Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in Management: M/S India Fashions

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of negotiation and conflict resolution processes at M/S India Fashions Limited. The report begins by identifying the roles of internal and external negotiators, including the Chief Executive and departmental executives, as defined by the company's 'Negotiation Policy.' It explores the importance of the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) and reviews the selection process for negotiators, advocating for the inclusion of junior representatives and experts. The report then delves into the company's training programs for negotiators, emphasizing the use of seminars, workshops, and practical testing. It also addresses the procedures followed before and after negotiations, including internal and external negotiation protocols, data collection methods, and the importance of deal-making. Furthermore, the report examines a case study of a conflict between the marketing and technical teams, analyzing the negotiation objectives, strategies, and outcomes. The report concludes with a bibliography of relevant academic sources.

Management 1
Negotiation and Conflict
Student’s Name
Course Name
Name of the Professor
Date

Management 2
Question 1
Choosing the internal and external company negotiators
Within M/S India Fashions Limited, Several circumstances have result to the need for carrying out
business negotiations in this company. They include reasonable dispute in areas such as the difference in
ideology, strategies, pricing, patent rights, etc. These may either be internal or external negotiations
depending on the scale of the dispute to be resolved. All the internal negotiations are conducted by the
departmental executives1. The departmental executives and managers are automatically chosen to handle
all the internal negotiations based on the ‘Negotiation Policy’ of the company. The policy further states
that all the external negotiations will be conducted the Chief Executive and the departmental executives.
They include the Chief Technical Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and the
Chief Operations Officer2.
Batna
It is always known to have the ability of identifying the best alternative to a negotiated agreement
that is related to a given negotiator. My company has therefore been able to come up with quite a
number of alternatives thus being able to perfectly solve different types of negotiated agreements under
different circumstances.
Review the process
There will be the need to review the entire process to make sure that adequate and reliable
information is obtained during the choosing process. This helps to avoid different conditions that are
likely to be related to confusion.
1 Antonioni, David. Relationship between the big five personality factors and conflict management
Styles. (3rd Ed, Derik 2016) 109
2 Aslani, Soroush, Jimena Ramirez‐Marin, Jeanne Brett, Jingjing Yao, Zhaleh Semnani‐Azad, Zhi‐Xue Zhang, Catherine Tinsley, Laurie
Weingart, and Wendi Adair. Dignity, face, and honor cultures: A study of negotiation strategy and outcomes in three cultures.(5th Ed, Peterson
2016) 112

Management 3
The best recommendations to junior representatives and experts in the affected departments to also
be involved in the negotiation process. They may be able to offer a different point of view or offer
expert advice. This would also present the junior representatives with the skills and experience required
to handle major negotiations in the case of a promotion3. The ‘Negotiation Policy’ should therefore be
open to amendment in order to cater for the junior departmental representatives and experts on the
negotiating table.
Question 1b
Training of the company negotiators
The company encourages employees to attend to training courses, classes, seminars and workshops
on handling negotiations. The company further provides incentives by catering for the expense incurred
from such functions. These seminars and workshops are meant to equip the employees with the
necessary negotiation skills4. They are then subjected to a 30% theoretical and 70% practical test. All
those who will have obtained an average score of 75% are issued with a certificate. Such qualifications
are used by the company for various purposes. These include; promotions, selection of managers and
departmental executives, etc. This is the major reason why the company insists on having only its
departmental executives and managers handling all the internal negotiations. This is clearly highlighted
on the ‘Negotiations Policy’ of the company.
Recommendations
Apart from attending the seminars and workshop, the employees should also be subjected to a
psychological test. This would greatly improve the validity of the results obtained. It also focuses on
critical areas such as behavioural and personality compositions.
3 Bodtker, Andrea M., and Jessica Katz Jameson. Emotion in conflict formation and its transformation: Application to organizational conflict
management. (4th Ed, Daniel 2012) 45
4 Chaiken, Shelly L., Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Charles M. Judd. Persuasion in negotiations and conflict situations. (7rd Ed, Johnson 2016) 64

Management 4
Question 2
Procedure to be taken prior to a negotiation
Internal
Whenever there is a pressing issue by one of the junior employees, he/she is supposed to write a
suggestion or complaint to the department managers. Furthermore, the managers are supposed to
compile questionnaires that are issued to the junior employees after every two months. They should be
filled and collected before the end of one week5. The managers are also supposed to identify the crucial
arguments that may result to significant decline in sales, marketing, productivity or profitability. Once
the subject of interest is identified, the managers are supposed to compile a report that is submitted to
the executive in that department. The executives are required to present the report during the next
executive meeting. Both the departmental executives and the managers are present in the meeting.
Negotiations are thereafter made by the respective departmental heads.
Moreover, apart from sampling views from only the employees. They should also be able to
collect the views of our previous customers. This should be able to eradicate departmental biasness on
the sample of data collected6.
External negotiations
The policy states that the departmental executives should write a report in the areas of interest and
submit to them to the Chief Executive Officer. Prior to this, the managers are tasked to issue out
questionnaires on the areas of interest to the junior employees as a method of data collection. The
5 Friedman, Raymond A., Simon T. Tidd, Steven C. Currall, and James C. Tsai. What goes around comes around: The impact of personal conflict
style on work conflict and stress. (6rd Ed, Ronald 2016) 254
6 Groysberg, Boris, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. Too many cooks spoil the broth: How high-status individuals decrease group
effectiveness. (5rd Ed, Bosco 2016) 55

Management 5
questionnaires are to be submitted before the end of one week7. The managers should then be able to
sample from both the questionnaire and junior representative report to come up with a conclusive
executive summary which is presented to the departmental executives8. The departmental executives are
then tasked to drafting the final report and submitting it to the Chief Executive Officer. The Chief
Executive Officer and the departmental executives are supposed to hold a meeting prior the negotiations
to discuss the tactics and the strategies to be employed during the negotiations. This would act as
preparations before the actual negotiations. The Chief Executive Officer then invites or is invited for the
negotiations.
Deal making
Most of the conditions involving external negotiations normally require deal making that takes place
between different parties thus allowing them to come up with a final conclusion regarding a situation.
Normally, deal making should always be given the first priority as much as possible.
On the other hand, when conducting external negotiations both the managers and the junior
departmental representatives should be present. This is because when it comes down to the
implementation stages the managers are supposed to monitor the progress of the terms of agreement.
The junior departmental representative is supposed to explain the terms of agreement to his/her
colleagues. This is because they are the ones who will be directly involved in the implementation phase.
7 Ledgerwood, Alison, Shelly Chaiken, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Charles M. Judd. Changing minds: Persuasion in negotiation and conflict
resolution. (3rd Ed, John 2016) 84
8 Putnam, Linda L. Productive conflict: Negotiation as implicit coordination. International journal of conflict management. (3rd Ed, Johnson
2016) 108

Management 6
Recommendations
One of the major ways to improve the processes that the company undertakes before the
implementation of any significant negotiation is to make sure those appropriate and reliable ethical
considerations are well taken into account thus coming up with a more advanced outcome that will be
more reliable. Moreover, another way to make the improvement is to involve different parties including
the stakeholders before the implementation of the significant negotiation. This will make sure that
various ideas obtained from different personalities are put into consideration.
Question 3
Post negotiation review process
After the negotiations have been made, an agreement is drafted by the managers of the affected
departments. The agreement is then signed by the executives and a copy is taken to the Chief Executive
Officer to sign it off. The signed document is then returned to the managers who take the agreed terms
back to their various departments9. A copy of the agreement is then pinned to the notice board of the
department by the managers. The junior employees are then supposed to analyse the document and work
towards the implementation of the negotiation. Many problems arise during the implementation stages.
This is because the people who are involved in the implementations were not present during the
negotiations and may not have a clear understanding of the agreement terms. This therefore creates the
need to bring even the junior employees to the negotiation table in order to avoid such complications.
Monitoring is a crucial element which is done by the managers of the departments. The purpose of
this stage is to ensure that what was agreed upon during the negotiations is being adhered to. The junior
employees are supposed to comply with the terms of agreement. Furthermore, a periodic review is
carried out to check whether there is production of favourable results. If the targeted objectives have not
9 Robinson, Allysha C., Amy R. Knowlton, Andrea C. Gielen, and Joseph J. Gallo. Substance use, mental illness, and familial conflict non-
negotiation among HIV-positive African-Americans: latent class regression and a new syndemic framework. (3rd Ed, Jack 2012) 82

Management 7
been met as predicted, several actions could be taken10. Reconvening is one strategy that can be applied.
This is because the managers of different departments can be able to share any new developments that
may have arisen during implementation. Also, it can be used as a form of information exchange. This is
also important because it will create a good working relationship between the two parties that are
involved.
Question 4
‘The marketing team’ versus ‘the technical team’
Recently, the marketing team proposed that the technical department should design the company
website with strict specifications based on a survey they had conducted. Being the manager of the
Information Communications and Technology department. As a delegate for the Information
Communications and Technology Department I set down the objectives we had for the negotiation.
They included the quality of the products, trends, cost of production and value for money. We knew that
the marketing team was going to present to us the market survey that they had conducted the over the
past three months as required. My negotiation team, myself and the Chief Technical Officer, had already
developed tactics and strategies for the negotiation11. During the negotiations, the marketing manager
stated that it was hard to argue with numbers and logic as they handed over the survey report to us. They
purported that majority of the website users prefer a website with only four webpages. They said that
having a bulky website would take a lot of time for it to load. In addition, they wanted our company
website to have a resemblance with our competitors’ websites. We in the technical team believed that
10 Smith, Julie, and Hildy Ross. Training parents to mediate sibling disputes affects children's negotiation and conflict understanding. (3rd Ed,
Albert 2016) 95
11 Taylor, Paul J., and Sally Thomas. Linguistic style matching and negotiation outcome. (6rd Ed, Derik 2016) 125

Management 8
this approach would in turn limit our level of creativity, uniqueness and fashion products to be
displayed12. We argued that the product specifications made by the marketing team would result to a
reduced number in online sales. Furthermore, the data they presented significantly involved the rural
areas. We argued that our target market majorly involve the people living in the urban setting who have
access to relatively fast internet connectivity. This would make the website to load faster even though it
had several webpages. We made a counter offer of 10 webpages still maintaining that the website
should be unique. They said that they could only add 2 webpages to their initial offer but accepted the
product uniqueness terms. The company has over 100 designs to be displayed on the website with the
details and pricing to be included. After further convincing, we finally agreed that a unique website with
seven webpages would be convenient for users in both rural and urban setting.
Basically, people involved in the actual survey to be present in future negotiations in this particular
area of interest. This is to enable them to explain the means and methods of data collection since the
entire dispute was based on their findings.
12 Ting-Toomey, Stella, Ge Gao, Paula Trubisky, Zhizhong Yang, Hak Soo Kim, Sung-Ling Lin, and Tsukasa Nishida. Culture, face maintenance,
and styles of handling interpersonal conflict: A study in five cultures. (3rd Ed, Dickens 2016) 45

Management 9
Bibliography
Antonioni, David. Relationship between the big five personality factors and conflict management
Styles. (3rd Ed, Derik 2016)
Aslani, Soroush, Jimena Ramirez‐Marin, Jeanne Brett, Jingjing Yao, Zhaleh Semnani‐Azad, Zhi‐Xue
Zhang, Catherine Tinsley, Laurie Weingart, and Wendi Adair. Dignity, face, and honor cultures:
A study of negotiation strategy and outcomes in three cultures.(5th Ed, Peterson 2016)
Bodtker, Andrea M., and Jessica Katz Jameson. Emotion in conflict formation and its transformation:
Application to organizational conflict management. (4th Ed, Daniel 2012)
Chaiken, Shelly L., Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Charles M. Judd. Persuasion in negotiations and
conflict situations. (7rd Ed, Johnson 2016)

Management 10
Friedman, Raymond A., Simon T. Tidd, Steven C. Currall, and James C. Tsai. What goes around comes
around: The impact of personal conflict style on work conflict and stress. (6rd Ed, Ronald 2016)
Groysberg, Boris, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. Too many cooks spoil the broth: How
high-status individuals decrease group effectiveness. (5rd Ed, Bosco 2016)
Ledgerwood, Alison, Shelly Chaiken, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Charles M. Judd. Changing minds:
Persuasion in negotiation and conflict resolution. (3rd Ed, John 2016)
Putnam, Linda L. Productive conflict: Negotiation as implicit coordination. International journal of
conflict management. (3rd Ed, Johnson 2016)
Robinson, Allysha C., Amy R. Knowlton, Andrea C. Gielen, and Joseph J. Gallo. Substance use, mental
illness, and familial conflict non-negotiation among HIV-positive African-Americans: latent
class regression and a new syndemic framework. (3rd Ed, Jack 2012)
Smith, Julie, and Hildy Ross. Training parents to mediate sibling disputes affects children's negotiation
and conflict understanding. (3rd Ed, Albert 2016)
Taylor, Paul J., and Sally Thomas. Linguistic style matching and negotiation outcome. (6rd Ed, Derik
2016)
Ting-Toomey, Stella, Ge Gao, Paula Trubisky, Zhizhong Yang, Hak Soo Kim, Sung-Ling Lin, and
Tsukasa Nishida. Culture, face maintenance, and styles of handling interpersonal conflict: A
study in five cultures. (3rd Ed, Dickens 2016)