Conflicts & Negotiation At Hbl

1 Conflict and Negotiation at HBL:

Conflict and Negotiation at HBL: Conflict: A process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affects some thing that the first party cares about. There are three views about conflicts; traditional view, human relations view and Interactionist view.

Traditional view: The belief that all conflict is harmful and must be avoided. Human Relation view: the belief that conflict is a natural and inevitable outcome in any group.

Interactionist view: The belief that conflict is not only a positive force in a group but that it is also an absolute necessity for a group to perform effectively.

MAJOR TYPE OF CONFLICT IN HBL: Most of the major conflicts in HBL belong to the category of policy driven conflicts. After privatization of HBL, it had a major change in its structure and policies. This change was necessary to overcome key problems associated with the structure of the public owed company such as:

Over-staffing: HBL before privatization had more than 31000 employees, management and nonmanagement, they aimed to reduce this number to 27000 employees with the help of its new policies.

Political Pressure: Before privatization HBL was highly influenced by the governmental policies as it was the largest financial institute under government control. The economic policies of the country were also affecting the bank’s policies. The problem occurred mainly because of the unstable political situation in Pakistan which was causing the huge fluctuations in governmental policies resulting in the inconsistency of HBL’s policies which led to the M. Ismail (L1F07BBAM0001) UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL PUNJAB

2 MAJOR TYPE OF CONFLICT IN HBL:

inefficient results. The motive of privatization was to make HBL as independent as possible.

DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESS: Negotiation: The Senior Vice President of Human Resource Management and Head of disciplinary department undertake the negotiation process. The representatives of the affected department approach VP of HR department and put forward their point of view that usually is against the management. VP uses his experience and expertise to minimize the conflict and to achieve the BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). He makes the employees agree to most of his demands if not all he drags the employee to agree on two or three points at least by making employees compromise on most of the issues. His preference remains that management by any means should not compromise and if incase he fails to do this he moves to the next phase that is of mediation.

Mediation: Despite trying hard, when the negotiation process fails HBL goes for the mediation process, where the role of an effective, neutral mediator comes in who acts as a communication bridge between the management and the employees. Usually the mediator is in HBL is a trusted manager popular amongst both employees and managers HBL’s mediation process can be broadly divided into the following three stages: Stage 1: Introduction and establishment of credibility Stage 2: Steering the negotiation process M. Ismail (L1F07BBAM0001) UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL PUNJAB

3 DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESS:

Stage 3: Movement towards a final settlement

M. Ismail (L1F07BBAM0001) UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL PUNJAB