Introduction to Negotiation

ROLE OF NEGOTIATION IN CONFLICT

Role of Negotiation in Conflict Management

Introduction

Conflict is a natural outcome when a number of people interact in groups to achieve or work on a common goal . When individuals participate in groups , they carry their personal beliefs , ideologies , thought process cultural and religious bearing and family background also in the groups These individual traits create diversity of view points , opinions and ultimately conflict in interpersonal relation (Fernberg , 1999 . It is increasingly recognized at organization level that conflict arising out of difference in opinion and

ideologies of interacting people is constructive and beneficial , provided its managed in a deft and skillful manner

Conflict and Confrontation

The major problems faced in organization dependent on successful coordination among number of teams and people is the threat that issues of constructive conflict rapidly degenerate to destructive confrontation . Such confrontation can pitch employees against each other , create disruption , decrease in output and loss to the organization . People start to resent opinions of others , involve their ego and stop to cooperate , coordinate and understand the need to assimilate their juniors and seniors to achieve organizational goals

However this is not a win-win situation as it leads to dispute and rancor . For conflict to be meaningful and constructive its important that participating parties gets to a resolution through joint working and cooperation (Fernberg , 1999 . In this context , the issue of conflict management , for organizations and individual alike rely primarily on the understanding the conflict in context of the situation , disputants , and their backgrounds as an essential way to come up with all possible solutions to the issue

Importance of negotiation in conflict resolution

Negotiation has emerged as an important form of conflict management within organizational and social setups . As such research conflict management has started to pay close attention to strategies involved in successful negotiation . Negotiation , as a part of managing conflict requires interested parties to trade proposals for settlement that include , out of court settlements , business contracts , collective bargaining contract through a number of complex processes . Generally the process of negotiation proceeds through motives that are competitive integrative , cooperative and composite (Levy . The approach of communication in the entire process of negotiation is concerned with the messages that are transferred among negotiators and the concerned parties

People participating in conflict are generally bound to their respective viewpoints , the role of third party negotiation is considered instrumental in getting a meaningful and mutually beneficial resolution out of the conflict . Good negotiators , armed with excellent communication skills , leadership qualities , listening skills and unbiased approach instill confidence in each of the party involved in the conflict in fairness of the final resolution (Levy , 1999 . They do not approach the conflict situation with any bias , preconceived notion or previous set of information . The entire information collection and analysis is done during the course of conflict resolution , which creates trust in fairness of negotiator , which is the most important criteria for any negotiation to be successful

Personal and collaborative approach in negotiation

Negotiation works best...