BUSI 455 Week 1 Discussion Board Forum Thread Example

Discussion Board Forum: Applying Resolving Everyday Conflict to a Real Conflict

BUSI 455 Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, Discussion Board Forum Thread

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The forum prompt and the conflict described are composites; the textbook, the research and the Scripture cited are real.

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At a regional distribution center, two shift supervisors, here called Rachel and Tom, disagreed about weekend coverage. When the center added Saturday shipping, the operations manager asked them to split the new shifts, and each believed the other's crew should take more. Rachel argued that her crew had covered overtime all summer; Tom argued that his crew had more workers with child care limits. Within a month the two had stopped speaking in meetings, were complaining about each other to their crews, and had each sent a sharp email to the manager questioning the other's leadership.

Sande and Johnson (2015) picture the ways people respond to conflict as a slippery slope. On one side are escape responses, such as denying a problem exists or avoiding the other person. On the other are attack responses, which use pressure, accusation or force to win. Peacemaking responses sit in the middle. Rachel and Tom slid down both sides: Tom escaped by avoiding Rachel and saying nothing in meetings, while Rachel attacked by questioning his leadership to the manager. Each response made the other's worse.

What started as a dispute over dividing the work, which researchers call task conflict, turned into personal hostility, or relationship conflict. That shift matters. De Wit et al. (2012) combined 116 studies of conflict in groups and found that relationship conflict was consistently related to lower group performance, lower trust and lower satisfaction, while task conflict had a much weaker overall relationship with performance and could even be positive under some conditions, such as when relationship conflict stayed low. The scheduling disagreement itself might have produced a better schedule; the personal feud that grew from it was what harmed the crews.

The book's peacemaking steps would have stopped the slide. The first is to consider overlooking an offense. Sande and Johnson (2015) note that many offenses are small enough to let go, and Tom's comment in the first meeting that Rachel's crew "always gets the easy shifts" might have been one of them. The second is to get the log out of one's own eye (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 7:5), examining one's own contribution before addressing the other person's. Rachel would have had to admit that going to the manager behind Tom's back escalated the conflict. The book then describes confession that is specific rather than vague, avoiding phrases that shift blame such as "if I offended you" or "but you started it," acknowledging the hurt caused and accepting the consequences.

Research confirms why a specific confession matters. Fehr et al. (2010) analyzed studies of what predicts forgiveness and found that an apology from the offender was among the strongest situational predictors, along with the victim's empathy for the offender and the offense's severity. A genuine apology from Rachel would have made Tom's forgiveness far more likely.

Finally, the book describes gently restoring the other person, raising their contribution privately and humbly (Galatians 6:1). Only after that would Rachel and Tom be ready to negotiate the original problem, the schedule, on its merits, perhaps by alternating weekends and giving priority to workers with documented child care needs. If the two could not settle it privately, the slope's other peacemaking responses remain: Sande and Johnson (2015) describe asking one or two others to help, as mediators, before handing the decision to someone with authority. The operations manager, who received both complaint emails, was in a good position to meet with both supervisors together, refuse to hear further complaints about either one in private, and help them build a rotation they could both defend to their crews. Had either supervisor taken the first step in the first week, the schedule could have been settled as the task problem it was, without a month of lost trust between two crews.

References

De Wit, F. R. C., Greer, L. L., & Jehn, K. A. (2012). The paradox of intragroup conflict: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 360-390. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024844

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Fehr, R., Gelfand, M. J., & Nag, M. (2010). The road to forgiveness: A meta-analytic synthesis of its situational and dispositional correlates. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 894-914. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019993

Sande, K., & Johnson, K. (2015). Resolving everyday conflict (Rev. ed.). Baker Books.