Avoidance in Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

Introduction

In recent years there has been an increased attention towards the Catholic Church and the sex scandals and child abuse cases that has been going on behind closed doors. To name a few of those incidents, there is the case where a Priest from Ireland abused an 8 year old child, and thereafter the Priest, with permission from the Bishop, paid her family a lump sum so they would not mention it. Another case is a German scandal, where a Priest sexually harassed kids, and Bishops knew about it without taking immediate action. This case is particularly interesting because the current pope was acting Arch Bishop in that period.

The Catholic Sex Scandal is and has been a big conflict for a long time, and the way that the church has handled it bears the marks of trying to avoid the conflict by suppressing it. We will illustrate and analyze this from the perspectives of Trust, Knowledge Management, Culture, Image Restoration and Crisis Management.

Trust Building and Destroying in Catholic Church

“And I say also to you, that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church” (Jesus)

Catholics develop an “identification-based trust” with one another where each of the members identifies himself with another entity or figure or group of persons and that they are emotionally connected and share the same values (Thompson, 2009). In this case, the Catholic community identifies herself and her values in what they consider the “personification of God” in the figure of Pope and the church as home of God.

The cases of pedophilia caused a huge breach of trust between the faithful and Vatican. What shocked the community is the way the Pope and Vatican hid and covered these crimes. The abusers remaining unpunished for years before someone came out into the open.

The Catholic values and the sermon of the Pope and priest are focused on justice, fairness and trust. The evangelism mission of the church includes an action in favor of justice, peace and an interior human growth. If they do not carry out these duties, they are not able to achieve the first goal of the mission known as Voltaire.

Repository of moral values, the Church has tried to put strict rules to the people of Jesus for years, launching pressing campaigns against abortion, homosexual marriage, the use of condoms and other kinds of contraceptive methods because of the defensive position of the integrity and ethical view of the Bible and all of the people who want to follow it as a “perfect believer”, learning the sexual morality accepted by the Catholic view.

   And for this reason, when the clerical child abuse scandals hit, the Church – the very advocate of integrity, ethical values and strict rules – trying to avoid and suppress the allegation and crimes so as to avoid embarrassment and to maintain the credibility of the Church and their representatives built over years in the eyes of the believers.

According to the mechanism of building trust and relationship between Catholic believers and Church and her representative, they built trust with the faithful, basically following coherent rules and principles.

Similarity

“People who are similar to each other like one another” (Thompson, 2009). Usually a priest in a community should be humble and show himself at the same level of the people of the community, help them as a caring father. From the figure of Jesus, a carpenter born in a simple family, priest learns the modest life and to mirror that of the community.

Mere Exposure

The mere exposure effect is one of the powerful methods that help the church talk and communicate with the faithful. “Personal connections make a difference” (Thompson, 2009). And with celebration of mass, the priest communicates with people in person, celebrating and discussing the Bible and teaching the values and the “Word of God”.

Reciprocity

“Love your neighbor as yourself “(Matthew 22:39). Jesus emphasizes this concept of charity as one of the three theological virtues to get the happiness. This kind of “return” and donation is, most of the time, not an obligation (as is possible it will be in different circumstance) but an appreciation to the benevolence of the priests and all the religious order and also to the community of brethren.

Schmoozing

The role of a priest, especially in a small community, is really important because he is not only a spirit guide but also a friend and a confessor who is able to hear your thoughts. For every kind of necessity he opens the door of  “the house of God” which might be the “house of all the Catholic people”. This kind of dialog between the priest confessor and the believer contribute to establishing a relationship based on honesty and understanding which are the fundamentals of a trust relationship.

Flattery

Trust relationship among people would also be built with reciprocal adulation that increases kindness and mutual admiration. Eucharistic adoration is one of the practices of Roman Catholic Church in which the believers are in a position of adoration toward Blessed Sacrament. This Eucharistic adoration could be extended in “perpetual-adoration” 24hours per day, a rite that, during the last century, is really popular in Catholic parishes around the world.

One episode that showed the devotion and the flattery of the Catholic public toward the Pope was the gift of 186,000 hours of adoration, as the rite of Eucharistic adoration but toward the Pope, for the 60th anniversary of his priesthood.«This occasion is particularly favorable to prove him our gratitude, our fondness, our communion for serving God and His Church, especially for “shining the Truth in the world” » said the Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzuibieta (Tornielli, 2011).

Self-disclosure

“Sharing information with another person about oneself” is one of the main points of the Catholic faith developed with the Confession Sacrament (Thompson, 2009). Priest should be a confidant who helps to set the person free from every sin, gives him advices as a friend, a father, a member of the family. Most of the time, the information is really personal and private. This fact helps build a mutual trust, reinforced by the secrecy of confession that binds the priest to the confession silence.

Analyzing how the Church and the Catholic representative builds trust with “people of God”, we can see the clerical child abuse allegation and scandals destroyed the trust and especially the values that the Church have built and taught over the years. The direct representative of the message of God, the major person in charge for the faithful (priests, bishops, deacons, churchmen)’s failure in handling the allegation and crimes also destroyed the reputation of the other ecclesiastics that used to live in the “word of God” following the right way.

Pope Benedict XVI (still Cardinal during that period) and the Ecclesiastic Hierarchy, tried to cover one of the most popular scandals in Wisconsin, where a priest abused 200 young guys of one prestigious institute for deaf person (New York Times, 2010).  The Ireland case was another major scandal that gives voice to the victims and leads priests and bishops to the admissions of the crime.

What is clear is the incoherence by an institution who fixed straight and strict rules about justice and sense of the duty, violated the same prohibition that it use to condemn but is not able to denounce because of the image and the scandal.

This is the case of identification-based distrust, where all the values and the goals that used to be compatible (according to identification-based trust) are perceived completely broken and different. What the Catholic people are seeing after the scandals is the opposite of the values that they used to follow leading them to distrust the counter part (Lewicki, 1998).

Knowledge Management in the Catholic Church

Knowledge Management has been around for hundreds of years, but it is until recently that business executives have started talking about it. Hansen, Nohria and Tierney explain that Knowledge Management can have two different strategies. The first being a Codification Strategy, where the strategy implies that the knowledge is carefully codified and stored to everyone’s immediate use. While the second is a Personalization Strategy, where knowledge cannot be transferred through documents, but needs a person-to-person contact (Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney, 1999).

The Catholic Church has a very personalized way of handling knowledge and managing their Church. This is due to the fact that the church has existed for over two millenniums without the need of a codified system. To handle different situations that arise for the Priest, they communicate with their superiors, Bishops, and try to find a solution to the problem. If no solution could be found, the Bishops communicate with their superiors, Archbishops, and so on.

The many incidents involving sexual harassment of children culminated in 2010 when accusations were made of the Pope Joseph Ratzinger who failed to act upon evidence of sexual harassment or inform the public authorities about these proceedings. According to CNN, this happened while he was Archbishop in the early 1980’s and part of the Munich archdiocese. A psychoanalyst, named Werner Huth, demanded that action had to be taken upon a molesting priest (Gilgloff, 2010). The New York Times uncovered a memo suggesting that the current Pope, held a meeting in which he approved psychiatric treatment of the priest and a transfer of the priest. Within days of the transfer, he worked with children again. This indicates that the Pope had opportunity to refer the molesting priest for prosecution or ensure that the priest would not be in contact with children. The priest would later be prosecuted as a child offender, but that would be four years after the current pope left for a new post (Kulish & Bennhold, 2010). Catholic News Agency highlights the fact that some information might be distorted: “He (editor: Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See's Press Office) stressed that the document shows that as archbishop the future Pope Benedict was completely "extraneous" to the decisions made after the abuses were verified” (Accused Munich Priest Resigns In Sex Abuse Case Wrongly Linked To Pope, 2010).

These events may have occurred with or without the knowledge of the current Pope, but nevertheless highlights the serious lack of communication and knowledge sharing between the different levels in the church. Dealing with a situation like this, explicit knowledge would not suffice, and tacit knowledge has to be given to coordinate the situation (Kasper & Haltmeyer, 2002). This situation, and many like it, has occurred due to the bishops thinking they can handle the situation without guidance from their superiors. By avoiding giving out too much information to the Archbishop or other, they are of the thought that they can manage the information given their knowledge. This can also be caused by inter-cultural difference between the ranks of the Church, meaning that language and different culture could lead to different perceptions of the problem at hand (Kasper & Haltmeyer, 2002). It appears as if the Catholic Church has failed to make it explicitly clear how they should handle sex offenders. And thereby created a situation where bishops could handle the situation as they pleased. 

Cultural Difference in Catholic Church

Sexual misconduct towards children is not new in Church. The Church had been settling child abuse quietly until 1980. Due to globalization and the advancement in internet, the public have more channels to information. Some studies suggest that there is up to 75% of the female victim of child abuse did not report, since in many cultures, females do not fight back, taught to be “nice”, and were told that the abuser would be more violence if they struggled. Male victims are less likely to be revealed. Different cultures have different forms of punishment and reporting styles (Campbell, 2005).

It is common that child abuse is not disclosed due to the below causes:

Authority

There are power distance differences between countries and cultures. According to McShane and Travaglione (2007), “power distance refers to the extent to which people accept an unequal distribution of power in a society” (p.47). Asian countries are likely to have higher power distance; the people in those countries will accept unequal power. Asians value respect to authority, and they are comfortable receiving orders from authority without discussion. Since the abuser in Church is in a higher position than the child, the victim from high power distance will tend to obey the authority, and keep silent about the incident without debate.

Fear

There is cultural difference in gender and sexual preference. For example, in some countries, males are bias being confident and muscular. In western countries, the public are more open about being homosexual. However, in many eastern and mid-eastern countries, homosexuality is a taboo. The male victims are fear for getting blame for the abuse and being ‘seductive’ to the abuser. Those societies will judge the abuse negatively against the victim.

Studies showed that collectivism (which value group and group harmony) view any sexual maltreatment before marriage as taboo. Anyone of collective cultures (African, Indian, Chinese and Mid Easterner) has sexual contacts before marriage will be punishment severely. In contrast, individualism (which emphasize on personal freedom and admiration over distinctive qualities) highly value their children.  Parents from individualism cultures, such as United States, show less tolerance to incidents regarding sexual abuse. Moreover, individualism cultures also believe in early discussion of sex, develop school system and basic knowledge on sex and protection. English-speaking societies, like United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, place a greater focus on child sexual abuse (Pratt, 2005).

Threats

Different countries have different achievement-nurturing orientation. Cultures with high achievement orientation value competitiveness and materialism. On the other hand, cultures with nurturing orientation put emphasis on well being and relationship with others. The Church abusers often threaten young kids. Since children have not fully developed, nurturing orientation victims might think that hiding the abuse will be building a relationship with others.

Image Restoration of the Catholic Church

For the most part, the Catholic Church has adopted an avoidance attitude in the child abuse scandals and has spent well over US$2b on different cases around the world so as to avoid litigation (Trumbull, 2012). Besides buying reputation with money, the Church has put much effort on shifting the blame and so diffusing the world’s attention on the string of scandals and allegations as a way to maintain its image.

Covering Up

The Church’s most early and most criticized way to uphold its reputation is to play down the child sex abuse problem by remaining silent and covering up. This controversial strategy has drawn criticism from different parties. An Italian academic professional Lucetta Scaraffia called this practice “"omerta" – the Mafia code of silence that described the conspiracy involved in hiding the offences” (Butt, 2010). Even when the civil justice system intervened, the Church would still block the information flow and hence hinder the investigation. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny strongly criticized that the Catholic Church’s cover-up culture “encouraged the rape of children” (Pogatchnik, 2012) and that the Church's failure to deal with the child abuse cases as "absolutely disgraceful" (McDonald, 2011).

Shifting the Blame, Diffusing World’s Attention

The Church also employed other tactics to avoid having to resolve the clerical sexual abuse problems – shifting the blame on the social broader context.

Instead of finding immediately and feasible ways to tackle the child sex scandals, the Catholic Church insisted on seeing the problem in its broader social context, which they did not have any control on. Pope Benedict XVI shifted the blame of the clerical child sex abuse case to the secular world in which “the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common” and that “child pornography [was] seemingly considered normal” (Vetter, 2010).

The Pope also diffused the public’s attention on the clerical child abuse scandal by saying that “sexual abuse was not just confined to within the church, but affected every institution in society” (Knortz, 2011).

Changing of the Playfield

Although heavily criticized, this way of avoidance through downplaying the scandal has been very effective for the last few decades until 10 years ago when more and more victims came forward to the media. The powerful social networking technology also facilitates the sharing of victim’s side of the stories amongst people in a greater speed in recent years (Tryout, 2009). As a result, the failure to close the floodgates of litigation might have helped pry them open (Kellerman, 2006). More and more incidents are believed to be exposed in time to come.

Government Crisis Management for the Scandal of Child Sexual Abuse

Oversee the Resignation of Bishop

The abuse of children by clergy members remains one of the most difficult for the church and the government. For example, Pope John Paul II once accepted Cardinal Bernard F. Law's resignation because he involved into the sexual abuse case; it was known as the most striking development yet in the Roman Catholic Church's efforts to manage the crisis of child sexual abuse (Bruni, F., 2002).

For more example, in 2010, the Vatican accepted the resignations of several Irish bishops after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in church-run residential schools (Kulish, N., 2010).

Resignation of bishop is one of the very passive ways for the government has done to protect the children from sexual abuse because resignation also happened after issues occur. The church has been respected greatly; it is hard for governments to influence the church.

Facilitate Settlement to Avoid Litigation

Another method government deal with this scandal is using money, trying to conceal the problem by compensate the victims. Numerous victims told horrific stories of abuse. Many later filed lawsuits. In an effort to stem the litigation, church officials entered into negotiations with the government. Under the agreement, the church will provide $110 million in cash and property to pay restitution and for counseling for survivors. Any victim who accepts restitution must agree to not initiate legal action against the church or the government (Church & State, 2002).

The society wants the Church face problem

Action 1: Independent Commission Unit

The Irish Commission was set in 2000, to Inquire into Child Abuse by the Irish government after a string of sexual-abuse cases emerged (Cassell, B., 2009)

Ireland's health minister, Micheal Martin, has announced a formal government investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests in a rural diocese after growing public pressure and lobbying by victims' rights groups (Lavery, B., 2002)

Action 2: Imply Law and Regulation

The Department of Justice has reached agreement on the inquiry with groups representing victims and submitted proposals to the Department of Finance…under the Government's new powers to establish commissions of investigations into matters of public interest, would examine how the diocese handled cases of alleged child abuse against priests (Wall, M., 2005).

But now, the public has been increasing the awareness of the problem. Government around the world is now setting commission and law and regulation to avoid the problem will be occurred in the future.

Conclusion

Avoidance is one of the five basic conflicting styles. Each style has its own merits and can cause further barriers too. Avoidance in the Catholic Church child sex scandal seemed to be able to help the Church preserve its image for a few decades. Especially for the past 10 years, avoidance has been proven an ineffective way for the Church to tackle this issue, be it in preserving its image or in reducing the number of child sexual cases. Clearly, avoidance is not the answer. Considering different perspectives of the issue, we attempt to make the following recommendations to both prevent further cases from happening and handle the existing cases:

For Prevention:

1)  Mandatory psychological assessment on the church officials at the start of their service for the church and thereafter every 6 months, so as to ensure they are in the right mental situation to serve the church and work with people especially children. A time-off from church service is imposed on those you fail the assessment. Immediate removal from church for those who fail the assessment 3 times.

For Handling of Existing cases:

1)  Change the Church Doctrine – Canon Law or draw a supplement to include a clear code of conduct between church officials and the believers. They may also consider if they can let the priest get married.

2)  Set up a mandatory report system to the church and the local police if there are any sexual abuse allegations and subject the cases to local judiciary system if appropriate.

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The Negotiator

(1) Background & Synopsis of Negotiation 

Background

Peter is a young single man, MBA qualified from School of Management. He works in this company for 5 years, first two years as Assistant Junior Manager in Marketing Division and after he was promoted without obtain any significant award. Since 3 years he receives only nominal nature raises even if he takes the same responsibilities and same role of the other managers who raise their financial positions.

The Modern Tool Manufacturers is a multinational company based in Hong Kong and it provides a very attractive 1-year Management Training program where young talents go through four 3-month job rotations to different departments to obtain skills and experience. At the end of the program, they will be assigned to specialize in one department.

           

Synopsis of the Negotiation

Peter enters the office of his employer, Jim, in demand of a raise following the new company policy denying him a bonus for his work this year. Peter has been earning HK$5,000 less than his peers doing the same job. Now he thinks it’s time for things to get even.

Peter: I’ve been working here for 5 years and have been loyal ever since. I have made contributions and taken responsibilities way out of my league and delivered spotless performance. I think we need to review my remuneration package to reflect this, especially my bonus or the lack of it.

Employer: I understand your situation but there’s nothing I can do. This is a new company policy that I have no control of.

P: OK you may have no control over the bonus but you can certainly give me a pay raise of HK$5,000. I’m not asking a lot but I just want to be treated fairly. I’m doing the same job as other managers but I don’t get the same compensation.

E: I’m not sure we can do that but let me think of something I can offer you.

Now the employer shows Peter 2 packages as follows:

Package A (proposed by Employer):

- Flexible hours (more days off) but no working from home

- Increase insurance coverage to your dependent family

Package B (proposed by Employer):

- Stock Options (Stock becomes yours 2 years from now)

P: It sounds good but I deserve more. The increased insurance coverage doesn’t quite apply to me, as I’m not married yet.  Why don’t you give me flexible hours and stock options? But for the stock options, I’m not sure if I have enough influence power to push the whole company to perform. I was thinking of a package myself so that the pay gap between m (Houba & Wen, 2004)y peers and me can be closed.

Package C (proposed by Peter):

- An immediate HK$ 2.000 pay raise

- A pay raise of HK$3,000 after 2 years of proven capability & performance

E: I see where you’re coming from, but I can’t comply with your wishes because it is too much to offer an inexperienced employee like yourself. I see the potential in you and I believe you can go further in your career and more reward with the third option I’m offering here.

Package D (proposed by Employer):

- Mentorship from Chief Marketing Officer

- Priority to choose the best Management Trainees (MT) to enhance your team upon their graduation of the 1 year program

- Stock Entitlement for proven capability and performance in training 4 MTs in the first year & the stock will belong to you at the end of the second year after completion of training of another 4 MTs.

If you can deliver the results, I’m sure you will get more monetary reward than a pay raise of HK$5,000 per month. I consider this a win-win outcome for you and the company.

P: That sounds like a challenge and I’m up for it.

E: I will schedule a meeting with the HR Talent Management Team to go through the details ASAP. I will keep you updated.

(2) The reasons why Packages A, B & C don’t work.

Package A (proposed by Employer):

- Flexible hours (more days off) but no working from home

- Increase insurance coverage to your dependent family

Package B (proposed by Employer):

- Stock Options (Stock becomes yours 2 years from now)

Package C (proposed by Peter):

- An immediate HK$ 2.000 pay raise

- A pay raise of HK$3,000 after 2 years of proven capability & performance 

In terms of trust and relationship building,

Knowledge-based trust creates a dependent atmosphere and enhances commitment among negotiators (Thompson, 2009). The lack of knowledge-based trust is clear in this case. Even though Peter has been working in the company for 5 years, the employer is still not aware of his marital status or long-term career goals. This can be seen from his proposal of increased insurance coverage that are not applicable to him and the short term increase in benefits, such as flexible hours as presented in Package A. It goes to show that there is minimal communication and trust building in this working relationship or the lack of it.

No identification trust can be identified, as the Employer did not even ask Peter directly on his preference or priority. He did not once take Peter’s perspective and think about what the young and well qualified want from his career but assumes that Peter wants monetary reward only. The lack of “emotional connection” makes the quest for win-win result difficult (Thompson, 2009).

In terms of negotiation tactics,

(a) False conflict

This negotiation creates a “false conflict”, because the two parties believe that “their interests are incompatible with the other party’s interests when, in fact they are not” (Thompson, 2009). The interest in this case is the pay raise. Employer thinks Peter is only looking for a pay raise while he considers there

Peter suggested Package C because he has not been treated fairly by his employer the last couple of years as he has taken on the same responsibilities as his fellow colleagues. He wants to get recognized for his consistent contributions and be seen even with his peers.

(b) Fixed pie perception

As pointed out in the above point, both Employer & Peter assumed they were in conflict in terms of salary increment. Peter was trying to maximize the pay raise increment to as far as HK$5,000 to be on equal terms with his peers while Employer was trying to steer away from it by mentioning benefits that do not require upfront salary increment, e.g. insurance, flexible hours and stock options. Both of them are focused on slicing the pie but not expanding the pie.

(c) Illusion of transparency

Peter can manipulate the employer to think that the employee would work harder in order to receive the promotion till the HK$ 5,000, but in truth, all he needs to do is work as he has been doing for the last three years. This is thereby only a win for the employee and a loss for the employer because he does not receive anything from the extra cost he has to provide. (Thompson, 2009)

(d) Compromise & delay

The benefits from offering stocks to the employee are that the employee is more engaged in the overall performance of the company, because he has stocks that depend on the performance of the company. If the performance goes well, he will make more money. If not, then he will find himself on the losing side. That is why the employee will be highly motivated to make sure he receives most value possible.

From Peter’s point of view this kind of solution will not be able to raise his financial position in short period as he expected, but after two years of hard work, as shown in Package B. Another problem with Package B is that, Peter has not been given extra resources to influence the company’s performance even after he has been given stock options. This will create a lack of motivation and trust on Peter’s part towards the company that is counterproductive.  This results in a lose-lose situation – both Peter and the company’s performance is compromised.

(3) Negotiation tactics that work

The Package Deals

The negotiator was trying the “door-in-the-face” technique, by offering two extreme packages that he knew Peter would not accept, and one unsuitable package from Peter, that Peter knew the corporate would not accept (Malhotra & Bazerman, 2008). After three rounds of unsuccessful negotiation, the negotiator presented Peter with the win-win package.  The company offered Peter the following arrangement:

• Mentorship program for Peter, which will be a good opportunity to executive level
• Peter will have to train four management trainees (MT) per year, however, Peter gets to choose the MTs to be in his team.  After the graduation of the MT, Peter makes the first round of selection and recruits the graduates to be permanent personnel of his team to increase productivity
• Stock options from the company, which he can cash 2 years from now 

The package included more than single-issue offer, for the reason that it does not permit the negotiator to make trade-offs between the matters (Thompson, 2009). By having multiple offers, the negotiator widens the bargaining zone.

Interest and Priorities

In order to reach the agreement, the negotiator became an active listener to increase trust and cooperativeness.  To shift the situation from a “win-lose” situation to a “win-win” situation, both the organization and Peter took perspective of the other party, and understood each other’s concerns and priorities.  According to Wertheim a Win-Win situation involves active listening, effective communication and preparation (Wertheim, 1996).  The ultimate goal of Peter is to have a clear career path, which he can climb up the corporate ladder.  Moreover, Peter desires to enhance his leadership skills, which could effectively develop his human ability.  According to Three-Skill Approach of leadership (Northouse, 2010), in order to become successful leader, the individual must achieve different level of technical, conceptual and human skills in different management settings.  If Peter is moving to top management, he has to develop his conceptual and human skills, while there will be less demand on his technical skill. The goal of the corporation is to develop their people, therefore, it can increase the performance and productivity of the company.  The company wants greatly motivated individuals that is devoted to the organization, and needs trainers to coach the new blood to high quality MT. 

           

Un-bundle and Re-bundle

Un-bundle: $5000 increment, time differences

Re-bundle: stock option, insight and knowledge from top executive, staff development           

Win-Win Situation

Benefits of the employee:

• Get the most intelligence MT graduates to join his team to enhance productivity
• Therefore, he can have time to get the insight and learning of the conceptual, high level decisions
• Other MT graduates of other departments will be his source and expansion of his connection
• Possible career path to senior level
• Stock options which eventually will be worth more than $5,000 per month

Benefits of the employer:

• Do not have to give out the $5,000 right away
• Peter can help with training the MTs, since not all managers are willing to include MT in their team, due to extra time and efforts that they have to put in
• Develop Peter to be the next executive in-line
• Increase the value of the company

(4) Analytical approach to finding a Win-Win Situation

Value and Expectation Differences

The value difference between the employer and employee is based on the fact that Peter wants to raise is salary immediately, expecting a valuable compensation for his work and an equally treatment as others managers, while the company tends to preserve Peter’s role as a valuable asset, who represents, after five years of work and promotion, a good resource for the company.

If we need to bring out the best solution on the table, we think of “some Potential Positive Outcome and Potential Negative Outcome” (Wertheim, 1996).

As we offer Stock Entitlement for proven capability, we concern about increasing motivation and trust towards the company, increasing performances and group loyalty of the employee who will be prone to take care of economic trends and positive results about company. Equally, the company reduces the risk of talent turnover, increasing the possibility to growing performances because of satisfied and motivate employee. For the concern of potential negative outcome of the conflict, this proposition avoid that “the careers can be side-tracked and relationship ruined” (Wertheim, 1996) because Peter used to be able to build trust and relationship within the company creating more value on the team-work.

About the Management Trainees (MT), the priority to choose the best trainees would helps Peter to select the most brilliant figures helping him to collect excellent skills and know-how remembering that “Smart people are more important than good ideas and if you give a mediocre idea to a great team they will make it work or throw it away and come up with something that works” (Catmull, 2008).

As a result, the MT selection priority does help him to get great influence and more power in the company, choosing an effective group structure and building trust among collaborators (Riley, 1996).

Mentorship from Chief Marketing Officer enables our employee to increase his vision at a managerial level having the chance to attend Board meeting, presentation and semester with senior management developing a vision of long-term change (Riley, 1996).

Differences in Risk Attitude

Risk-seeking negotiators are more likely to “trade off issues in a win-win fashion” (Thompson, 2010). Peter is young and well qualified manager with a proven record of success. He would not have problem looking for another job if negotiation falls through. And so he affords to be more risk seeking and is comfortable enough to accept Package D even though it may take longer & more effort for reward to materialize and when it does, it may be in a bigger fashion too in a way that benefits both himself and the company. As such he will gain knowledge and experience transfer from the top executive, more capability in his team from better performing MT graduates, increased productivity for the team and eventually the company can have a higher productivity and more chance to reap more profits. It’s the ideal win-win result.

Time Preferences

In 1748 Benjamin Franklin met a young tradesman and said the following to him: ”Remember that Time is Money.” The opportunity to alter when something is due is a very powerful tool in a negotiation. The package offered by the Employer has this element embedded in it. The relative time preferences of the both parties play an important role on the relative bargaining weights and the conditions for each of the two cases (Houba & Wen, 2004). Peter believes he has been treated unfairly by the corporation, and would like instant gratification by receiving a pay rise. This is due to the fact that he has the same workload as his colleagues, but earns HK$ 5.000 less pr. month. The Employer uses Peter’s ambition to climb the latter of the career, to his advantage by introducing the time difference. By offering him the opportunity to be mentored by an executive, and the possibility to choose the best MT’s, he would have received a great advantage in becoming an executive director. This is an excellent way to delay the gratification of Peter, and in the same time, makes him a motivated and better employee while adding value to the corporation.

Capabilities Difference

Without a doubt, Peter is an asset to the organization.  With his MBA qualification and years of working experience in the company, Peter is less fungible.  Although Peter is intelligent and good at what he is doing, he does not have experiences in senior management, due to lack of opportunities.  For example, Peter has the technical skills to get his daily work done; however, he is lack of the expertise to manage adverse situations, which top executives encounter regularly.  Senior management has the conceptual skills, which Peter can learn from.  On the other hand, the corporation needs trainers to develop its people on implementation of the day-to-day work.  With difference on capability, the company has conceptual knowledge to offer to Peter, while Peter has human and technical capabilities, which the organization needed, in order to maintain an equilibrium business environment.

Bibliography

Catmull, E. (2008, September). How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review , pp. 64-72.

Houba, H., & Wen, Q. (2004, November). Different Time Preferences and the Maximal Wage. Tinburgen Institut .

Malhotra, D., & Bazerman, M. (2008). Psychological influence in negotiation: An introduction long overdue. Journal of Management , 509-531.

Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and Practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Riley, R. (1996). Putting the pieces together; Comprehensive school-linked strategies for children and familes.

Thompson, L. L. (2009). Establishing Trust and Building a Relationship. In The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator.

Thompson, L. L. (2009). Win-Win Negotiation: Expanding the Pie. In The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator.

Wertheim, E. (1996). Negotiations and Reselving Conflicts: An overview. College of Business Administration, Northeastern University.

***Extension:

Human skills: according to skill approach of leadership, human skill is important across all management levels (Northouse, 2010).  In fact, compare to technical skill and conceptual skill, human skills is the only skill that remains essential throughout supervisory management, middle management, and top management.  When a person is in supervisory level, technical skill and human skill are significant for leaders.  In contrast, conceptual skill and human skill are more critical for effective top management leaders.  All three skills are equally important for middle management leaders.  The skill approach of leadership points out that in order to be an effective top manager, the individual must develop all three skills, while human skill is most crucial along the whole way.  Training MT is an excellent way to develop human skill that is needed for a leader. Therefore, I disagree with the comment that “Peter is taking a lot of risk because he puts his own future on the performance of others.”  Firstly, Peter went to the boss and demanding a $5000 raise is a risky move on its own, since all employees are highly fungible, however, the more abilities and capabilities that a person has, the more negotiation the person able to leverage.  Secondly, there will be no team, if it is a one-man-band.  Somewhere along the way, a person needs to develop human leadership skills.  More importantly, in order to become a successful leader, the individual needs to view the human development as one of the objectives in his/her career life.  In a lot of multinational companies, one of the company’s values is “value your people” or “teamwork”.  It is important for managers to tie the assigned goal from top management to their personal goal.  By doing this, they can generate more intrinsic and inspirational motivation.

Reference: Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5^thed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Blog Entry 01

(1) Your names, pictures of yourselves or a group picture, and brief introductions of your individual identities.

See video.

(2) An introduction to your group name that explains why and how your group chooses the particular group name

 “It takes two to tango” is an idiom that expresses a situation in which more than one party or entity are required to pair up in an intimate and dynamic way in order to achieve a common objective or perform the same activity.  During negative situations, both people and entities are responsible for the liability.  In positive circumstances, it could not occur without the other party or entities.

The tango originates in South America.  Cultural differences in different parts of South America influenced the expansion of Tango.  Tango requires a pair or more than a pair of partners to move in relation to each other; not necessarily in the same direction, but also in tandem and opposition.

(3) A LOGO for your group that symbolizes your group name, and an explanation for your LOGO

The logo is made up of a silhouette of a couple collaborating on dancing tango, the group name Tango and the course name.

The silhouette can easily be anyone of us – no one can escape collaboration these days. The collage of the many different pictures of couple dancing tango together shows various cultural influences on the dance. It resembles the fact that globalization brings people from different backgrounds to together. Collaboration can take any forms and adaptation. It also goes on to show that collaboration may happen with more than a pair of persons.

The straight lines on the group name Tango can embody the same overall stance or purpose every team member tries to achieve in collaboration even though their background, expertise, experience and their role in the team may be vastly different.

(4) Your group goals for this class in relation to work and life

Knowledge & Insights Sharing - Our group is diverse in our cultural exposure, e.g. Italian, Danish, American, Australian and Chinese; and our disciplines, such as Economics, Marketing, Information System, Law, Psychology & Human Resources. We can easily share our knowledge & insights from different cultures and disciplines with one another when we collaborate in this project. This can broaden our horizons and challenge our intellectual boundaries.

Diversity Adaptability – The diversity of our group members provides a golden opportunity for us to learn from each other. No group member is more brilliant than the other.  Therefore, each of us brings different value to the group. With differences in our personalities and values in work and life, we expect to have intense intellectual discussion & confrontation. We believe communication, trust and respect will carry us through in our collaboration.

(5) An explanation on what excites the group most about the weekly topics and what additional topics your group would like to learn in this class

The most exciting thing about the weekly topics is that it provides: -

- A fast-track crash course on dealing with the most common and up-to-date issues many face in workplace – managing diversity and inclusivity so as to create synergy and maximize performance

- Resourceful insights about different facets of collaboration drawing from research and experience of different scholars and practitioners’

- Comprehensive tools to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals

- Crisis Management if and when issues arise

- The combination of the above 4 items creates a very solid way to understand and improve on a seemingly abstract but important skill in life.

Addition topics the group like to learn in class includes collaboration across different generations given Gen-Y is slowly and steadily joining the workforce.

(6) One Myth you have about COLLABORATION that wants confirmation or disconfirmation. Describe and explain the myth; analyze and speculate why our culture and society has kept the myth vibrant and alive in spite of its dubious verity; and confirm or disconfirm the myth with evidence.

Myth: Diversity always brings values in collaboration.

People tend to assume that diversity offers more perspectives and that this wider perspective can get more ground covered, bring more values and thus better results, be it in a collaboration among diverse individuals or even companies.

For example, a sports equipment product management team in a consumer electronics company is always comprised of specialists from different backgrounds, e.g. sports science, engineering, marketing, art and design. The company always assumes that the diversity in their background can enable them to bring different kinds of expertise & perspectives together to come up with products with quality design, functionality and user-friendliness that can enable them to satisfy and even create markets needs. 

Let’s take a look at collaboration between two companies and they even merged in the end.

Lenovo and IBM Acquisition

In December 2004 Lenovo announced acquisition of IBM Personal Computer Division.  Both companies focused on different consumer groups and different geographical markets; the focus of IBM was on corporate consumers in western countries and the focus of Lenovo was on small enterprises in China (Quelch, 2006).  Despite the difference, both companies shared the same set of values and goal - integration.

The key success factors in this collaboration lie in the fact that both parties are willing and focused on building a common ground to start, respecting each other’s different perspectives, having the overall interest at heart instead of individual ones, meeting half-way as and when needed and joining forces to enhance their competitive advantages to outperform competitors.

Does diversity always automatically bring values & thus better results in collaboration? Or does it increase differences and introduce complexity in it?

The DaimlerChrysler Merger 

In 1998 there was an important merger between two big automotive company in the world: The American Chrysler which produced vehicles suitable for mass market and Daimler-Benz, a German manufacturer of automobiles, motor vehicles and internal combustion engines for luxury consumers.

This merger failure mainly attributed to the clash between American and German values in business kept them away from adopting the same set of values and also reaching a common strategic mission and a unified brand image. While Americans appreciated originality & adaptability, Germans preferred structure & hierarchy (Weber-Camerer, 2003). 
This also resulted in their difference in management styles and thus reduced the possibility of creating synergy (Finkelstei, 2002).

Why our culture and society has kept the myth vibrant and alive

Globalization has become a popular topic in recent years with the advancement of Internet technology and the increasing accessibility of knowledge and information. The world has become a “level playing field” (Friedman, 2007). in business. In order to succeed in this globalized business environment, many corporations rely on hiring local people and employing local intelligence from them to outperform their competitors in different markets all over the world. This results in a diversified staff body and probably a view that diversity can help enhance competitive advantages in a corporation. HSBC is one of the corporations which embrace the belief that diversity always brings values to business. This is reflected in their marketing slogan - the world’s local bank. Globalization plays a very crucial role in keeping this myth alive.

Moreover, one of the ways to enhance competitive advantage is to introduce differentiation to the product or service of the company.  For instance, innovation is one of strategic moves to achieve differentiation.  Diversity in ethnicity, demographics and expertise enable a company to bring new ideas and effective brainstorming to the solution (Anderson, 2011). According to a survey, 85 percent of respondents agreed that diversity is crucial to gaining the perspectives and ideas that foster innovation (Mulvey, 2011).

Reference:

Anderson, T. (2011, 09 May), “Is diversity good for business? CSC think so”, Washington Technology, US.

Friedman, T. L. (2007). The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (First ed.). New York, NY: Picador.

Mulvey, J., (2011, 14 Jul), “Why diversity is good for business”, Business New Daily

Quelch, J., Knoop C. (2006), Lenovo: Building a Global Brand, Harvard Business School

Sydney Finkelstein (2002).The DaimlerChrysler Merger. Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth.

Weber Roberto A., Camerer Colin F. (2003, April). Cultural Conflict and Merger Failure: An Experimental Approach. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

***********************

BLOG EXTENSION

Myth: Diversity always brings values in collaboration.

This blog extension will refine its argument on what keeps the myth vibrant.

As mentioned before, the phenomenon globalization can bring about diversity in staff members as companies hire local people to obtain local intelligence such as market conditions, political scenario, cultural and legal requirements to outcompete in local markets. Companies that hire staff this way are said to have a polycentric approach to its human resources.

Others comment that globalization may only bring homogeneity. This happens when a company follows the approach will choose only the citizens of the parent country to work in host nations; as such higher-level foreign positions are filled with expatriate employees from the parent country. The general rationale behind this approach is that the staff from the parent country would represent the interests of the headquarters effectively and link well with the parent country. This creates a photocopy of the HQs for local offices and hence homogeneity. But then again it may change depends on how far the expat is willing to adopt its local office to local environment.

In short, to reconcile these two opposing views, we have to look into the organization’s international staff recruitment strategy which in turn reflects the organization’s business values. This shapes whether globalization facilitates diversity or homogeneity.

In addition to globalization, what plays a very crucial role in keeping this myth alive is the ideology of being a world citizen who always establish a common ground with other people by advocating the greater good of the world before any nations’ and putting the best interests of the world at heart. As a result, in collaboration, the world citizens will strive to fit themselves into and contribute towards the bigger picture as the world. This is exactly what the myth is about.

Reference:

http://www.whatishumanresource.com/international-recruitment