CMN 136 (Sec. 2) - Readings (2)

What are the steps in the Collaboration process and what happens at each step? What is required for the collaboration approach to work?

5 steps 1. define the problem - the prob. definition must be specific - a statement of the prob. in a conflict situation is usually much more difficult than it seems, and most people jump to solutions before they clearly define the problem (b/c of this, our inclination is to state the problem as a solution rather than as a goal, which results in ambiguous communication) - the outcome may be increased conflict - one helpful strategy is to write out the prob. statement clearly, so everyone can see it and agree on it. Or you can agree on a prob. stated as a question. state goals in the form of group goals rather than your own goals 2. analyze the problem - most people want to skip this step (they may argue they live w/ the prob) - no point in spending more time wallowing in it - by exploring the depths of the prob., by looking at its history, causes, effects, and extent, you can later come up w/ a solution that address more than symptoms, one that is more than a bandage - the analysis will address the root cause of the problem, thus improving the chances of being successful 3. brainstorm alternatives - everyone involved in the conflict should offer potential solutions - one idea may stimulate other ideas - the more you communicate in an open, trusting environment, the greater the potential for finding effective solutions - trust evaporates when an idea is criticized during a brainstorming session (ex. "that's a terrible idea. It'll never work") <- who would be willing to take the risk of coming up w/ another idea - make sure you don't judge ideas prematurely 4. develop criteria for a good solution - these criteria or standards, may already be in place and available - other times, your boss will tell you what a good solution must look like - occasionally, you and/or your team are allowed to dev. your own criteria - the most common criteria for a good solution are: it must be cheap it must be easy to do it must call for using resources already on hand it must be legal it must be in line w/ the company's mission or values 5. evaluate the brainstormed alternatives using the criteria - this is the easiest step - by this time, you have reached agreement on the problem and everyone has had a say about possible solutions. The best solution will appear naturally b/c it is the brainstormed alternative that matches your list of criteria Steps in the collaboration process: 1. define the problem 2. analyze the problem 3. brainstorm solutions 4. develop criteria for a good solution 5. find the best match this process calls for 2 prereq's - time and ability - you can't count on reaching consensus on a solution right away. Hearing everyone out takes time and patience, commodities that are rare in today's workplace - secondly, the people have to know how to collaborate; they must be familiar with, and be willing to follow, the 5 steps above (ex. p. 42 - graduate student who managed the 3rd shift in a manufacturing company - two of his subordinates had been locked in a conflict for some time over a tools issue - tried using the collaborative strategy he learned - it didn't work - he put his employees into the break room and said "come out when you two have reached an agreement" - after an hour they said they worked it out but Rob said they didn't use the process - they used seniority - the worker who worked longer got his way) = this demonstrates the impt. of training people on the steps in the collab. strategy for conflict resolutions - it's based on how we think when we are trying to rationally solve a prob., but participants must know and stick to the steps in the process for it to work

Know all of the information given on each of the conflict resolution strategies. What is the result for each one?

Managing conflict w/ the boss: Avoid the avoidance or withdrawal strategy combines a low concern for production w/ a low concern for people - you see conflict as useless - rather than undergo the tension and frustration of conflict, you use avoidance simply to remove yourself from conflict situations either physically or psychologically - you dislike tension, don't take sides in a disagreement among others, and feel little commitment to any decisions reached - this conflict management style is the 2nd most popular among US managers - you can avoid by ignoring a hurtful comment or quickly changing the subject when conversation beings to threaten - another way to avoid is to place the responsibility for an issue back on your boss - a third way to withdraw is to use a simple response of "I'm looking into the matter", with the hopes that the boss will forget the issue - the avoidance strategy is frequently used in large bureaucracies that have too many policies - rather than tackling the conflict, you simply blame it on "policy" - if you lack self-confidence in your communication abilities, you may hope the problem just disappears - "never complain, never explain" usually doesn't work in the long run - withdrawal has been negatively associated w/ knowledge of the boss's feelings and attitudes; open, upward communication; perceived helpfulness of the subordinate; and strength of the planning relationship --- thus, avoiding conflict w/ the boss doesn't usually make things better in critical managerial areas Managing conflict w/ the boss and w/ peers: accommodate - you try to deal w/ conflict by giving in, hoping to make everyone happy - you emphasize maintaining relationships w/ bosses and coworkers, and you de-emphasize achieving productive goals - since you are aiming for others' acceptance, you often give in to their desires in areas that conflict with your own. You use this style if you believe confrontation is destructive - typical attempts to accommodate may include such things as calling for a coffee break at a tense moment, breaking tension by cracking a joke, saying "you're right" when they are not, or engaging in some ritual show of togetherness such as an office b-day party - these efforts are likely to reduce feelings of conflict - they are better than simple avoidance - BUT, handling conflict by giving in will prob. have short-range effects - accommodating is a camouflage approach that can break down at any time and create barriers to progress (research has found that managers in low or medium performing organizations accommodate to reduce conflict more often than managers in high performing organizations do) - accommodating hurts open communication w/ the boss and with participation in goal setting (think of your latest performance review w/ your boss. did you give in to the judgements of your work quality w/o discussion or pushback? If so, did the boss think you had accepted the judgements as fair and true? How did you feel afterward - motivated to work harder? prob. not) Managing conflict w/ bosses and w/ peers: compromise - strategy for conflict resolution up and across the ladder, assumes that half a loaf is better than none - since compromise provides some gain for both sides rather than a unilateral victory or loss, you might judge this approach to be better than other strategies just discussed - compromise is used when one of two conditions exists: (1) neither person thinks he/she can force their way on the other person (2) one or both people believes winning may not be worth the cost in money, time, or energy - compromise is often highly related to negotiating, which is a legitimate conflict resolution strategy in today's workplace - compromising may make both parties think they won, but they may also both feel like losers. A negative overtone may develop in the working relationship, and any sense of trust may break down - while both people prob. entered the negotiation w/ a cooperative attitude, a sense of competition may be the final outcome - a second concern w/ compromise is that the person w/ the most info. has the better position, usually the person who has a better network (this power of info. may restrict open communication, often resulting in a lopsided compromise) - a third factor is the principle of the least-interested party (the party that has the least interest in the outcome is the more powerful person in the negotiations. As a result, a coworker who has little concern about your welfare or the team's welfare may have the most influence in a compromise.) Managing Conflict w/ Subordinates: force - previous sections talked about traditional ways to approach conflict upward and horizontally; this here is conflict down the ladder (conflict w/ subordinates) - you use force when you need to meet production goals at all costs, w/o concern for the needs or acceptance of your subordinates or team - losing is destructive b/c you think it reduces status, seems weak, and fosters poor image (you must win no matter what, b/c winning gives you a sense of excitement and achievement) - forcing is the number 1 conflict resolution strategy that US managers use - this strategy will prob. cause later conflicts - negative effects in the language manners: beat the opposition, battle, fight, conquer, coerce, smash, nuke <- such language/ imagery can result in long-term emotional wounds - while force can resolve immediate disputes, the long-term effects will prob. include a loss of productivity - forcing in conflict situations is negatively associated w/ adequacy of planning, helpfulness of the supervision, and participation in goal setting - the major result of forcing is that your employees are reluctant to carry out orders b/c they think that the ultimate resolution of the conflict will put them on the losing side of a win-lose position - while little doubt exists that forcing has limited use, managers consider forcing to be their fav. backup strategy for dealing w/ conflict (immediate compliance is misperceived as a long-term solution in these cases) Managing conflict w/ anyone: collaborate - this is a win-win strategy for conflict - this complex and highly effective style requires skill, strategic managerial communication, but it reaps a big dividends - the key to this strategy is that it follows a mutual problem-solving approach rather than a combative one - unlike all the other approaches, managers who collaborate assume that a high-quality, mutually acceptable solution is possible (everyone directs energies toward defeating the problem and not each other)

What do the following terms means: Cultural embeddedness, enculturation trajectory, structural embeddedness, internalization, acting on the surface, self-regulation, value congruence, and perceptual accuracy.

Standard methodologies are largely unable to detect the evolution of an employee's thinking and behavior, including the process of cultural assimilation, or enculturation. - Nor are they able to detect gradual alienation from the organization among employees who become disenchanted. (most research relies on self-reported surveys)- they study cultural fit at a single point in time - cultural fit is a dynamic process, not static cultural embeddedness - the degree an individual internalizes the common culture and accepts group norms; describes the extent to which that person shares values and assumptions w/ those around her and how much the common culture shapes her interactions w/ others. Cultural embeddedness is an evolving condition Enculturation trajectory: each person's relationship w/ an organization's culture changes over time, creating a unique enculturation trajectory for individual employees, the relationship they establish w/ their organization's culture is a key determinant of their success on the job - employees who are good fits are more satisfied, more strongly attached, better motivated, and better performers than their peers who are not in sync - research suggests that under some circumstances, there may be advantages to keeping some cultural distance at work structural embeddedness: - another variable correlated w/ an employee's career path was structural embeddedness - refers to how people fit into an organization's social network - are they members of a tightly knit group or do they instead float, and serve as go-betweens, among a number of groups? (researchers have found that people who serve as the bridge b/w otherwise disconnected groups tend to do better in the workplace than those who are tightly attached to a single circle) - email data -> an employee's career path strongly reflected a combination of cultural and structural embeddedness - employees who were embedded either structural or culturally but not both, fared better than their counterparts who were doubly embedded or not embedded at all linguistic analysis investigates BEHAVIOR not cognition - such analysis cannot read people's minds, patterns of language use can distinguish b/w employees who have deeply absorbed workplace culture and those who are merely playacting to get along internalization - coming to see oneself as a group member and embracing group standards of conduct acting on the surface: - patterns of language use can distinguish b/w employees who have deeply absorbed workplace culture and those who are merely playacting to get along self-regulation - involves cracking the group's normative code and learning to behave accordingly, despite unexpressed cultural difference research offers evidence that employees who stay with their employer are more likely to have internalized the organization's culture, while those who leave have a greater tendency to put up a front to separate the 2 types of employees, we, together w/ Gabriel Doyle and Michale C. Frank of the Dept. of Psychology at Standford, examined nearly 408,000 pairs of emails exchanged b/w pairs of employees at our research site. Of 485 employees studied in this analysis, 329 stayed, 66 quit, and 90 were fired. We traced enculturation during the first 6 months on the job by comparing changes in the use of the pronouns I, you, and we in email exchanges employees initiated and in their responses to exchanges begun by others - employees who absorbed the company culture tended to use we more frequently both in email exchanges they initiated and in their responses to others. By contrast, those who did not internalize the culture stepped up their use of "we" in their email replies but became less likely to introduce the word in the exchanges they originated - those employees who used "we" more often in exchanges they initiated were more likely to remain w/ the company - their coworkers who did not increase the use of "we" when initiating email exchanges had greater odds of getting fired === these data suggest that employees who did not assimilate overcompensated in their word choice when responding to colleagues - Linguistic analysis of organizational culture may be further refined by exploring the diff's. b/w 2 variables associated w/ cognitive cultural fit -> value congruence: - how closely an individual's values and beliefs match those prevailing in the organization Perceptual accuracy: - how well an individual's characterization of the organization's culture matches the descriptions of other group members in a joint project w/ Jennifer A Chatman and Richard Lu, both at Berkeley, we used a combination of survey data and email analysis at the tech. company - using machine learning techniques, we identify the "linguistic signature" of value congruent and perceptual accuracy = train an algorithm to predict a persons' survey responses based on email content and then impute value congruence and perceptual accuracy scores for all employees - including those who did not take the survey - for all points in time that email data are available

What were the three areas of "applications" and how did those areas connect with organizational culture?

applications at the group, organizational, and interorganizational levels the use of language to measure diff. aspects of culture and cultural fit potentially has a wide range of applications in both the intra- and interorganizational contexts linguistic analysis can place cultural similarities and diff's into sharp relief and can be readily integrated into policies and practices related to hiring, workforce management, organizational restructuring, alliances, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) online hiring - the hiring process is shifting to the internet - especially true in a gig company - may never meet face-to-face - these platforms collect extensive data on candidates, including education and job history, but they generally do not take cultural fit into account - may be valuable to embed in them elements that predict cultural compatibility (ex. short essay q's designed to elicit info. on a candidate's beliefs and values could be added to online applications) - we anticipate hiring platforms will increasingly incorporate measures of cultural fit based on patterns of prehire language use Reorganization and Restructuring - culture varies widely within organizations - most studies of organizational culture take their cues from the organization chart, assuming that internal distinctions in values and norms largely coincide w/ the structure of dept.'s and work units - this is often not the case - organizational subcultures frequently transcend departmental boundaries (ex. an individual employee's cultural reference group may not consist of other work unit members but rather of informal communities of like-minded people from other parts of the organization) - understanding how individuals fit into diff. social groups and subgroups has special significance when an organization is redrawing its organization chart (managers could use language-based measures of cultural compatibility to determine the consequences of structural changes for the cultural cohesion across newly formed or separate subunits) Business combinations: - one of the most common reasons mergers fail is b/c the partners' cultures are at odds w/ each other - effective decision makers take cultural compatibility into account when pursuing mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and alliances - culture is generally considered impressionistically or through coarse self-reports, not according to precise quantitive metrics - linguistic analysis may soon allow measurement of the cultural similarities and diff's b/w M&A and alliance partners to be incorporated into the business case analysis - might also be used as a guide in designing effective programs of post merger integration

What was said about conflict in the workplace?

conflict can benefit you and your company destructive and constructive conflict conflict is always such a strong presence, especially in diverse workplaces 5 strategies for dealing w/ conflict and explain when each one works best tensions can run high at work - as a manager, you are likely to spend up to 35% of your time dealing w/ complaints and handling disruptions in your fast-paced, diverse work environment conflict may range from a simple disagreement over a work procedure to an argument over priorities, to work stoppage, and even to violence - workplace violence continues to increase at an alarming rate - violence is the number one cause of death on the job among women, and the number two cause for men - it's a manager's duty to protect workers from violence by developing intervention efforts - conflict is inevitable in the workplace, and it's even more powerful a factor when the workforce is diverse - you will be able to successfully deal w/ conflict by following the steps described here: read the situation to identity the source of the conflict, recognize whether the conflict is constructive or destructive, select the right strategy out of the toolbox, and then apply it - the table in the pic., will help you choose the right conflict resolution strategy

What are the benefits of conflict?

conflict forces you to analyze goals, it creates dialogue among employees, and it fosters creative solutions - it has been linked to organizational learning, and even to improved performance and productivity - w/o conflict, employees and organizations would stagnate conflict b/w diverse age groups is one ex. of how conflict can be positive - for the first time in US history, 4 generations are working together. - conflict commonly is due to diffs in their work style and philosophy - older workers view "work" as a place - a location you go to at a specified time, such as 9-5pm - younger workers tend to view "work" as something you do - anywhere, any time - they grew up in a digital world where info. is always available - so, it's easy for Boomers to conclude that millennials who arrive at 9:30 are working less hard than they, who arrived at 8:30, not realizing that the younger generation may have already put in time at their home computers or smartphones while still in pajamas - to millennials, rigid scheduling of work is unnecessary, Boomers can benefit from their younger coworkers by learning that much of today's work can be done in flextime for max. efficiency conflict may also foster creativity - it helps to overcome biases by forcing you out of your traditional ways of thinking - in this way, conflict promotes the unstructured thinking that lets you develop good, novel alternatives to diff. problems decisions are better when there is open opposition and resistance - in one study, high-quality decisions occurred in 46% of the situations w/ strong worker resistance, but in only 19% of the situations where resistance was weak or nonexistent conflict may not be as harmful as suppressing it if you are simply smooth sailing - forces goal analysis - creates dialogue among employees - fosters creative solutions - stimulates organizational learning - improves performance and productivity - prevents stagnation

Know everything about the four employee archetypes. What makes the good ones good, and the not good ones, not good?

doubly embedded actor - is culturally integrated and a member of a close-knit group disembedded actor - a cultural outsider and lacks strong group ties assimilated broker - has absorbed the culture and is not bound to a single group integrated nonconformist - a bit of a cultural misfit but is part of a close-knit circle assimilated brokers and integrated nonconformists generally did better than disembedded actors and doubly embedded actors disembedded actors, who lacked both cultural fit and network membership, were an order of magnitude more likely to be fired than assimilated brokers, who also lacked strong network membership, but fit in culturally doubly embedded actors, who showed strong cultural fit plus network membership, were more than 3x more likely to be fired than integrated nonconformists, who were structurally integrated but poor cultural fits why would doubly embedded actors (those who have both anchors available to them, not do so well as their nonconforming but structurally integrated peers?) - culturally assimilated employees who belong to a tightly knit group simply lack any basis on which to stand out from the crowd - the structural positions they occupy - being deeply ensconced within a social circle - makes it harder for them to be exposed to novel ideas - their cultural conformity, on the contrary, makes them unlikely to contribute novel or creative ideas in contrast, the assimilated broker brings to the table a networking advantage well known in the social science literature. Because she serves as a pivotal link among individuals and groups that are otherwise disconnected, she has access to nonoverlapping information and ideas, which enable her to develop valuable innovations for the organization. And because she exhibits high cultural fit, she can serve as a liaison and connector among these disparate individuals and groups without suffering the penalties of mistrust and incoherent identities that brokers often face. The integrated nonconformist, on the contrary, is likely to introduce new ideas to the group. By virtue of her networked integration, however, these ideas are more likely to be perceived as novel contributions than as threatening signals of being a group outsider.

What is the definition and previous research findings of "organizational culture?"

corporate culture is widely assumed to play a pivotal role in organizational success and failure Management gurus attribute much of the prosperity of such companies as Google, online retailer Zappos, and Southwest Airlines to ways of doing business that build a sense of purpose, treat customers with respect, and encourage employees to be creative and have fun. Other companies are said to have cultures that put them at a competitive disadvantage - ex. - tolerated sexual harassment - Uber + employee abuse - lost many customers Prevailing views of organizational culture tend to take a top-down perspective—one that sees culture as unified, enduring, and resistant to change. Research starting from this vantage point investigates the qualities that make for both effective cultures that enable high levels of performance and dysfunctional cultures that demoralize employees and alienate customers. This article looks at culture through a different lens—one that starts from the bottom up and takes into account the myriad local subcultures that exist in organizations, how individuals fit into those subcultures, and the causes and consequences of subtle shifts in cultural fit over time - It is part of a broader research tradition that explores the intersection between individuals and the social groups and organizations to which they belong Culture is a foundational concept in the social sciences, referring to the attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral norms that distinguish a group of people. - explicit and implicit understandings about what to believe and how to behave - both cognitive (consisting of shared beliefs and values) & behavioral (it establishes norms about appropriate conduct) It defines each person's expectations about what others in a group will say and do—the common ways of thinking and acting that make working or living with other group members seem natural every workplace has its conformists and nonconformists

linguistic analysis, cultural heterogeneity and company performance

language can also provide insights into the role of culture in organizational-level performance w/ Matthew C. of Standford, we studied how measures of cultural heterogeneity related to company profitability, patenting success, and market valuation - cultural heterogeneity can be thought of as diversity in ideas and beliefs - Scholars are divided over whether such diversity contributes to organizational success our research sought to reconcile these p.o.v's by distinguishing b/w compositional heterogeneity and content heterogeneity . - The first refers to the extent to which members diverge in how they describe an organization's culture = there is little consensus about what the culture is like - content heterogeneity describes the breadth of the cultural inventory members draw from in describing the culture - to assess, we examined reviews on Glassdoor where individuals post anonymous descriptions of their employers - the sample included more than 500K reviews of nearly 500 publicly traded companies from 2008 to mid 2015 - we used linguistic analysis to capture the cultural content of reviews - ex. how performance is recognized and whether employees are encouraged to have fun at work - statistical analysis showed that companies w/ high compositional heterogeneity were less profitable in the next quarter (return on assets compared w/ equivalent companies w/ low comp. hetero.) - companies w/ high content hetero. in the next quarter = higher level of Tobin's Q - measure of market expectations of future growth and patenting success cultural divergence may hamper effective coordination and execution, thereby reducing profitability, meanwhile, a broad cultural toolkit appears to promote innovation, fueling market expectations of future growth

What was the research approach used in the study? What were the "linguistic" indicators they looked for?

novel approach to measuring culture based on the application of the tools of computational linguistics to archives of internal communication among employees. Much of the research presented here is based on a comprehensive analysis of more than ten million electronic messages exchanged over five years among employees at a midsized U.S. technology company - largely free of observational and reporting biases and offers a view of each employee's relationship to that culture as it unfolds over time Moreover, language use predicts an individual's success on the job and reveals distinct linguistic patterns for employees who stay, exit voluntarily, or are asked to leave Studying cultural fit based on employee language use yields important insights about effective workforce management. The dynamic view of enculturation made possible by linguistic analysis suggests that, when making hiring decisions, organizations should not just evaluate candidates on perceived cultural fit but also anticipated enculturability, that is, how quickly and thoroughly an employee is likely to adjust to a new culture. In addition, while hiring for cultural compatibility is generally beneficial, organizations should consider the merits of sometimes choosing job applicants who are, to some extent, cultural misfits. Finally, managers should be aware that cultural fit waxes and wanes, which makes it important to pay attention to each employee's cultural trajectory. each organization has its own linguistic conventions to measure cultural fit, the present coauthors along with V. Govind Manian and Christopher Potts analyzed emails exchanged among 601 full-time employees - the company possessed a distinctive culture based on innovation, teamwork, and a high-energy work environment - cultural values were inculcated through training of new hires, ongoing staff communications, and employee recognition programs - more than 10.2 million messages sent b/w 2009 and 2014 were examined, excluding emails sent outside the company - an established program was used to sift out culturally meaningful language from functional and task-related content - the frequency with which the words "I" and "we" were used relative to each other, how often language associated w/ negation was expressed, how commonly words like "would" and "should" appeared, and how much cursing took place were all treated as expression of cultural style - we developed an algorithm to determine how closely a person's language conformed to the linguistic cultural style of her colleagues. - this was our linguistic measure of cultural embeddedness - we derived this measure on a monthly basis to capture changes in individual levels of enculturation - for employees who left the company, we determined whether the departure was voluntary or involuntary (this allowed an estimation of how the degree of linguistic cultural fit was associated w/ diff. employee career paths) employees were separated into 3 categories: those who stayed at the company, those who left the firm involuntarily, and those who left voluntarily - the first group showed secular increases in cultural fit (these individuals appeared to win the acceptance of their peers and become strongly attached to the company) - the second group showed slow or no increases in fit early in their employment (they failed to enculturate from the beginning and, in some cases, drifted further away from their colleagues - the third group was initially indistinguishable from coworkers who joined the company the same time and stayed (both sets of employees assimilated at first, but at some point, those who exited did a U-turn, and our models could predict who would quit voluntarily on the basis of this shift in later career linguistic conformity) supplemental analyses indicated that enculturability - the rate of change in cultural fit in the first 6 months after joining the organization - was more impt. for subsequent career success that was the initial level of cultural fit - those employees who rapidly adapted to the company's culture, as opposed to those who exhibited high fit immediately upon entry, were least likely to be fired

What were all the findings of this study?

our linguistic measure of cultural embeddedness strongly predicted both positive and negative employee career outcomes, bearing out the hypothesis that cultural assimilation is associated w/ on the job success (ex. non managerial employees w/ high cultural fit were 1.5 and 2.7 times more likely to be promoted to management than their peers w/ median and low fit, respectively) - employees w/ low fit were 4x more likely to leave involuntarily after 3 years than their median-fit coworkers - new employees on avg. were highly adaptable, quickly assimilating to the company's linguistic culture - by the end of the first year on the job, the avg. employee reached the mean level of cultural fit, w/ the growth rate of fit tapering off after the first year - the assimilation path varied greatly from one person to another. Some employees never fit in well according to our linguistic measures/ others were well embedded, but then fell back hiring should focus on enculturability, not on fit at a single point in time - organizations can screen for such qualities as flexibility, enthusiasm, and intelligence, which may be markers of adaptability - organizations should look for evidence that a candidate is comfortable in varied cultural environments

What was suggested that managers do to reduce traditional conflicts between functional units?

to reduce such traditional conflicts b/w functional units, managers should remind their people of the overarching goals, mission, and vision keep in mind that diff. conflict situations call for diff. strategies, so effective communication means that you match the strategy to the situation

What are the sources of conflict?

when you perceive conflict in the workplace, you may assume it's due to incompatible personalities - why can't everyone just get along? the sources are often deeper than individual personality - once you understand this, you can then select the right communication strategy for handling it underlying causes of conflict are often the organization's hierarchy, ways of doing business, and a built in opposition b/w units - research shows that conflict increases w/ levels of hierarchy, standardization of jobs, and the number of workers the distribution of the limited resources available in an organization is another source of conflict - when resources are limited, and more than one person or group wants a share, conflict and competition develop diverse goals are another source of organizational conflict - ex. clashes may occur b/w quality assurance and production in a manufacturing company - the goal of quality control people is zero defects, while the goal of the production unit is filling the customers' orders on time - conflicting goals & roles (ex. why a shift foreman refuses to let his workers attend an employee development session offered by human resources) conflict sources - the organization's hierarchy - ways of doing business - built-in opposition b/w units - highly standardized jobs - large # of workers - distribution of limited resources - diverse goals