Discussion Question
A realistic approach to understanding conflict management styles is to divide them into two broad types: collaborative (win-win) versus competitive (win-lose).
Issue:
You are supposed to tell which type of conflict will arise in following situation and what will be the aftereffects if it will not be resolved.(word limit: maximum 150)
Situation:
"The sales team of the toys manufacturing company claimed that they made the boost sales in the current year than previous years so there should be extra bonuses for their welfare and encouragement but management is not ready to announce extra bonuses according to the efforts of sales team."
Solution:-
Here is the Idea Solution:
Type of Conflict:-
In this situation competitive conflict (win-lose) will arise as staff demands more bonuses after they claim increase in the sales and management is not prepared to announce more bonuses.
Aftereffects:
A competitive process will most likely have the following effects on the parties:
Communication is obstructed as the conflicting parties try to gain advantage by misleading each other through false promises and misinformation. Communication is ultimately reduced as the parties realize they cannot trust one another's communications as honest and informative. "Obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness lead to mutual negative attitudes and suspicion of one another's intentions. One's perceptions of the other tend to focus on the person's negative qualities and ignore the positives."
The parties are unable to effectively divide their work and end up duplicating efforts. When they do divide it, they continuously feel the need to check each other's work.
Ongoing disagreement and critical rejection of ideas reduces participants' self-confidence as well as confidence in the other parties.
The conflicting parties seek to increase their own power and therefore see any increase in the other side's power as a threat.
The competitive process fosters the notion that the solution of the conflict can only be imposed by one side on the other. This orientation also encourages the use of coercive tactics such as psychological or physical threats and/or violence. This process tends to expand the range of contested issues and turns the conflict into a power struggle, with each side seeking to win outright. This sort of escalation raises the motivational significance of the conflict for the participants and makes them more likely to accept a mutual disaster rather than a partial defeat or compromise.
