Chapter 8
Pages 248-249 talk about the terms "conflict" and "consensus".
Conflict is defined as the interaction of interdependent people who perceive oppositions of goals, aims, and values, and who see the other parties as potentially interfering with the realization of these goals.
Consensus does not mean that all members agree with a decision but feel instead that their views are adequately considered by the team.
I knew the correct meaning of conflict, but up until now I always thought that consensus meant that all members agreed with the decision. I am glad I took this class, now I know the true meaning. During my work experience in India and the U.S. I have seen many conflicts within the organizations I worked for. Employees in Indian organization resolved conflicts using feminist qualities, like interpersonal skills, providing support & responsivess, while in U.S. I have mainly seen masculine qualities in conflict resolution, like direct and assertive expressions, to the point conversations. I feel like organizational, regional, and national cultures play a vital role in how organizational members resolve conflicts.
On the other hand, the Indian organizations I worked for, I hardly saw business practices that used consensus among various stakeholders. Decisions were made and implemented without the due diligence to all the involved parties. The party that had the highest stakes ruled. In the U.S. organization, I see more time and resources are devoted to reach consensus among all the stakeholders.
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TM, the way you address conflict and consensus with its effect towards organizational, regional, and national cultures is great. I think, similar to the networking models where certain networks works better with different problems, feminist and masculine conflict resolution styles could work better relative to the conflict at hand... While I think masculine qualities for example being so direct could work for more context based situations with quick resolutions, the feminist model works more with relationships where maybe negotiations are necessary. I like how you extend to culture because it relates to emerging communication networks. The expected norms of the culture controls behavior in micro conflicts.
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