Module 1 – SLP
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN NEGOTIATION
Imagine you are the owner of a small electrical
company. You have been penalized $14,000
by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for what you
consider to be petty violations. You do not think you should have been cited
for two of the three violations which were identified as “Serious” violations.
There was an open elevator shaft 30 feet from where your
electrician was working.
Someone cut the grounding prong off of one of your extension
cords.
Your electrician did not cover an open circuit breaker box
that was energized, which exposed other workers to potential electrical shock
hazards.
In addition, you consider your company’s safety program to
be one of the best in the industry, having won several awards from the local
Safety Council. You also have not had a
recordable injury for over 5 years.
You do not think you should have been cited for the elevator
shaft, since it was not very close to where your electrician was working (so
the employee wasn’t really exposed to the hazard). He didn’t even have a reason to go near the
shaft, and it wasn’t your company’s responsibility to put up a guard rail (the
carpenters are supposed to do that).
You do not think you should be cited for the electrical cord
because you have repeatedly instructed your workers not to do this, and you
have a program to check for ground prongs daily (though your foreman sometimes
forgets to do this).
You decide to set up an informal settlement conference to
try to settle the case with the Area Director. You heard conflicting stories
related to her willingness to negotiate in good faith, however.
A framing contractor (who is admittedly a bit of a ‘hot-head’)
stated that the Area Director is ‘a jerk’ and that she ‘has it in’ for
construction contractors. He stated, “I
showed her how her inspector was clearly wrong and all she would do was give me
a 20% penalty reduction. She wants to
put us all out of business”. A roofing
contractor stated, however, that you just need to get on her good side. He stated that the Area Director was very
accommodating and that she withdrew two out of four serious citations tied to
an inspection conducted at one of the roofer’s sites. He ended up with a 65% penalty reduction
overall.
In this scenario, you are the business owner and are
obviously entering into a negotiation with a federal manager to reduce the
penalties issued against your company.
You really do not know what to expect.
For this assignment, please:
Outline the key tenets of emotional intelligence and discuss
how an awareness of emotional intelligence and the human element can be useful
going into such a negotiation.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Answer questions with
clarity.
Show depth and breadth to enhance the quality of your paper.
Search in our library to find some papers/articles to
support your argument and show them in the reference list.
Turn in your 2- to 3-page paper by the module due date.
