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In order for managers to lead and administer any organisation effectively, they must be able to negotiate with both internal and external constituents in a way and manner that develops or maintains relationships, creates value and can be utilised cross-culturally.

Similarly, managers must be able to identify different types of conflict, manage and harness conflict to make it beneficial to organisational and personal growth of key constituents.

Further, managers must be able to identify those conflicts that require the use of dispute resolution and the different types of dispute resolution methodologies that are available.

So, the module applies practical skills, complemented with substantive knowledge to round out the skill sets of the participants to make them highly effective leaders and managers.

Topics covered

• Contextualising negotiations for optimal outcome
• Conflict styles, strategies and situations
• Distributive negotiations, strategies and tactics
• Creating value and the integrative potential
• Effective communication, information gathering and asking questions
• Power, influence and persuading
• Psychological behavioural antecedents: utilising framing and cognitive biases
• Multiparty negotiations in organisations
• Alternative, third party and transformative mediation
• Working though conflict as organisational learning.

Learning outcomes

If you complete the module successfully, you should be able to:

• Judge and select methods of negotiation and alternative dispute resolution
• Define and critically evaluate the different types of strategies employed to become effective negotiators
• Describe and assess substantive and affective conflict as well as interpersonal conflict
• Demonstrate an understanding of how to manage conflicts in a way and manner that leads to constructive outcomes
• Construct a coherent approach and evidence-backed argument for persuading another
• Identify cognitive biases that stand as barriers to effective negotiation and conflict management and the deception and biases that could limit one’s own negotiation and conflict management skills
• Demonstrate communication skills (particularly, skills of persuading others)
• Apply skills to be more effective in their roles within an organisation by negotiating and managing conflict
• Manage conflict actively through reduction, elimination or avoidance
• Prepare effectively for a negotiation and reach mutually beneficial agreements
• Apply research skills into negotiations and conflict management problems and the application of these in the assembling and analysis of facts and situations.

Assessment

This module is assessed by:

Coursework (50% weighting):

• There is one item of coursework for this module which contributes to the final assessment mark for this module.
• Coursework: a written essay of a maximum of 2,000 or 2,500 words (deadline – weeks 9-12) The coursework is designed to check student progress, extend and reinforce concepts covered and also test individual performance.

Examination (50% weighting):

• The final piece of assessment will be an unseen written examination of 2 hours’ duration.