Question

Those in power often set the tone for corporate culture and how a company approaches issues of gender, personality and multi-national culture both inside and outside the company. Unfortunately, not all power is used responsibly and the result is a corporate culture where diversity is not respected leaving some people to hide or change in order to conform to the dictated culture. This has in some cases led people to take creative means to circumvent bias and discrimination.

Identify two business examples where the issue of gender, personality or cultural differences was an issue in a business negotiation. Analyze each business conflict to determine how power, gender, personality, and culture affect negotiation.

1. How do the different types of power and different sources of power affect a negotiation?

2. Based upon your research, how does gender, personality or multi-national culture affect conflict negotiations?

3. Analyze how the person with the power can use gender, personality or culture to resolve a conflict.

4. In your opinion, is it ethical for a company to use marketing tactics that are fraudulent or misleading, such as Witchsy used

Answer 1

1. Examples of discrimination in business negotiations.

A) In the recent past a zomato delivery guy delivered order to a customer. Even though the parcel was completely fine and was delivered as ordered, the customer refused to take the delivery.

He did so because he was a pure vegetarian and the delivery guy was from a non vegetarian background.

B) Our IT company got a big deal worth 10 lakhs. We had to manage the website, professional e-mail and domain of a certain organization.

The deal got cancelled by them just because they got to know that the IT head of our company was a woman. They told that they cannot trust a woman head for such an important assignment.

2. Certain kinds of power can affect a business negotiation -

A) Political Power

B) Financial Power

C) Social Power

3. Conflicts are very common to occur in any team or organization. This can be due to different work culture, personality or nationality.

Conflict negotiations can sometimes become really difficult. Specially when the conflicts are due to gender or nationality difference.

4. Thus a leader who is himself unbiased can handle the situation in a very sensitive way otherwise these conflicts can lead to disastrous results.

Here the leader can use his personality in a real effective manner. When you have set examples earlier as a leader, people always look upto you in times of conflicts.

You can lead by example by criticising such gender or nationality based biases.

If the leader has a true personality the subordinates do believe that their rights will be protected and there will be no discrimination on any basis.