Conflict Management and Negotiation

The course on Conflict Management & Negotiations follows an interdisciplinary approach by coupling the perspectives on conflict from organizational psychology, organizational behaviour and organizations studies. It aims at offering students both theoretical and methodological tools to understand and manage conflict dynamics and negotiation in the workplace. In addition, the course aims at fostering a critical approach to conflict in organizations, by focusing on the phenomenon of violence in the workplace.
The course will provide an understanding of what conflict is, its inevitability in the workplace, and how it can hinder (or facilitate) dynamics and processes. As such, the course will focus on providing both knowledge and practice for managing conflicts and negotiations. Three main elements constitute the course learning objective.
First, the course will seek to provide an extensive and practical review of the theories and perspectives on conflicts, conflict management and negotiations (30% of the course).
Second, the course aims at providing knowledge on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural dimensions involved in conflicts as a basis for managing conflicts by constructively engaging with conflicts and seeking to realize solutions that value both people and work. In doing so, the course will focus on the main barriers to conflict management (e.g., biases and prejudices; group and organizational cultures), and support with methodological frameworks for negotiations that participants can use to analyse, prepare for, and execute in situations they might encounter (40% of the course).
Third, the course aims to foster a critical approach to conflicts in organization. The idea is that conflicts are not only occurring at the level of horizontal relationships (among co-workers) due to individual differences and personal characteristics, but there are also vertical conditions that increase the occurrence of such conflicts. The third part of the course will be devoted to the study of violence in organizations as a structural phenomenon (20% of the course).
Combining the three parts, course's participants will develop a toolkit meant to approach the disparate and various occurrences of conflicts in organizations.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

1.Understand what conflicts are and how they can hinder or facilitate processes and dynamics in the workplace.
2.Understand the role of intra-psychological dimensions involved in conflicts (emotional, cognitive, and behavioural) and its management.
3.Understand and develop skills for approaching conflict management.
4.Understand potential barriers to conflict management, and possible strategies for managing conflicts and negotiations.
5.Understand conflicts via a multilevel perspective and approach conflicts in critical terms.