solution may be to change the
composition of the team, separating the personalities that were at odds. In
instances in which conflict is attributed to the widely different styles, values, and
preferences of a small number of members, replacing some of these members may
resolve the problem. If that’s not possible because everyone’s skills are needed on
the team and substitutes aren’t available, consider a physical layout solution.
Research has shown that when known antagonists are seated directly across from
each other, the amount of conflict increases. However, when they are seated side by
side, the conflict tends to decrease.Gordon, J., Mondy, R. W., Sharplin, A., &
Premeaux, S. R. (1990). Management and organizational behavior. New York: Simon &
Schuster, p. 540.

Create a Common Opposing Force

Group conflict within an organization can be mitigated by focusing attention on a
common enemy such as the competition. For example, two software groups may be
vying against each other for marketing dollars, each wanting to maximize
advertising money devoted to their product. But, by focusing attention on a
competitor company, the groups may decide to work together to enhance the
marketing effectiveness for the company as a whole. The “enemy” need not be
another company—it could be a concept, such as a recession, that unites previously
warring departments to save jobs during a downturn.

Consider Majority Rule

Sometimes a group conflict can be resolved through majority rule. That is, group
members take a vote, and the idea with the most votes is the one that gets
implemented. The majority rule approach can work if the participants feel that the
procedure is fair. It is important to keep in mind that this strategy will become
ineffective if used repeatedly with the same members typically winning. Moreover,
the approach should be used sparingly. It should follow a healthy discussion of the
issues and points of contention, not be a substitute for that discussion.

Problem Solve

Problem solving is a common approach to resolving conflict. In problem-solving
mode, the individuals or groups in conflict are asked to focus on the problem, not
on each other, and to uncover the root cause of the problem. This approach
recognizes the rarity of one side being completely right and the other being
completely wrong.

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Conflict-Handling Styles

Individuals vary in the way that they handle conflicts. There are five common styles
of handling conflicts. These styles can be mapped onto a grid that shows the
varying degree of cooperation and assertiveness each style entails. Let us look at
each in turn.

Figure 10.6 Conflict-Handling Styles

Avoidance

The avoiding6 style is uncooperative and unassertive. People exhibiting this style
seek to avoid conflict altogether by denying that it is there. They are prone to
postponing any decisions in which a conflict may arise. People using this style may
say things such as, “I don’t really care if we work this out,” or “I don’t think there’s
any problem. I feel fine about how things are.” Conflict avoidance may be habitual
to some people because of personality traits such as the need for affiliation. While
conflict avoidance may not be a significant problem if the issue at hand is trivial, it
becomes a problem when individuals avoid confronting important issues because of
a dislike for conflict or a perceived inability to handle the other party’s reactions.

Accommodation

The accommodating7 style is cooperative and unassertive. In this style, the person
gives in to what the other side wants, even if it means giving up one’s personal
goals. People who use this style may fear speaking up for themselves or they may
place a higher value on the relationship, believing that disagreeing with an idea

6. An uncooperative and
unassertive conflict-handling
style.

7. A cooperative and unassertive
conflict-handling style.

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Figure 10.7

Body language can fuel a conflict.

might be hurtful to the other person. They will say things such as, “Let’s do it your
way” or “If it’s important to you, I can go along with it.” Accommodation may be an
effective strategy if the issue at hand is more important to others compared to
oneself. However, if a person perpetually uses this style, that individual may start to
see that personal interests and well-being are neglected.

Compromise

The compromising8 style is a middle-ground style, in which individuals have some
desire to express their own concerns and get their way but still respect the other
person’s goals. The compromiser may say things such as, “Perhaps I ought to
reconsider my initial position” or “Maybe we can both agree to give in a little.” In a
compromise, each person sacrifices something valuable to them. For example, in
2005 the luxurious Lanesborough Hotel in London advertised incorrect nightly rates
for £35, as opposed to £350. When the hotel received a large number of online
bookings at this rate, the initial reaction was to insist that customers cancel their
reservations and book at the correct rate. The situation was about to lead to a
public relations crisis. As a result, they agreed to book the rooms at the advertised
price for a maximum of three nights, thereby limiting the damage to the hotel’s
bottom line as well as its reputation.Horowitz, A., Jacobson, D., Lasswell, M., &
Thomas, O. (2006, January–February). 101 dumbest moments in business. Business
2.0, 7(1), 98–136.

Competition

People exhibiting a competing9 style want to reach
their goal or get their solution adopted regardless of
what others say or how they feel. They are more
interested in getting the outcome they want as opposed
to keeping the other party happy, and they push for the
deal they are interested in making. Competition may
lead to poor relationships with others if one is always
seeking to maximize their own outcomes at the expense
of others’ well-being. This approach may be effective if
one has strong moral objections to the alternatives or if
the alternatives one is opposing are unethical or
harmful.

8. A middle-ground conflict-
handling style, in which a
person has some desire to
express their own concerns
and get their way but still
respects the other person’s
goals as well.

9. A conflict-handling style that is
highly assertive but low on
cooperation.

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© 2010 Jupiterimages
Corporation

Collaboration

The collaborating10 style is high on both assertiveness
and cooperation. This is a strategy to use for achieving
the best outcome from conflict—both sides argue for
their position, supporting it with facts and rationale
while listening attentively to the other side. The
objective is to find a win–win solution to the problem in which both parties get
what they want. They’ll challenge points but not each other. They’ll emphasize
problem solving and integration of each other’s goals. For example, an employee
who wants to complete an MBA program may have a conflict with management
when he wants to reduce his work hours. Instead of taking opposing positions in
which the employee defends his need to pursue his career goals while the manager
emphasizes the company’s need for the employee, both parties may review
alternatives to find an integrative solution. In the end, the employee may decide to
pursue the degree while taking online classes, and the company may realize that
paying for the employee’s tuition is a worthwhile investment. This may be a
win–win solution to the problem in which no one gives up what is personally
important, and every party gains something from the exchange.

Which Style Is Best?

Like much of organizational behavior, there is no one “right way” to deal with
conflict. Much of the time it will depend on the situation. However, the
collaborative style has the potential to be highly effective in many different
situations.

We do know that most individuals have a dominant style that they tend to use most
frequently. Think of your friend who is always looking for a fight or your coworker
who always backs down from a disagreement. Successful individuals are able to
match their style to the situation. There are times when avoiding a conflict can be a
great choice. For example, if a driver cuts you off in traffic, ignoring it and going on
with your day is a good alternative to “road rage.” However, if a colleague keeps
claiming ownership of your ideas, it may be time for a confrontation. Allowing such
intellectual plagiarism to continue could easily be more destructive to your career
than confronting the individual. Research also shows that when it comes to dealing
with conflict, managers prefer forcing, while their subordinates are more likely to
engage in avoiding, accommodating, or compromising.Howat, G., & London, M.
(1980). Attributions of conflict management strategies in supervisor-subordinate
dyads. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 172–175. It is also likely that individuals will
respond similarly to the person engaging in conflict. For example, if one person is
forcing, others are likely to respond with a forcing tactic as well.10. A conflict-handling style that is

high on both assertiveness and
cooperation.

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What If You Don’t Have Enough Conflict Over Ideas?

Part of effective conflict management is knowing when proper stimulation is
necessary. Many people think that conflict is inherently bad—that it undermines
goals or shows that a group or meeting is not running smoothly. In fact, if there is
no conflict, it may mean that people are silencing themselves and withholding their
opinions. The reality is that within meaningful group discussions there are usually
varying opinions about the best course of action. If people are suppressing their
opinions, the final result may not be the best solution. During healthy debates,
people point out difficulties or weaknesses in a proposed alternative and can work
together to solve them. The key to keeping the disagreement healthy is to keep the
discussion focused on the task, not the personalities. For example, a comment such
as “Jack’s ideas have never worked before. I doubt his current idea will be any
better” is not constructive. Instead, a comment such as “This production step uses a
degreaser that’s considered a hazardous material. Can we think of an alternative
degreaser that’s nontoxic?” is more productive. It challenges the group to improve
upon the existing idea.

Traditionally, Hewlett-Packard Development Company LP was known as a “nice”
organization. Throughout its history, HP viewed itself as a scientific organization,
and their culture valued teamwork and respect. But over time, HP learned that you
can be “nice to death.” In fact, in the 1990s, HP found it difficult to partner with
other organizations because of their culture differences. During role plays created
to help HP managers be more dynamic, the trainers had to modify several role-
plays, because participants simply said, “That would never happen at HP,” over the
smallest conflict. All this probably played a role in the discomfort many felt with
Carly Fiorina’s style as CEO and the merge she orchestrated with Compaq Computer
Corporation, which ultimately caused the board of directors to fire Fiorina. On the
other hand, no one is calling HP “too nice” anymore.

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OB Toolbox: How Can You Stimulate Conflict?

• Encourage people to raise issues and disagree with you or the status quo
without fear of reprisal. An issue festering beneath the surface, when
brought out into the open, may turn out to be a minor issue that
can be easily addressed and resolved.

• Assign a devil’s advocate to stimulate alternative viewpoints. If a
business unit is getting stagnant, bring in new people to “shake
things up.”

• Create a competition among teams, offering a bonus to the team that
comes up with the best solution to a problem. For example, have two
product development teams compete on designing a new product.
Or, reward the team that has the fewest customer complaints or
achieves the highest customer satisfaction rating.

• Build some ambiguity into the process. When individuals are free to
come up with their own ideas about how to complete a task, the
outcome may be surprising, and it allows for more healthy
disagreements along the way.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

Conflict management techniques include changing organizational structures
to avoid built-in conflict, changing team members, creating a common
“enemy,” using majority rules, and problem solving. Conflict management
styles include accommodating others, avoiding the conflict, collaborating,
competing, and compromising. People tend to have a dominant style. At
times it makes sense to build in some conflict over ideas if none exists.

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E X E R C I S E S

1. List three ways to decrease a conflict situation. What are some pros and
cons of each of these approaches?

2. Do you deal with conflict differently with friends and family than you do
at work? If so, why do you think that is?

3. What is your usual conflict-handling style at work? Do you see it as
effective or ineffective?

4. Describe a situation in which not having enough conflict can be a
problem.

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Figure 10.8 The Five Phases
of Negotiation

10.4 Negotiations

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Learn the five phases of negotiation.
2. Learn negotiation strategies.
3. Avoid common mistakes in negotiations.
4. Learn about third-party negotiations.

A common way that parties deal with conflict is via negotiation. Negotiation11 is a
process whereby two or more parties work toward an agreement. There are five
phases of negotiation, which are described below.

The Five Phases of Negotiation
Phase 1: Investigation

The first step in negotiation is the investigation12, or
information gathering stage. This is a key stage that is
often ignored. Surprisingly, the first place to begin is
with yourself: What are your goals for the negotiation?
What do you want to achieve? What would you concede?
What would you absolutely not concede? Leigh
Steinberg, the most powerful agent in sports (he was the
role model for Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Maguire),
puts it this way: “You need the clearest possible view of
your goals. And you need to be brutally honest with
yourself about your priorities.”Webber, A. (1998,
October). How to get them to show you the money. Fast
Company, 198. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/19/
showmoney.html.

During the negotiation, you’ll inevitably be faced with
making choices. It’s best to know what you want, so that
in the heat of the moment you’re able to make the best
decision. For example, if you’ll be negotiating for a new
job, ask yourself, “What do I value most? Is it the salary level? Working with
coworkers whom I like? Working at a prestigious company? Working in a certain

11. A process whereby two or more
parties work toward an
agreement.

12. The first step in negotiation in
which information is gathered.

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http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/19/showmoney.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/19/showmoney.html

geographic area? Do I want a company that will groom me for future positions or do
I want to change jobs often in pursuit of new challenges?”

Phase 2: Determine Your BATNA

If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else.

– Lawrence J. Peter

One important part of the investigation and planning phase is to determine your
BATNA13, which is an acronym that stands for the “best alternative to a negotiated
agreement.” Roger Fisher and William Ury coined this phrase in their book Getting
to Yes: Negotiating without Giving In.

Thinking through your BATNA is important to helping you decide whether to
accept an offer you receive during the negotiation. You need to know what your
alternatives are. If you have various alternatives, you can look at the proposed deal
more critically. Could you get a better outcome than the proposed deal? Your
BATNA will help you reject an unfavorable deal. On the other hand, if the deal is
better than another outcome you could get (that is, better than your BATNA), then
you should accept it.

Think about it in common sense terms: When you know your opponent is desperate
for a deal, you can demand much more. If it looks like they have a lot of other
options outside the negotiation, you’ll be more likely to make concessions.

As Fisher and Ury said, “The reason you negotiate is to produce something better
than the results you can obtain without negotiating. What are those results? What
is that alternative? What is your BATNA—your Best Alternative To a Negotiated
Agreement? That is the standard against which any proposed agreement should be
measured.”Fisher, R., & Ury, W. (1981). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without
giving in. New York: Penguin Books.

The party with the best BATNA has the best negotiating position, so try to improve
your BATNA whenever possible by exploring possible alternatives.Pinkley, R. L.
(1995). Impact of knowledge regarding alternatives to settlement in dyadic
negotiations: Whose knowledge counts? Journal of Applied Psychology, 80, 403–417.

Going back to the example of your new job negotiation, consider your options to the
offer you receive. If your pay is lower than what you want, what alternatives do you

13. Stands for the “best alternative
to a negotiated agreement.”
Determining your BATNA is
one important part of the
investigation and planning
phase in negotiation.

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have? A job with another company? Looking for another job? Going back to school?
While you’re thinking about your BATNA, take some time to think about the other
party’s BATNA. Do they have an employee who could readily replace you?

Once you’ve gotten a clear understanding of your own goals, investigate the person
you’ll be negotiating with. What does that person (or company) want? Put yourself
in the other party’s shoes. What alternatives could they have? For example, in the
job negotiations, the other side wants a good employee at a fair price. That may lead
you to do research on salary levels: What is the pay rate for the position you’re
seeking? What is the culture of the company?

Greenpeace’s goals are to safeguard the environment by getting large companies
and organizations to adopt more environmentally friendly practices such as using
fewer plastic components. Part of the background research Greenpeace engages in
involves uncovering facts. For instance, medical device makers are using harmful
PVCs as a tubing material because PVCs are inexpensive. But are there alternatives
to PVCs that are also cost-effective? Greenpeace’s research found that yes, there
are.Layne, A. (1999, November). Conflict resolution at Greenpeace? Fast Company.
Retrieved November 14, 2008, from http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/1999/
12/rick_hind.html. Knowing this lets Greenpeace counter those arguments and puts
Greenpeace in a stronger position to achieve its goals.

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http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/1999/12/rick_hind.html

http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/1999/12/rick_hind.html

Figure 10.9

All phases of the negotiation
process are important. The
presentation is the one that
normally receives the most

OB Toolbox: BATNA Best Practices

1. Brainstorm a list of alternatives that you might conceivably take if
the negotiation doesn’t lead to a favorable outcome for you.

2. Improve on some of the more promising ideas and convert them
into actionable alternatives.

3. Identify the most beneficial alternative to be kept in reserve as a
fall-back during the negotiation.

4. Remember that your BATNA may evolve over time, so keep
revising it to make sure it is still accurate.

5. Don’t reveal your BATNA to the other party. If your BATNA turns
out to be worse than what the other party expected, their offer
may go down, as PointCast learned in the opening case.

Sources: Adapted from information in Spangler, B. (2003, June). Best Alternative
to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). Retrieved November 12, 2008, from
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/batna/; Conflict Research
Consortium, University of Colorado. (1998). Limits to agreement: Better
alternatives. Retrieved November 12, 2008, from http://www.colorado.edu/
conflict/peace/problem/batna.htm; Venter, D. (2003). What is a BATNA?
Retrieved January 14, 2008, from http://www.negotiationeurope.com/articles/
batna.html.

Phase 3: Presentation

The third phase of negotiation is presentation14. In this
phase, you assemble the information you’ve gathered in
a way that supports your position. In a job hiring or
salary negotiation situation, for instance, you can
present facts that show what you’ve contributed to the
organization in the past (or in a previous position),
which in turn demonstrates your value. Perhaps you
created a blog that brought attention to your company
or got donations or funding for a charity. Perhaps
you’re a team player who brings out the best in a group.

14. The third phase of negotiation.

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http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/batna/

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/problem/batna.htm

http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/problem/batna.htm

http://www.negotiationeurope.com/articles/batna.html

http://www.negotiationeurope.com/articles/batna.html

attention, but the work done
before that point is equally
important.

© 2010 Jupiterimages
Corporation

Phase 4: Bargaining

During the bargaining15 phase, each party discusses
their goals and seeks to get an agreement. A natural
part of this process is making concessions16, namely,
giving up one thing to get something else in return.
Making a concession is not a sign of weakness—parties
expect to give up some of their goals. Rather,
concessions demonstrate cooperativeness and help
move the negotiation toward its conclusion. Making
concessions is particularly important in tense union-management disputes, which
can get bogged down by old issues. Making a concession shows forward movement
and process, and it allays concerns about rigidity or closed-mindedness. What
would a typical concession be? Concessions are often in the areas of money, time,
resources, responsibilities, or autonomy. When negotiating for the purchase of
products, for example, you might agree to pay a higher price in exchange for
getting the products sooner. Alternatively, you could ask to pay a lower price in
exchange for giving the manufacturer more time or flexibility in when they deliver
the product.

One key to the bargaining phase is to ask questions. Don’t simply take a statement
such as “we can’t do that” at face value. Rather, try to find out why the party has
that constraint. Let’s take a look at an example. Say that you’re a retailer and you
want to buy patio furniture from a manufacturer. You want to have the sets in time
for spring sales. During the negotiations, your goal is to get the lowest price with
the earliest delivery date. The manufacturer, of course, wants to get the highest
price with the longest lead time before delivery. As negotiations stall, you evaluate
your options to decide what’s more important: a slightly lower price or a slightly
longer delivery date? You do a quick calculation. The manufacturer has offered to
deliver the products by April 30, but you know that some of your customers make
their patio furniture selection early in the spring, and missing those early sales
could cost you $1 million. So, you suggest that you can accept the April 30 delivery
date if the manufacturer will agree to drop the price by $1 million.

“I appreciate the offer,” the manufacturer replies, “but I can’t accommodate such a
large price cut.” Instead of leaving it at that, you ask, “I’m surprised that a 2-month
delivery would be so costly to you. Tell me more about your manufacturing process
so that I can understand why you can’t manufacture the products in that time
frame.”

“Manufacturing the products in that time frame is not the problem,” the
manufacturer replies, “but getting them shipped from Asia is what’s expensive for
us.”

15. The fourth phase of
negotiation.

16. Giving up one thing to get
something else in return.

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When you hear that, a light bulb goes off. You know that your firm has favorable
contracts with shipping companies because of the high volume of business the firm
gives them. You make the following counteroffer: “Why don’t we agree that my
company will arrange and pay for the shipper, and you agree to have the products
ready to ship on March 30 for $10.5 million instead of $11 million?” The
manufacturer accepts the offer—the biggest expense and constraint (the shipping)
has been lifted. You, in turn, have saved money as well.Adapted from Malhotra, D.,
& Bazerman, M. H. (2007, September). Investigative negotiation. Harvard Business
Review, 85, 72.

Phase 5: Closure

Closure17 is an important part of negotiations. At the close of a negotiation, you and
the other party have either come to an agreement on the terms, or one party has
decided that the final offer is unacceptable and therefore must be walked away
from. Most negotiators assume that if their best offer has been rejected, there’s
nothing left to do. You made your best offer and that’s the best you can do. The
savviest of negotiators, however, see the rejection as an opportunity to learn.
“What would it have taken for us to reach an agreement?”

Recently, a CEO had been in negotiations with a customer. After learning the
customer decided to go with the competition, the CEO decided to inquire as to why
negotiations had fallen through. With nothing left to lose, the CEO placed a call to
the prospect’s vice president and asked why the offer had been rejected, explaining
that the answer would help improve future offerings. Surprisingly, the VP
explained the deal was given to the competitor because, despite charging more, the
competitor offered after-sales service on the product. The CEO was taken by
surprise, originally assuming that the VP was most interested in obtaining the
lowest price possible. In order accommodate a very low price, various extras such as
after-sales service had been cut from the offer. Having learned that the VP was
seeking service, not the lowest cost, the CEO said, “Knowing what I know now, I’m
confident that I could have beaten the competitor’s bid. Would you accept a revised
offer?” The VP agreed, and a week later the CEO had a signed contract.Malhotra, D.,
& Bazerman, M. H. (2007, September). Investigative negotiation. Harvard Business
Review, 85, 72.

Sometimes at the end of negotiations, it’s clear why a deal was not reached. But if
you’re confused about why a deal did not happen, consider making a follow-up call.
Even though you may not win the deal back in the end, you might learn something
that’s useful for future negotiations. What’s more, the other party may be more
willing to disclose the information if they don’t think you’re in a “selling” mode.

17. The last part of negotiation in
which you and the other party
have either come to an
agreement on the terms, or one
party has decided that the final
offer is unacceptable and
therefore must be walked away
from.

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Should You Negotiate for a Higher Salary?

Yes! According to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com, 58% of hiring
managers say they leave some negotiating room when extending initial job
offers. The survey also found that many of the hiring managers agree to a
candidate’s request for a higher salary. “Salary negotiation has become a
growing opportunity in the job acquisition process,” says Bill Hawkins,
president and CEO of The Hawkins Company, a full-service executive search
firm with offices in Los Angeles and Atlanta. “Candidates who fail to make a
counteroffer could forfeit significant income.”

Source: Adapted from information in Reed-Woodard, M. (2007, April). Taking
money off the table. Black Enterprise, 37(9), 60–61.

Negotiation Strategies
Distributive Approach

The distributive view18 of negotiation is the traditional fixed-pie approach. That is,
negotiators see the situation as a pie that they have to divide between them. Each
tries to get more of the pie and “win.” For example, managers may compete over
shares of a budget. If marketing gets a 10% increase in its budget, another
department such as R&D will need to decrease its budget by 10% to offset the
marketing increase. Focusing on a fixed pie is a common mistake in negotiation,
because this view limits the creative solutions possible.

Integrative Approach

A newer, more creative approach to negotiation is called the integrative
approach19. In this approach, both parties look for ways to integrate their goals
under a larger umbrella. That is, they look for ways to expand the pie, so that each
party gets more. This is also called a win–win approach. The first step of the
integrative approach is to enter the negotiation from a cooperative rather than an
adversarial stance. The second step is all about listening. Listening develops trust as
each party learns what the other wants and everyone involved arrives at a mutual
understanding. Then, all parties can explore ways to achieve the individual goals.
The general idea is, “If we put our heads together, we can find a solution that
addresses everybody’s needs.” Unfortunately, integrative outcomes are not the
norm. A summary of 32 experiments on negotiations found that although they
could have resulted in integrated outcomes, only 20% did so.Thompson, L., &

18. The traditional fixed-pie
approach in which negotiators
see the situation as a pie that
they have to divide between
them.

19. An approach to negotiation in
which both parties look for
ways to integrate their goals
under a larger umbrella.

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Hrebec, D. (1996). Lose-lose agreements in interdependent decision making.
Psychological Bulletin, 120, 396–409. One key factor related to finding integrated
solutions is the experience of the negotiators who were able to reach
them.Thompson, L. (1990). Negotiation behavior and outcomes: Empirical evidence
and theoretical issues. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 515–532.

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OB Toolbox: Seven Steps to Negotiating a Higher Salary

• Step 1: Overcome your fear.

◦ The first step is to overcome your fears. Many people don’t
even begin a salary negotiation. We may be afraid of angering
the boss or think that because we are doing a good job, we’ll
automatically be rewarded. But, just because you’re doing a
good job doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get a raise. Why? If
you don’t ask for one, the boss may believe you’re satisfied
with what you’re getting. So why should he pay you more?
Imagine going into a car dealership and being absolutely
delighted with a car choice. The sticker price is $19,000. Would
you pay the dealer $23,000 just because you really like the car?
Of course not. You probably wouldn’t even offer $19,000. If the
car was up for auction, however, and another bidder offered
$20,000, you’d likely increase your offer, too.

◦ That’s what salary negotiation is like. Your boss may be
thrilled with you but at the same time is running a business.
There’s no reason to pay an employee more if you seem
satisfied with your current salary.

• Step 2: Get the facts.

◦ Before you enter into the negotiation, do some background
research. What are other companies paying people in your
position? Check sites such as Payscale.com, salary.com, and
salaryexpert.com to get a feel for the market. Look at surveys
conducted by your professional organization.

• Step 3: Build your case.

◦ How important are you to the organization? How have you
contributed? Perhaps you contributed by increasing sales,
winning over angry customers, getting feuding team members
to cooperate, and so on. Make a list of your contributions. Be
sure to focus on the contributions that your boss values most.
Is it getting recognition for the department? Easing workload?
If another employer has shown interest in you, mention that
as a fact. However, don’t use this as a threat unless you’re
prepared to take the other offer. Mentioning interest from
another employer gets the boss to think, “If I don’t give this

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raise, I may lose the employee.” (By the way, if you don’t feel
you have a strong case for your raise, perhaps this isn’t the
time to ask for one.)

• Step 4: Know what you want.

◦ Set your target salary goal based on your research and the
norms of what your organization will pay. Now ask yourself, if
you don’t get this figure, would you quit? If not, are there
other alternatives besides a salary increase that you’d
consider? For example, would you accept a higher title? More
vacation time? Paid training to learn a new skill? Flexible
hours?

• Step 5: Begin assertively.

◦ Start the discussion on a strong but friendly tone. “I think I’m
worth more than I’m being paid.” List the ways you’ve
contributed to the company.

• Step 6: Don’t make the first offer.

◦ Let your boss name the figure. You can do this by asking, “How
much of a raise could you approve?” However, if the boss
insists that you name a figure, ask for the most that you can
reasonably expect to get. You want to be reasonable, but you
need to allow room to make a concession. Your boss will
assume your opening number was high and will offer you less,
so asking for the actual figure you want may leave you feeling
disappointed.

◦ If the boss opens with, “The salary range for this position is
$66,000 to 78,000,” ask for the high end. If your goal was
higher than that range, challenge the range by explaining how
you are an exception and why you deserve more.

• Step 7: Listen more than talk.

◦ You’ll learn more by listening rather than talking. The more
you listen, the better the boss will feel about you—people tend
to like and trust people who listen to them.

◦ If you can’t get a raise now, get your boss to agree to one in a
few months if you meet agreed-upon objectives.

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Sources: Adapted from information in Brodow, E. (2006). Negotiation boot camp.
New York: Currency/Doubleday; Nemko, M. (2007, December 31). The general
way to get a raise. U.S. News & World Report, 57.

Avoiding Common Mistakes in Negotiations
Failing to Negotiate/Accepting the First Offer

You may have heard that women typically make less money than men. Researchers
have established that about one-third of the gender differences observed in the
salaries of men and women can be traced back to differences in starting salaries,
with women making less, on average, when they start their jobs.Gerhart, B. (1990).
Gender differences in current and starting salaries: The role of performance, college
major, and job title. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 43, 418–433. Some people
are taught to feel that negotiation is a conflict situation, and these individuals may
tend to avoid negotiations to avoid conflict. Research shows that this negotiation
avoidance is especially prevalent among women. For example, one study looked at
students from Carnegie-Mellon who were getting their first job after earning a
master’s degree. The study found that only 7% of the women negotiated their offer,
while men negotiated 57% of the time.CNN. (2003, August 21). Interview with Linda
Babcock. Retrieved November 14, 2008, from http://transcripts.cnn.com/
TRANSCRIPTS/0308/21/se.04.html. The result had profound consequences.
Researchers calculate that people who routinely negotiate salary increases will earn
over $1 million more by retirement than people who accept an initial offer every
time without asking for more.Babcock, L., & Lascheve, S. (2003). Women don’t ask:
Negotiation and the gender divide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. The good
news is that it appears that it is possible to increase negotiation efforts and
confidence by training people to use effective negotiation skills.Stevens, C. K.,
Bavetta, A. G., & Gist, M. E. (1993). Gender differences in the acquisition of salary
negotiation skills: The role of goals, self-efficacy, and perceived control. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 78, 723–735.

Letting Your Ego Get in the Way

Thinking only about yourself is a common mistake, as we saw in the opening case.
People from the United States tend to fall into a self-serving bias in which they
overinflate their own worth and discount the worth of others. This can be a
disadvantage during negotiations. Instead, think about why the other person would
want to accept the deal. People aren’t likely to accept a deal that doesn’t offer any
benefit to them. Help them meet their own goals while you achieve yours.
Integrative outcomes depend on having good listening skills, and if you are thinking

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only about your own needs, you may miss out on important opportunities.
Remember that a good business relationship can only be created and maintained if
both parties get a fair deal.

Having Unrealistic Expectations

Susan Podziba, a professor of mediation at Harvard and MIT, plays broker for some
of the toughest negotiations around, from public policy to marital disputes. She
takes an integrative approach in the negotiations, identifying goals that are large
enough to encompass both sides. As she puts it, “We are never going to be able to sit
at a table with the goal of creating peace and harmony between fishermen and
conservationists. But we can establish goals big enough to include the key interests
of each party and resolve the specific impasse we are currently facing. Setting
reasonable goals at the outset that address each party’s concerns will decrease the
tension in the room, and will improve the chances of reaching an
agreement.”Rothenberger, C. (2008, September 11). Negotiation 201: Refine your
skills. Fast Company. Retrieved January 11, 2008, from
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/team/prob_podziba.html. Those who set
unreasonable expectations are more likely to fail.

Getting Overly Emotional

Negotiations, by their very nature, are emotional. The findings regarding the
outcomes of expressing anger during negotiations are mixed. Some researchers
have found that those who express anger negotiate worse deals than those who do
not,Kopelman, S., Rosette, A. S., & Thompson, L. (2006). The three faces of Eve: An
examination of the strategic display of positive, negative, and neutral emotions in
negotiations. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 99, 81–101. and that
during online negotiations, those parties who encountered anger were more likely
to compete than those who did not.Friedman, R., Anderson, C., Brett, J., Olekalns,
M., Goates, N., & Lisco, C. C. (2004). The positive and negative effects of anger on
dispute resolution: Evidence from electronically mediated disputes. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 89, 369–376. In a study of online negotiations, words such as
despise, disgusted, furious, and hate were related to a reduced chance of reaching an
agreement.Brett, J. M., Olekalns, M., Friedman, R., Goates, N., Anderson, C., & Lisco,
C. C. (2007). Sticks and stones: Language, face, and online dispute resolution.
Academy of Management Journal, 50, 85–99. However, this finding may depend on
individual personalities. Research has also shown that those with more power may
be more effective when displaying anger. The weaker party may perceive the anger
as potentially signaling that the deal is falling apart and may concede items to help
move things along.Van Kleef, G. A., & Cote, S. (2007). Expressing anger in conflict:
When it helps and when it hurts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1557–1569. This
holds for online negotiations as well. In a study of 355 eBay disputes in which

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mediation was requested by one or both of the parties, similar results were found.
Overall, anger hurts the mediation process unless one of the parties was perceived
as much more powerful than the other party, in which case anger hastened a
deal.Friedman, R., Anderson, C., Brett, J., Olekalns, M., Goates, N., & Lisco, C. C.
(2004). The positive and negative effects of anger on dispute resolution: Evidence
from electronically mediated disputes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 369–376.
Another aspect of getting overly emotional is forgetting that facial expressions are
universal across cultures, and when your words and facial expressions don’t match,
you are less likely to be trusted.Hill, D. (2007). Emotionomics: Winning hearts and
minds. Edina, MN: Adams Business & Professional; Holloway, L. (2007, December).
Mixed signals: Are you saying one thing, while your face says otherwise?
Entrepreneur, 35, 49.

Letting Past Negative Outcomes Affect the Present Ones

Research shows that negotiators who had previously experienced ineffective
negotiations were more likely to have failed negotiations in the future. Those who
were unable to negotiate some type of deal in previous negotiation situations
tended to have lower outcomes than those who had successfully negotiated deals in
the past.O’Connor, K. M., Arnold, J. A., & Burris, E. R. (2005). Negotiators’ bargaining
histories and their effects on future negotiation performance. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 90, 350–362. The key to remember is that there is a tendency to let the
past repeat itself. Being aware of this tendency allows you to overcome it. Be
vigilant to examine the issues at hand and not to be overly swayed by past
experiences, especially while you are starting out as a negotiator and have limited
experiences.

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Tips for Negotiation Success

• Focus on agreement first. If you reach an impasse during
negotiations, sometimes the best recourse is to agree that you
disagree on those topics and then focus only on the ones that you
can reach an agreement on. Summarize what you’ve agreed on, so
that everyone feels like they’re agreeing, and leave out the points
you don’t agree on. Then take up those issues again in a different
context, such as over dinner or coffee. Dealing with those issues
separately may help the negotiation process.

• Be patient. If you don’t have a deadline by which an agreement
needs to be reached, use that flexibility to your advantage. The
other party may be forced by circumstances to agree to your
terms, so if you can be patient you may be able to get the best deal.

• Whose reality? During negotiations, each side is presenting their
case—their version of reality. Whose version of reality will prevail?
Leigh Steinberg offers this example from the NFL, when he was
negotiating the salary of Warren Moon. Moon was 41 years old.
That was a fact. Did that mean he was hanging on by a thread and
lucky to be employed in the first place? “Should he be grateful for
any money that the team pays him?” Steinberg posed, “Or is he a
quarterback who was among the league leaders in completions and
attempts last year? Is he a team leader who took a previously
moribund group of players, united them, and helped them have
the best record that they’ve had in recent years?” All those facts
are true, and negotiation brings the relevant facts to the forefront
and argues their merit.

• Deadlines. Research shows that negotiators are more likely to strike
a deal by making more concessions and thinking more creatively
as deadlines loom than at any other time in the negotiation
process.

• Be comfortable with silence. After you have made an offer, allow the
other party to respond. Many people become uncomfortable with
silence and feel they need to say something. Wait and listen
instead.

Sources: Adapted from information in Stuhlmacher, A. F., Gillespie, T. L., &
Champagne, M. V. (1998). The impact of time pressure in negotiation: A meta-
analysis. International Journal of Conflict Management, 9, 97–116; Webber, A. (1998,
October). How to get them to show you the money. Fast Company. Retrieved

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November 13, 2008 from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/19/
showmoney.html.

When All Else Fails: Third-Party Negotiations
Alternative Dispute Resolution

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)20 includes mediation, arbitration, and other
ways of resolving conflicts with the help of a specially trained, neutral third party
without the need for a formal trial or hearing.New York State Unified Court System.
(2008, October 28). Alternative dispute resolution. Retrieved November 14, 2008,
from http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ip/adr/index.shtml. Many companies find this
effective in dealing with challenging problems. For example, Eastman Kodak
Company added an alternative dispute resolution panel of internal employees to
help them handle cases of perceived discrimination and hopefully stop a conflict
from escalating.Deutsch, C. H. (2004, August 24). Race remains a difficult issue for
many workers at Kodak. New York Times.

Mediation

In mediation21, an outside third party (the mediator) enters the situation with the
goal of assisting the parties in reaching an agreement. The mediator can facilitate,
suggest, and recommend. The mediator works with both parties to reach a solution
but does not represent either side. Rather, the mediator’s role is to help the parties
share feelings, air and verify facts, exchange perceptions, and work toward
agreements. Susan Podziba, a mediation expert, has helped get groups that
sometimes have a hard time seeing the other side’s point of view to open up and
talk to one another. Her work includes such groups as pro-choice and pro-life
advocates, individuals from Israel and Palestine, as well as fishermen and
environmentalists. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, “Mediation gives the parties the opportunity to discuss the issues
raised in the charge, clear up misunderstandings, determine the underlying
interests or concerns, find areas of agreement and, ultimately, to incorporate those
areas of agreements into resolutions. A mediator does not resolve the charge or
impose a decision on the parties. Instead, the mediator helps the parties to agree on
a mutually acceptable resolution. The mediation process is strictly
confidential.”The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2007,
December 4). Mediation. Retrieved November 13, 2008, from http://www.eeoc.gov/
mediate/index.html. One of the advantages of mediation is that the mediator helps
the parties design their own solutions, including resolving issues that are important
to both parties, not just the ones under specific dispute. Interestingly, sometimes

20. Includes mediation,
arbitration, and other ways of
resolving conflicts with the
help of a specially trained,
neutral third party without the
need for a formal trial or
hearing.

21. A process in which an outside
third party (the mediator)
enters the situation with the
goal of assisting the parties to
reach an agreement.

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mediation solves a conflict even if no resolution is reached. Here’s a quote from
Avis Ridley-Thomas, the founder and administrator of the Los Angeles City
Attorney’s Dispute Resolution Program, who explains, “Even if there is no
agreement reached in mediation, people are happy that they engaged in the
process. It often opens up the possibility for resolution in ways that people had not
anticipated.”Layne, A. (1999, November). Conflict resolution at Greenpeace? Fast
Company. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.fastcompany.com/
articles/1999/12/rick_hind.html. An independent survey showed 96% of all
respondents and 91% of all charging parties who used mediation would use it again
if offered.Layne, A. (1999, November). Conflict resolution at Greenpeace? Fast
Company. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.fastcompany.com/
articles/1999/12/rick_hind.html.

You Know It’s Time for a Mediator When…

• The parties are unable to find a solution themselves.
• Personal differences are standing in the way of a successful solution.
• The parties have stopped talking with one another.
• Obtaining a quick resolution is important.

Sources: Adapted from information in Crawley, J. (1994). Constructive conflict
management. San Diego: Pfeiffer; Mache, K. (1990). Handbook of dispute resolution:
Alternative dispute resolution in action. London: Routledge.

Arbitration

In contrast to mediation, in which parties work with the mediator to arrive at a
solution, in arbitration22 the parties submit the dispute to the third-party
arbitrator. It is the arbitrator who makes the final decision. The arbitrator is a
neutral third party, but the decision made by the arbitrator is final (the decision is
called the “award”). Awards are made in writing and are binding to the parties
involved in the case.American Arbitration Association. (2007). Arbitration and
mediation. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.adr.org/arb_med.
Arbitration is often used in union-management grievance conflicts.

22. A process that involves
bringing in a third party, the
arbitrator, who has the
authority to act as a judge and
make a binding decision to
which both parties must
adhere.

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Figure 10.10

As a last resort, judges resolve
conflicts.

Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/
wikipedia/commons/4/44/
Supreme_Court_Front_Dusk .

Arbitration-Mediation

It is common to see mediation followed by arbitration.
An alternative technique is to follow the arbitration
with mediation. The format of this conflict resolution
approach is to have both sides formally make their cases
before an arbitrator. The arbitrator then makes a
decision and places it in a sealed envelope. Following
this, the two parties work through mediation. If they
are unable to reach an agreement on their own, the
arbitration decisions become binding. Researchers using
this technique found that it led to voluntary agreements
between the two parties 71% of the time versus 50% for
mediation followed by arbitration.Conlon, D. E., Moon,
H., & Ng, K. Y. (2002). Putting the cart before the horse:
The benefits of arbitrating before mediating. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 87, 978–984.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

Negotiation consists of five phases that include investigation, determining
your BATNA, presentation, bargaining, and closure. Different negotiation
strategies include the distributive approach (fixed-pie approach) and the
integrative approach (expanding-the-pie approach). Research shows that
some common mistakes made during negotiations include accepting the
first offer made, letting egos get in the way, having unrealistic expectations,
getting overly emotional, and letting past negative outcomes affect the
present ones. Third-party negotiators are sometimes needed when two sides
cannot agree.

E X E R C I S E S

1. What are the negotiation phases and what goes on during each of them?
2. When negotiating, is establishing a BATNA important? Why or why not?
3. What are the third-party conflict resolution options available?

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10.5 The Role of Ethics and National Culture

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Consider the role of ethics in negotiation.
2. Consider the role of national culture in negotiation.

Ethics and Negotiations

Are hardball tactics OK to use? Sometimes a course of action is legal but is
questionable in terms of ethics. A good rule of thumb is that hardball tactics should
not be used because the negotiation is likely not to be the last time you will interact
with the other party. Therefore, finding a way to make a deal that works for both
sides is preferable. Otherwise, if you have the complete upper hand and use it to
“destroy” the other party, it’s likely that at a future date the other party will have
the upper hand and will use it to retaliate mercilessly against you. What’s more,
your reputation as a negotiator will suffer. As J. Paul Getty said, “My father said:
‘You must never try to make all the money that’s in a deal. Let the other fellow
make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the
money, you won’t have many deals.’”Quote retrieved January 29, 2009, from
http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/keywordquotes/money.

Ethics establish a way of doing what is right, fair, and honest. If your counterpart
feels you are being unfair or dishonest, he or she is less likely to make any
concessions—or even to negotiate with you in the first place.

Here are some tips for ethical negotiations:

• Be honest.
• Keep your promises.
• Follow the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule tells us to treat others the

way we want to be treated. Author Tony Alessandra goes a step further
with the Platinum Rule: “Treat people the way they want to be
treated.” Caring about others enough to treat them the way they want
to be treated helps build long-term relationships based on ethics and
trust.Stark, P. B., & Flaherty, J. (2003). Ethical negotiations: 10 tips to
ensure win–win outcomes. Negotiator Magazine. Retrieved November 11,
2008, from http://www.negotiatormagazine.com/
showarticle.php?file=article106&page=1.

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Negotiation Around the Globe

Not understanding cultural differences is another common mistake. Some cultures
have a higher or lower threshold for conflict. For example, in countries such as
Japan or Korea, the preference is for harmony (called wa in Japan) rather than overt
conflict.Lebra, T. S. (1976). Japanese patterns of behavior. Honolulu, HI: University
Press of Hawaii. Americans and Germans have a much higher tolerance for conflict
as a way of working through issues. In a study of Japanese, German, and American
cultures, it was found that almost half of the preference for different conflict
management styles was related to the country in which participants were
raised.Tinsley, C. (1998). Models of conflict resolution in Japanese, German, and
American cultures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 316–323.

In Japan, much like Pakistan, the tendency is not to trust what is heard from the
other party until a strong relationship is formed. Similarly, in China, conversations
start out with innocuous topics to set a mood of friendliness.U.S. Commerce
Department. (2007). Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.Buyusa.gov.
This differs a great deal from American negotiators who tend to like to “get down to
business” and heavily weigh first offers as reference points that anchor the process
as both sides make demands and later offers.

There are also differences in how individuals from different cultures use
information and offers during the negotiation process. Observations show that
Japanese negotiators tend to use offers as an information exchange process.Adair,
W. L., Weingart, L., & Brett, J. (2007). The timing and function of offers in the U.S.
and Japanese negotiations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1056–1068. Research has
found that American negotiators tend to reveal more information than their
Japanese counterparts.Adair, W. L., Okumua, T., & Brett, J. M. (2001). Negotiation
behavior when cultures collide: The United States and Japan. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 86, 371–385. Japanese negotiators might learn little from a single offer,
but patterns of offers over time are interpreted and factored into their
negotiations. Since Japan is a high-context culture, information is learned from
what is not said as well as from what is said.

Even the way that negotiations are viewed can differ across cultures. For example,
the Western cultures tend to think of negotiations as a business activity rather than
a social activity, but in other cultures, the first step in negotiations is to develop a
trusting relationship. Negotiators in Brazil, for example, seriously damaged
relationships when they tried to push negotiations to continue during the Carnival
festival. “The local guys took that as a disrespectful action,” said Oscar Lopez,
commercial director for Hexaprint, S.A. De C.V. in Mexico. “It took several weeks to
restore confidence and move on.”Teague, P. E. (2006, August 17). Collaboration
trumps negotiations. Purchasing, 135(11), 58.

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Also keep in mind what agreement means in different cultures. For example, in
China, nodding of the head does not mean that the Chinese counterpart is agreeing
to what you are proposing, merely that they are listening and following what you
are saying. “Culturally, Chinese companies and workers do not like to say no,” says
a buyer at a manufacturer based in the United States. Here’s how to overcome the
problem. Instead of phrasing a question as, “Can you do this for us?” which would
put the Chinese official in an uncomfortable position of saying no (which they likely
would not do), rephrase the question as, “How will you do this for us and when will
it be done?”Hannon, D. (2006, May 18). DO’s and DON’Ts of doing business in China.
Purchasing, 135(8), 52.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

Being honest during negotiations, keeping your promises, and treating
others as you would like to be treated all help you negotiate ethically. Not
understanding the culture of a person or group of people you are
negotiating with can be a major mistake. Try to learn as much as you can
about the culture of others involved and be sure to clarify key points along
the way. Also, keep in mind that agreement (e.g., nodding one’s head up and
down or saying “yes, yes”) may not mean the same thing in all cultures.

E X E R C I S E S

1. Is the goal of negotiation to maximize your economic outcome at all
costs? Why or why not? Is it ethical to do so?

2. What are some similarities and differences in conflict management
preference and negotiation practices among different countries around
the globe? Have you had any experiences with individuals from other
cultures? If so, how did it go? How might it have gone better?

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10.6 Conclusion

Conflict can run the gamut from minor annoyances to physically violent situations.
At the same time, conflict can increase creativity and innovation, or it can bring
organizations to a grinding halt. There are many different types of conflict,
including interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intergroup. Within organizations, there
are many common situations that can spur conflict. Certain organizational
structures, such as a matrix structure, can cause any given employee to have
multiple bosses and conflicting or overwhelming demands. A scarcity of resources
for employees to complete tasks is another common cause of organizational
conflict, particularly if groups within the organization compete over those
resources. Of course, simple personality clashes can create intrapersonal conflict in
any situation. Communication problems are also a very common source of conflict
even when no actual problem would exist otherwise. When conflict arises, it can be
handled by any number of methods, each with varying degrees of cooperation and
competitiveness. Different situations require different conflict handling methods,
and no one method is best.

Negotiations occur during many important processes, and possessing astute
negation skills can be an incredible tool. A key component to negotiations involves
having a BATNA, or “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” Negotiations
typically move through five phases, including investigation, determining your
BATNA, presentation, bargaining, and closure. During a negotiation, it is important
not to make any number of common mistakes. These mistakes can include
accepting the first offer, letting ego get in the way, having unrealistic expectations
of the outcome of the negotiation, becoming too emotional during the process, or
being weighed down by previous failures and letting the past repeat itself. It is
important to keep in mind that many cultures have preferential methods for
handling conflict and negotiation. Individuals should understand the cultural
background of others to better navigate what could otherwise become a messy
situation.

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10.7 Exercises

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E T H I C A L D I L E M M A

Imagine that you are part of a bargaining team that has been engaged in
negotiations for 6 long months. One night, as you are getting ready to leave
and are gathering your things, you notice a piece of green paper on the
ground near where Devin, a member of the opposite negotiation team, was
sitting just a few minutes earlier. When you pick it up, you realize that it is a
list of the ideal outcome for the other team.

At first you are ecstatic—this is the information you need to end these
negotiations! Then you begin to recall your organizational behavior course
and all those ethical dilemmas that seemed so easy back then. What should
you do? Should you use the information for your team? I mean, why not,
they were careless enough to leave it behind? On the other hand, would that
be ethical?

Thinking back to that OB course, you recall some key questions you should
ask yourself during negotiations:

• Would this be honest?
• Would this involve keeping my promises?
• Would I be following the Platinum Rule and be “treating people the way

they want to be treated?”

As you are pondering these questions, you also realize that this is a key
decision. There are some additional questions you should ask yourself
around making ethical decisions if you plan on using this information to
help your team:

• Is this decision fair?
• Will I feel better or worse about myself after I make this decision?
• Does this decision break any organizational rules?
• Does this decision break any laws?
• How would I feel if this decision were broadcast on the news?

Just as you think you’ve made your decision, Devin from the opposing team
walks back in and asks you if you’ve seen a green piece of paper.

• What would you do?
• What are the ethical dilemmas involved?
• How would you justify your choice?
• What would be the consequences of your choice?

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I N D I V I D U A L E X E R C I S E

A Case of Listening: When Silence Is GoldenDevine, W. (2002, September 30).
Anatomy of a deal-maker. California Real Estate Journal. Retrieved November
14, 2008 from http://www.wdesquire.com/pages/dealmaker.html.

Listening can be an effective tool during negotiations. William Devine was
representing a client on a land purchase. “The owner and I spent 2 hours on
the phone horse-trading contract issues, then turned to the price,” Devine
explained. “We were $100,000 apart.” The owner then said, “The price your
client proposes will leave us well short of our projections. That makes it very
tough on us.” The line went silent.

“My impulse was to say something in response to the silence, and I started
to speak, then stopped. As I hesitated, I sensed that if I said, ‘My client can
pay all cash,’ or ‘It’s still a good deal for you,’ then the owner would take my
comment as an invitation to joust, we would battle over the hundred grand,
and my client would end up having to pay some or all of that sum. The
owner had not asked a question or proposed a compromise, so no response
was required from me at that moment. I decided to remain silent. After what
felt like days but was probably less than 30 seconds, I heard, ‘But I guess it’s
good for us [i.e., his company] to just get this deal done, so we’ll do it.’”

Devine saved his client $100,000 by staying silent.

Questions to Think About

1. What does this case suggest about the role of silence in negotiations?
2. Have you ever had a similar experience when saying nothing paid off?
3. Are there times when silence is a bad idea? Explain your answer.

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G R O U P E X E R C I S E

Salary Negotiations

Thinking about negotiations is a lot easier than actually engaging in them.
In order to give you some practice with the information in this chapter, you
will engage in a salary negotiation.

1. To make this more meaningful, the exercise will be based on a job that
you are actually interested in. Think of a job you would like to have
(either now or in the future). Imagine you have been offered this job.
The salary is OK. It is about 15% below the market rate for this type of
job, but you really want the job.

2. What will you do?

◦ Will you negotiate for a higher salary?
◦ What are the pros and cons of this choice?

3. If you’ve decided to negotiate (and we strongly suggest you do), work
through the next six steps in the OB Toolbox “Seven Steps to
Negotiating a Higher Salary.” Once you are up to step 5, let your
instructor know you are ready to begin the negotiation process.

Chapter 10 Conflict and Negotiations

10.7 Exercises 471

• Licensing

Chapter 10 Conflict and Negotiations
10.1 Understanding Conflict
10.2 Causes and Outcomes of Conflict
10.3 Conflict Management
10.4 Negotiations
10.5 The Role of Ethics and National Culture
10.6 Conclusion
10.7 Exercises