“I Need That Week Off!”: An Experiential Exercise on Conflict and Negotiation

ABSTRACT

This article presents an experiential exercise designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop their knowledge of ways in which conflict may be managed (using the framework proposed by Thomas, 1976) and types of negotiation. Students form pairs and are presented with a scenario in which they have both requested the same week of vacation to attend events. Unfortunately, they are informed that they are unable to take the time off simultaneously. Participants are asked to discuss among themselves, using assigned modes of managing conflict, to determine how the time will be allocated. The target audience is composed of undergraduate students, who may be enrolled in any number of classes related to organizational behavior. To examine perceptions of the exercise, data were collected from a sample of 140 participants. Among the findings, 92.9% of respondents reported that they would recommend that instructors use the exercise in a similar course.

KEYWORDS:

• conflict
• experiential exercise
• negotiation
• organizational justice
• role-play

Notes

1. Note that the reliabilities for the effort/importance and value/usefulness subscales are based on N = 140 observations, while the reliability for the interest/enjoyment subscale is based on N = 137 observations.

2. Based on 139 observations.

3. I thank two anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.

4. I thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melanie A. Robinson

Melanie A. Robinson is an assistant professor in the Department of Management at HEC Montréal. Her research interests include leadership, followership, forgiveness, and pedagogical research. She can be reached at [email protected].