Selina Lo’s Conflict Management in Ruckus Wireless Company Case Study

Introduction

Conflict is a process in which “one party perceives that another party opposes its interests resulting into negative effects” (Kreitner and Kinicki 2009). In this case, the language of conflict affects perception about conflict. Selina Lo starts with the metaphor and language of war in managing other employees. However, the authors challenge us to embrace metaphor and language of opportunity and journey as Selina Lo discovers.

In the past, organisations regarded conflicts as threats. However, this notion has changed with studies in conflicts showing both positive and negative effects of conflicts. This implies that lack of conflict is dangerous for any organisation. We can see the transformation of conflict from dysfunctional (hinders performance) to functional (enhance performance) conflict in Selina Lo.

In the beginning, we notice opposing views, beliefs, lack of boundaries, communication breakdown, pressure, and unreasonable decisions among others. However, when Selina Lo becomes the CEO of Ruckus Wireless, she begins to change her management style.

She seeks for consensus, stronger relationships, negotiations, and learning. This is the view of cooperative conflict model. We notice conflict from three sources such as personality, organisational, and cross-cultural conflicts.

Managers need to handle various forms of conflicts present in their organisations. We have five styles of managing conflicts. These include compromising, obliging, avoiding, dominating, and integrating.

We have noted that these styles of managing conflicts have their own strengths and weaknesses. Selina Lo must learn these styles in order to accommodate her new employees and establish a culture of managing conflict and negotiation in Ruckus Wireless.

How did Selina Lo’s interpersonal style evolve in terms of the conflict metaphors discussed in this chapter?

Selina Lo was a difficult boss. She believed in conflict as a war and personal problem. However, after becoming the CEO of Ruckus Wireless, Selina changed her management style and embraced conflict as opportunities and a journey of slow learning.

We can observe that Selina Lo is impatient and a manager who can get emotional. She wants tasks accomplished faster than the system. According to Selina Lo in an interview, she stated that an employee once told her that she was too fast, abrupt, demanding, and expected employees to learn through osmosis.

The employee also told her that her style of management caused too much stress. Selina noted this as a wake-up call (Bryant 1).

Therefore, this observation led to change processes. This involves evaluating response to conflicts (Lederach 23). Change process in conflict management must focus on immediate needs and its wide effects. There should be immediate action with long-term effects on conflict management. Change process needs conflicting parties to see issues beyond their surface meaning and seek creative approach to issues.

Thus, Selina Lo needs to undergo change processes that involve the following. First, personal change as she desires. This entails emotional, perception, and cognitive changes regarding conflict. Selina Lo noted that conflict affected her employees emotionally, physically, self-esteem, and perception.

Thus, she took the journey to change her management style. Second, Selina Lo also needed to understand relational dimensional of change necessary to change conflict in her organisation. In this case, we should focus on issues of conflict related to power, emotions, communication, interdependence, and interaction with colleagues (Zartman 153).

This should also focuses beyond issues that cause conflict and dwell on underlying issues that originate from conflict. For instance, one of the employees requested that he wanted another boss. This shows how conflict created a gap between Selina Lo and her employees.

Thus, there should be intentional intervention in order to reduce negative effects of conflict with attempts to enhance communication and mutual understanding between workers and their boss. Third, structural dimension focuses on causes of conflict in relation to organisational structure and social relations and how conflict changes these organisations.

Conflict may affect social, economic, and organisational relationships. As a result, it will influence decision-making and provision of resources. Thus, the aim of change should focus on conditions that promote violent expressions and provide ways of minimising such adversarial interactions. This also calls for improved participation of other people in decision-making processes.

Fourth, cultural dimension of conflict changes organisational aspects in terms of employees’ expectations. Cultural conflict affects culture of different workers. For instance, Selina Lo is a Chinese who pays little attention to the Western culture. Thus, any change should address cultural patterns that promote conflict in the organisation and provide options on how well to handle such conflicts as Selina Lo does.

What evidence of functional and dysfunctional conflict is apparent in this case?

Before Selina Lo became a CEO of Ruckus Wireless, all her management styles depicted dysfunctional conflict. She yelled, pounded her fist, made people feel emotional weak, physically unfit, attacked people and made some employees unable to sleep.

As we can see, dysfunctional conflict results from the ego of Selina Lo due to her interests and ambitions. Dysfunctional conflict was the major source of stress among juniors of Selina Lo. Consequently, some of them requested for a new boss. We have to note that the cause of dysfunctional conflict between Selina Lo and her employees were incompatibility, poor communication, and cultural differences among others.

Managers and employees can internalise conflict that has negative effects on their behaviours. We can see how Selina Lo behaviour changed due to effects of conflict on her employees. Selina Lo resolved dysfunctional conflict through recognising different values, ambitions, and abilities of her juniors. As a CEO, she engaged employees in discussions so as to find solutions that worked for the group.

When Selina Lo assumed the position of a CEO at Ruckus Wireless, she changed her management style to reflect functional conflict. She had open discussions, listened to colleagues, accepted her weaknesses, and sought consensus.

Functional conflict emerges from respecting others’ views. This is what Selina Lo recognised in her employees and accommodated them in decision-making processes. The process of functional conflict promotes cooperation among employees (Kindler 6).

They do not perceive others as opposition but rather as colleagues working for the same organisation. At the same time, it also discourages interruption of others while expressing their opinions. This process also eliminates the use of coercion when interacting with colleagues.

Selina Lo recognised that employees are not productive when forced to do tasks they are not comfortable performing. Thus, appreciating others’ opinions and reaching a compromise promotes functional conflict that is suitable for enhancing performance of an organisation. Selina Lo demonstrates that resolution to achieve functional conflict aims at finding the problem.

What did Selina Lo need to learn early on about emotional intelligence, as discussed in Chapter 5? How would it have impacted her management style?

Selina Lo showed the lack of sufficient knowledge on effects of emotional intelligence in an organisation at the beginning of the case. She would have gained from recognising emotional needs of her employees and how her aggressive tendencies impacted employees’ health, generated negative conflicts, and reduced the willingness to be in her team.

Organisational goals concerning employees’ behaviours strive at changing employees’ behaviours in a productive manner. In companies, the focus has been on workers’ behaviours that enhance performance and behaviours that promote teamwork and unity. Emotional intelligence has become effective in the current organisations.

We can relate this interest among firms to their efforts to improve business performance and desire among management to predict employees’ behaviours. Thus, Desimone, Werner, and Harris concluded that emotions and mental processes were necessary in studying decision-making processes among employees as they affected how workers react to situations (Desimone, Werner and Harris 33).

Employees also benefit from improving emotional intelligence in terms increasing their relationships at workplaces and social life. In addition, they also improve a good understanding and handling of emotional conditions of others.

Organisations benefit from workers who are emotionally intelligence to customers and fellow workers. This develops positive interaction among all stakeholders. Investing in employees’ personal development increases productivity and motivation of the workforce.

How would you handle a boss with the win-lose style Selina Lo exhibited early in her career? Explain

In the past, reaction to aggressive and impatient bosses included quitting the job. However, HR specialists have developed ways that employees can use when dealing with a win-lose style of managers like Selina Lo (Keating 98).

Selina Lo is a controlling manager. Initially, she barely let her employees make any decisions or express their opinions. As a result, employees experienced difficulties in working with her.

Anxiety is the main cause of such behaviours among managers. Selina Lo did not want to fail or make any mistakes. Thus, micro-managing provides a means of ensuring that all employees are on track towards their objectives.

Therefore, effective relationship with win-lose manager should focus on a plan that aims at solving a problem. Any conversation must be productive.

At the same time, employees must also be flexible and satisfy wishes of their managers. However, this process requires assertiveness among employees as they compromise their positions. Win-lose managers need reassurance through addressing all possible risks that may cause failure (Osborne 49).

Using Table 13-2 as a guide, what lessons about cross-cultural conflict did Selina Lo need to learn early in her career?

In the beginning of the case, Selina Lo showed a lack of interest among various cultures in the organisation. However, when she assumed the position of the CEO at Ruckus Wireless, she learned to accommodate cultures and became sensitive to others’ cultures. In addition, she became cooperative instead of competitive and embraced compromise.

From a cultural perspective, Selina Lo needed to learn and know her culture first to enable her understand other cultures. Selina Lo did not pay attention to her own prejudices, beliefs, biases, and values and their effects. She also ignored effects of her behaviours on others. Selina Lo needed to understand the importance of her own culture within the family and at the workplace.

Awareness of one’s culture promotes openness when dealing with others from different cultures. Thus, we can compare and contrast various cultures so as to eliminate possibilities of threats (Elmer 67).

Selina Lo also needed to learn others employees’ expectations. Awareness of what other parties expect from conflicting situations enables us understand conflicts when they occur and how to handle them. Expectation leads to open discussions on how the team should work together. As Selina Lo observes, learning new cultures take time. Therefore, it is a journey as these authors note.

People make assumptions about other cultures. Selina Lo does not need praise according to her culture. However, in the West, employees need appreciation to motivate them. Selina Lo could have developed acceptable communication systems to help check her perceptions about other cultures. She failed to do so and created feelings of hostility and inaccurate stereotypes.

Selina Lo ought to have given feedback of behaviours she observed about employees such as giving praise where necessary and seek clarification. This also means that she must be open to explanations provided without criticism.

Which conflict-handing styles are evident in this case? What was their comparative effectiveness?

At the beginning of the case, Selina Lo exhibits dominating behaviours. However, as she assumes the position of a CEO at Ruckus Wireless, she becomes integrating manager. She stops showing concerns for herself and focuses on the group as a whole.

Dominating style involves showing “high concern for self and low concern for others” (Kreitner and Kinicki 2009). Selina Lo demonstrates competing style of management in conflicting situations.

As a result, she has created a win-lose style of management and ignored cooperation within the organisation. This approach is effective for organisational success. However, dominating style within the organisation does not promote teamwork.

Selina Lo also uses hard bargaining in meetings that include a major investor. Hard bargaining aims at creating a win-win situation. However, it seems Selina Lo wanted more from the bargain as Dominic Orr says “It became clear that Selina Lo might win – but Ruckus might lose”.

Selina Lo used controlling style that involved aggressive behaviours. She used threats, sarcasms, fist pounding, yelling and ‘drive-bys’ to control her employees. This style created fear among employees and propelled them to do things they were reluctant to do. For instance, employees used to scare others by telling them that they would tell Selina that certain employees could not perform a given task.

As Selina Lo became a CEO, she realised that she needed to change her management style. She became a collaborator through integration. Integrating is whereby “interested parties confront the issue and cooperatively identify the problem, generate and weigh alternative solutions, and select a solution” (Kreitner and Kinicki 2009).

Integrating style entails including all parties in decision-making so that all parties recognise the outcome. In this case, conflict provides opportunities for negotiation, strengthening relationships and expressing opinions among all stakeholders. It also creates opportunities for defining suitable processes for achieving organisational goals.

Selina Lo formed a group to assist in resolving conflicts related to emotions and cultures. At the same time, she also recognised her greatest weakness of being impatient. Integrating style involves a plan of action for the team. It also focuses on goals and interests of the entire team.

Integrating style involves great deals of time and thoughts. The process creates a team that is willing to execute the plan, a closer team than before, and meets all needs of the team members.

Integrating style has been effective in handling many conflict situations. These situations may involve important relationships and issues. Thus, parties must invest their time in order to resolve conflict through best options that come from the team. However, emotional situations can affect the outcome of collaborating among team members.

Selina Lo shows that integrating style is effective in handling dysfunctional conflict. The CEO uses this style to promote functional conflict within the organisation.

Organisations can find it difficult to practice all styles of managing conflict and negotiation. However, we have to recognise that managing conflict is hard regardless of styles used. Therefore, proper planning and approach can result into effective, functional conflict within the organisation.

Conclusion

We can see that conflict in the case emanated from personality and cultural differences (Corvette 1). These factors influenced how Selina Lo handled conflict in various organisations, and in different levels of management. Expression of conflict affects how parties react to it.

Aggression styles escalate conflict in an organisation. As a result, job satisfaction, employees’ motivation, and output decrease among the workforce. As we can see from the case, effective management of conflict requires clear goals based on appropriate style of conflict management. This is because conflict may emanate from various sources and manifest itself in other areas of the organisation.

Negotiating conflict is effective in addressing conflict situations in organisations. However, parties must recognise that there are compromises and gains in negotiation as Selina Lo and her employees show. A distributive form of negotiation is not effective in a group situation since only one team benefits.

Thus, effective management of conflict involves the use of integrating style where there is a win-win situation for all parties. Functional conflict depends on the quality of information and amount time the group invests to solve conflict. However, we must appreciate the presence of conflict in an organisation and embrace various ways of resolving them.

Works Cited

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