We Are Group Beehive!

Left to right: Bernie, Oanh, Philip, Matthew and Erin.

We are a group of students with various backgrounds. We all have Bachelor's degrees and are currently striving for our Master's. Some of us have quite a few working experience years behind us, while some are just at the beginning of their prosperous careers. To find out more about us, click on our names.

The story behind our group name, Beehive, is to create a structure that requires every individual honeybee to participate in building an extensive collaboration network. Furthermore, the name represents the spirit of our team, United We Stand, Divided We Fall. The purpose of this blog is to inspire others not to take things too seriously, but to always strive for creativity. The credits for the group name and explanation go to our creative group member Philip.

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The Myth

We had several excellent myths, but there was one that was above the rest:

"Seeking management’s decision from different departments is the best way to resolve conflicts within a working group."

Conceptual Grounding

The myth can be true or false, depending on the culture and context. It is important to understand the meaning universally and to be able to measure the difference between cultures and context.

Culture

To analyse the content of culture in a quantitative way, Hofstede’s Dimensions can be applied. It considers four comparable factors (Hofstede and Bond, 1984) as follows:

1. Power Distance: Degree of members accept and expect the perceived differences in power and  inequalities when they form interpersonal relationships
2. Uncertainty Avoidance: Degree to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguous situations
3. Masculinity/Femininity: Degree to which sex roles are clearly delineated
4. Individualism/Collectivism: Extent to which culture values the welfare of the individual versus that of the group

To have qualitative analysis, the core values of the culture group, the abstract end goals that people strive to achieve in their lives, need to be analyzed.

Context

The context scenario plays a crucial role as well. Furthermore, the organizational structure and authority power has a great influence on the sub-culture groups (Peter & Olson, 2005), that are distinctive groups of people in a society that share common cultural meanings for affective and cognitive responses, behaviors. environmental factors, such as group within teams, departments and committees, etc.

Description of the myth

• There are always different ideas, suggestions, proposals from different departments when their team members are working in a working committee
• In a sizable company, no matter if its located in HK or USA, departments can differ a lot, for example, from sales, to operations, to procedure control, and even to risk management
• There should be basically different KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for different departments. For example, to maximize business gained for Sales; zero defects and timely finished tasks for Operations; 100% no missing-link between procedures and all related parties follow for Procedure Control; no loss in connection with risk for Risk Management
• As the departments had no similar KPIs, thus they should not have the same goal to work for
• As a result, how can conflicts be resolved if these people would collaborate? Would seeking management’s (i.e. bosses of those departments) final decision be the best way to resolve the conflict?

Analyze and speculate

It can be analyzed from different point of views. Since the real case provided below is in Hong Kong and many people in Hong Kong is Chinese, the Chinese culture is considered to be a start point for the discussion:

By Culture

Below shown the Hofstede's Dimensions data of different countries (6 Yeh, Ryh-song 2005),

Hofstede's Dimensions

High  Power Distance +  Ethics Philosophy  => Compromise Strategy
For the case of Hong Kong, Power Distance (PD) is comparatively strong than the western countries. High PD implies that people accepts and expects the differences in authority and power. To combine with the "Top-down” Ethics Philosophy (i.e. 君君臣臣)  of Chinese culture, lower level people has greater respect for authorities of the higher level people and less need for discussion. Therefore, the operational staff is trends to obey the command from management with limited resistances. It turns out to reach a compromise by management decision during discussions.

Low Individualism + No consensus  => Representative for whole groups
Low individualism implies people cares more on the welfare of groups than their individual, so people leans toward consensus from the whole group. On the other hand, collectivism implies people does not desire to harm other's feeling, so people is trends to not give out their own opinions. With the strong collective responsibility, the representative, usually the department head, has the obligation to take account of the welfare of the whole group and is considered to represent the interest of the group. Therefore, there is a trend to seek bosses or managements to represent the group interest or idea when consensus cannot be made.

Low Uncertainty Avoidance + Guanxi => Seek decision from higher authorities
Low Uncertainty Avoidance (UA) implies the organization has less concern on the ambiguity, more tolerance on variety, and less rule-oriented. In the same time, the Guanxi in Chinese culture is ingrained and is restricted by the structure of grade (i.e. 差序格局). It leads to higher coherence within a department, but lower coherence outside department, departments trends to unwilling to collaborate cross-departments directly. When conflicts occur between departments, there is a trend to seek an opinion from higher authorities or managements to finalize a decision.

By Context

Case's scenario

• Hierarchical organizational structure
• Working group structure (does not encourage interest-based negotiations)
• Complex problem in nature involving different considerations

Evidence from a real case

A credit policy of a product in a bank should be drafted to protect the bank’s best interest. The working committee is consisted of Credit Policy, Risk Management, Operation, Sales, Product & Marketing. During initial discussion, it is noticed that some guidelines that Credit Policy, Risk Management and Operation are different from Sales, and Product & Marketing.

Product & Marketing tried to persuade by using statistics, some market practices and pass records for others to accept their proposal, but besides Sales (because was on their side), no one listened to what they had to say. Thus, some of the guidelines could not be negotiated on the same spot.

After almost a year and after several rounds of departments negotiating together by using verbal and e-mail conversations, finally Risk Management suggested the working committee to vote which "side" they prefer.

Obviously, Credit Policy, Risk Management and Operations would vote for one side; and Sales and Product & Marketing will vote for the other.

Risk Management then told the committee that the voting results would be given to management (all the bosses from different departments) and seek their approval on which side they are on.

Latest updates of the real case

• The credit policy is still under management’s review (because they are too busy)
• The members of Product & Marketing are mad about members of Risk Management and they are trying to avoid discussion with each other
• They sometimes had other things to argue about

Conclusion

The myth is true when quick decisions may be required without considering other urgent matters in Hong Kong's culture. However this may not be in other cases.

References

David, A. V.Conflict management and negotiation. Retrieved February 09, 2012, from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Comp-De/Conflict-Management-and-Negotiation.html

Hofstede, G., & Bond, H. M. (1984). Hofstede's culture dimensions: An independent validation using rokeach's value survey. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 15(4), 417-433. doi:10.1177/0022002184015004003

Peter, J. P., & Olson, J. C. (2005). Consumer behavior & marketing strategy (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Yeh, R. (2005). On hofstede's treatment of chinese and japanese values. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 6(1), 149-160. doi:10.1007/BF01732256

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Group Goals

By luck we seem to be group with amazingly coherent group goals. Naturally all group members still have individual goals in relation to life, work and school. However the underlying concepts were quite similar for, such as: team work, consensus, achieving win-win, understanding differences of opinions, conflict-resolution and self-awareness. Below we have listed a few group goals:

• To learn different ways to perform well individually when working with peer groups and to organize an effective team
• To raise self-awareness about own work methods and routines and to make them more effective and efficient
• To be able to find the fittest role in an organization / team
• To foster a culture of creativity / risk taking in an organization to make decisions in a more innovative and agile way
• To enable people to understand different opinions and accepting others
• To be able to enhance negotiation skills to achieve a win-win situation for both parties
• To learn how to create a collaborative atmosphere to increase individual efficiency and to minimize conflict

What Excites Our Group

As individuals we surely have different sources of excitement about the weekly topics of this course. However there is one topic that interests us the most and this is "Persuading and Influencing Others among Groups & Organizations".

We are keen on learning more about how to persuade and influence group and organization members without it coming off as manipulation and bias. Since in groups we always all have our own opinions and it’s important for us to have the ability to convince others and have others’ consensus. Lastly, we find that in Chinese culture, the so called lower class tends to obey and accept commands from the upper class. It would be interesting to find out ways how to influence the upper class or even the organizational culture by using indirect conflict approaches or appreciative inquiry (bottom-up perspective).

Here are some topics that we would like to learn more about during this course:

• How to make effective and good objections (without influencing the relationship with peer groups)
• How to save a team while the team members are not willing to cooperate and follow the lead of the leader (from the leader’s perspective)
• How to convince / cooperate with peers with different backgrounds / cultures by using a win-win approach
• How to resolve conflicts at the beginning to avoid inefficiency in an organization

Group Logo

The logo is comprised of the letters that form our group name "Beehive". It represents a sense of unity in our group to strive for a colorful and rich collaboration. The image of the bee implies that we work together in an intelligent way just like a bee to build a hive. The bee also metaphorically represents that not all things need to be black and white or too serious - you're allowed to have fun while learning! The design and copyright credits go to our group IT guru Matthew.

Extension

Comment made on Feb 25, 2012 01:03 AM



Thank you Beehive for providing us with a classic scenario of what people at workplace usually come across in Hong Kong. I think a lot of us feel déjà vu when we read this example.

I agree with Beehive that indeed it’s a myth. Involving different departments before making a decision is important to get buy-in but not the ultimately best approach. The core of the issue is how people, groups & corporations can capitalize on the different perspectives and conflict of interest among different departments to resolve conflicts, generate different ideas and better their ideas in a timely manner. How can we do that? I think leadership plays an important role in collaboration.
It seems to me that the group can’t collaborate well because they do not have enough interest or care in this particular product, the subsequent policy drafting & discussion it entails and so they only voted for what’s convenient/ best for their respective department(s). Where is the buy-in? There is not enough thawing in Kurt Lewin’s vocabulary of a change process. Where is the project manager?

In the context of Hong Kong where collectivism is high as pointed out by Beehive, I will go one step further and challenge ourselves and think if we can leverage the very same high collectivism characteristic to create a project team with team members with:-
-A high sense of belonging of the group/company
-Depend on one another in decision-making
-Value team work?

Aren’t these familiar attributes of what people in a high collectivism have?
 

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Agreed with what Kersten said that leadership plays an important role in collaboration between different perspectives and conflict of interest. As one of the in-group person in the conflict, we have reviewed again what is happening out there.

(A) Sources of Conflict (McShane, Von Glinow (2010)):

1.   Incompatible Goals

Business – Maximize sales and revenue volume, in terms of actual sales and revenue figure.

Risk Management – Minimize organization’s risks exposure, in terms of loss ratio; bad debt figure; impairment.

Operations – Need easy-to-follow procedures, minimize operational lost.

2.   Differentiation

Business – Younger, more aggressive, strike balance in business and risks (what we believe we are and, actually, it should be done with Risk Management).

Risk Management – Middle age, more pessimistic, the department to be blamed when having high impairment, keep as low as possible on their KPIs (bad debt, impairment).

Operations – Generally older, want zero operational defect.

3.   Interdependence

No difference for different departments.

4.   Scarce Resources

Although it is correct for most of the organizations, departments are inter-related with each other. For example, the more flexible the credit policy is, the more competitive the organization could be, and more business can be generated, thus more resources. But if the credit policy is too loose, although more business can be generated, bad debts will be higher to the organizations, thus revenue cannot be maximized, resources will be less (as a result).

5.   Ambiguous Rules

Not really the major source of the conflict mentioned.

6.   Communication Problems

a.   Lack of opportunity to communicate

We don’t think we have less opportunity to communicate upfront. But once the policy had been discussed several times but no compromising point can be made on all items, people started to communicate in e-mails (to avoid confrontational situation). Communication becomes remote and relies on stereotypes.

b.   Some people lack the necessary skills to communicate in a diplomatic, non-confrontational manner

We found that as we are avoiding face-to-face confrontational situation, a more confrontational manner started to show in e-mails. As this manner started from one side, the other will be “fought” back as normally expected; although our perception is that they had “actively” put those confrontational wordings in the discussions.

c.   Perception of conflict reduces the motivation to communicate

This is exactly the one of the causes of confrontational manner shown in e-mails

(B) Interpersonal Conflict-Handling Styles (McShane, Von Glinow (2010)):

1.   Problem solving (Strive for a mutually beneficial solution-win-win orientation)

Preferred when interests are not perfectly opposing; parties have trust, openness and time to share information; issues are complex.

2.   Forcing (Win the conflict at the other’s expense)

Preferred when having a deep conviction on the position; requires a quick solution; the other party would take advantage of the cooperative strategies.

3.   Avoiding (Smooth over or avoid conflict situations altogether)

Preferred when conflict becomes too emotional; cost of trying to resolve the conflict outweighs the benefits.

4.   Yielding (Giving in completely to the other side’s wishes)

Preferred when other party having substantially more power; issue is less important to certain party.

5.   Compromising (Looking for a position in which you make concessions to some extent)

Preferred when parties have equal power; time pressure exists for resolving the conflict; parties lack trust and openness for problem solving.

In the situation, “opposing” parties are having equal power to each other. The said policy had been discussed for over 8 months (for us it is a simple policy), thus time pressure existed. And because of differentiation in different departments, it is quite a problem to seek mutual trust and openness to the solutions. So it seems that Compromising or / and Problem Solving style is suitable for the situation.  

But we believe both opposing parties were thinking they have a deeper conviction, and even some would think they have more power (in terms of grading) to another. So finally, some of them were using Forcing to settle the conflict.

(C) Structural Approaches to Conflict Management (McShane, Von Glinow (2010)):

1.   Emphasizing Superordinate Goals

We believe it is what leaders should do (in the condition that the senior management of different parties believe collaboration and work together).

2.   Reducing Differentiation

One of the ways is to create common experiences, like job rotation between departments. But we don’t think it can be very feasible in the banking industry.

3.   Improving Communication and Understanding

Good and an effective intervention can improve understanding of each other.

4.   Reducing Interdependence

In terms of polled interdependence, but may not be applicable to this situation.

5.   Increasing Resources

Same as 4.

6.   Clarifying Rules and Procedures

Same as 4.

As a result, emphasizing superordinate goals and improving communication and understanding with teams by senior management of the organization can improve inter-team relationship and resolve conflicts at the moment and in the future.

(D) ~~CHANGE~~

With the above conflict management styles, the most important and basic thing is to CHANGE.

The mentioned CHANGE does not only relate to the working level of conflicting teams, but also to their management. As we mentioned, this conflict situation must be solved by the management.

According to Lewin’s Force Field Analysis Model effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to a desired condition and then refreezing the system so that it remains in this desired state.

Lewin’s Force Field Analysis Model 

The above image indicates that. First of all, management had to increase their communication and fully understand the organization goals (Unfreezing). It can be achieved by regular meetings and having discussion on how to collaborate (Change).

Then, the management team should pass their successful collaboration discussions to their subordinates and increase changes for different parties having the opportunities to meet in formal and casual ways (Refreeze), so that subordinates know what the bosses are doing and they will work like them.

Once a more peaceful environment has been developed, previous conflicts must be settled and new conflicts must be minimized.

(E) Latest updates on relationship between Business and Risk Management:

Certainly, there is no Conflict Management had occurred. During the time that business was cooling down in Jan and Feb of 2012, Risk Management colleagues had changed their manners a little bit. So we also changed ours to avoid a relationship conflict and influence working as partners.

But after entering March, they changed back to the manner they had after the conflict incident by using verbally confrontational wordings during different meetings.  For example, in the discussion on a policy’s latest review, our team had suggested to refine wordings in order to make it clearer, they rejected.

References

McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2010). Organizational Behavior (5th Edition). Singapore: McGraw Hill/Irwin.

Photo source:

samvara.dreamwidth.org