To prevent everyone from passively agreeing with each other in quarterly department meetings, one person will now be required to openly point out all the possible things that could go wrong with each new project.

2. HomeSafe sells and installs wireless home security systems in 5 districts across the Midwest. HomeSafe has about 20 sales reps in each district. At the end of each year, the top sales rep from each district wins an extra week of paid vacation time to use in the following year.

3. Your organization is in a rut. Everyone is doing the same things they’ve always done and there’s nothing creative or groundbreaking happening. You have two employees retiring soon and decide to replace them with people from completely different industries to bring in novel perspectives and keep everyone on their toes.

4. People in your office seem to be afraid to try new things, so the company sets up a monthly brainstorming session where employees can safely present wild and innovative new ideas. The sessions happen after work hours, but everyone who attends and contributes at least one new idea gets to take the last Friday of the month off of work.

5. Some of your employees want to bring the company’s training program entirely online (option 1), while others think it’s best to keep a face-to-face component in addition to offering a few online sessions (option 2). Due to resource constraints, the company can only choose one option. The executives decide to assign one upper manager to argue for option 1 and another to argue for option 2. This will help them to gather the necessary facts to make a final call.

Managers are constantly confronted with conflicts—both functional and dysfunctional-while trying to reach organizational goals. This activity is important because effective management requires the ability to stimulate functional conflicts.

The goal of this exercise is to challenge your knowledge of the techniques for stimulating functional conflict.

Select the most appropriate technique for stimulating functional conflict for each of the items listed below.

Options:

Spur competition among employees

Change the organization's culture and procedures

Bring in outsiders for new perspectives

Use programmed conflict

Answer:

1. Change the organization's culture and procedures

2. Spur competition among employees

3. Bring in outsiders for new perspectives

4. Spur competition among employees

5. Use programmed conflict

Explanation:

Functional workplace conflicts are purposeful conflicts that spur healthy, constructive, and problem-solving disagreements between functional groups or individuals. They help to identify problems early, as these regulated conflicts trigger some actions that may expose other underlying problems. They also improve productivity by galvanizing the workforce to improve their individual insights, relationships with others, and commitment to the achievement of organizational success. Functional conflicts should be encouraged by management, while efforts should be exerted to reduce dysfunctional conflicts through appropriate mediations.