Business Conflict Management

Course Overview
This six-week course covers the most recent theories, models and practices of effective conflict management within the business setting. Ongoing accelerated change in organizational operations, the management and expectations of employees and the skills needed to maintain professional momentum and credibility require the latest information on constructive approaches to potentially damaging discord.

This offering will benefit organizational managers and leaders, those ascending the succession ladder, and individuals motivated to increase their capacities in handling difficult situations. At the completion of this course, participants will have expanded their resourcefulness, confidence and agility in working through distressful predicaments.

Course Structure
Students will participate in six two-hour class sessions, actively using the new information they have acquired in discussing case studies, assuming varied power roles in simulations, and asking lead questions from readings which will engage the total class in analytical, reflective dialogue.

Students will receive access to an online course site that will provide the source for interactive, ongoing exchanges on core topics, newly released information, and issues raised as the course progresses. The syllabus and assignments will also be posted on the online course site.

Required Textbook
Working Through Conflict: Strategies for Relationships, Groups, and Organizations
by Joseph P. Folger, Marshall S. Poole, and Randall K. Stutman
(2005) Fifth Edition. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Paperback
ISBN: 0205414907
$73.40

Preferred online bookstores include:

Amazon (new and used)
Barnes & Noble (new)
half.com (by ebay) (new and used)

Course Materials
Students will receive the following course materials with their paid registration fee.

• Managing Praise and Criticism in Organizations
• Conflict Management: A Checklist Approach and
• Two Productive Methods for Presenting f2f Information

Grading Criteria, Assessments and Evaluations
Students are expected to complete five of six two-hour face-to-face sessions

Class members will select one of five topics, develop expertise in the conflict area, cooperate with others in planning and delivering a twenty minute panel discussion, and expedite a current, annotated bibliography for others in the class.

In addition, each student will be responsible for and graded on their leadership capacities to identify key concepts, tactics and strategies in the assigned reading, to ask probative (open, descriptive vs closed) questions of the class, and to develop a productive discussion on those questions.

The quality of class participation and contributions will affect the final evaluation of class participants.

Registration Information

Registration Information
Business Conflict Management, taught by our faculty, is a core course offering in the Business Communication Program.

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