Management skills

1

Alternative Assignment: Component B – Task 3 – Negotiation

This assignment should only be completed if you have not attended the negotiating skills

practical roleplay sessions.

It should be submitted via Blackboard as part of your Management Skills portfolio

together with Tasks 1, 2 & 4 on 12 December.

Do not send to your module leader or workshop tutor for marking.

TASK

Please read the Bristol CC case study on page 2 and address the following tasks:

Analyse the case and address the following questions concerning planning and preparation

for your meeting with Frankie. There is a maximum word limit of 500 words.

• Outline your plan for the meeting (e.g. identifying the key areas to be addressed;

what background information may be needed? What negotiation tactics will you employ

and why? What options will you have in terms of bargaining power?)

• Describe the specific skills you will need to employ during the meeting.

Please include the following title in the heading of your task to indicate that you have

completed the alternative assignment: ‘ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNMENT: Negotiating skills.’

Refer to the slides for Lecture 6 and Workshop 7 for details of the conceptual frameworks and

the academic literature that may be appropriate for your analysis.

Tips:

 Draw on relevant conceptual frameworks and theory from the lectures as well as your own study to support your analysis.

 Use UWE Harvard Referencing within the work and include a Reference List (not included in the word count)

Marking criteria

 Identification of key areas of negotiation

 Quality of plan for negotiation interview

 Integration of theory with analysis of case

 Quality of writing and good academic practice.

2

You are a Manager with The Bristol CC with responsibility for eight staff members in your

department. Of these staff members, six have been with the company for over five years and two are coming to the end of their six-month probation period as Graduate trainees. These two have both done very well and the company would like to offer them permanent positions if they wish to stay. The Bristol CC is a relatively new company of 18 years (known initially as The Bristol Clothing

Company) with one outlet in the area of Clifton, popular with students, and a healthy on-line sales outlet. They concentrate upon fashionwear for the 15-30 year old male/female market, a particularly competitive market in terms of price/quality/competitors, but for the past seven years they have been steadily, if slowly, expanding each year. There are a few new posts and planned vacancies that will need to be filled over the next six months. The company has no trouble filling vacancies and there is a regular interest from Graduates in the various internships and trainee jobs on offer. Frankie’s probation period will end next week and has requested a meeting with you to discuss it. You have had a brief chat today to roughly identify what Frankie wishes to discuss in the meeting next Tuesday. You have found Frankie to be ambitious - eager for promotion and the benefits that might accompany that, specifically: a significant pay rise, a company car/mobile/laptop, an additional five days’ annual leave, the opportunity of foreign travel, the ability to regularly work from home when suitable. According to your own experience, Frankie appears to be a very good employee: quick to learn, a creative thinker, a likeable team player, eager to take on new tasks (though sometimes a little too eager as Frankie has once or twice missed a task’s deadline). Frankie is regularly late which annoys the rest of the team, but Frankie does have an hour’s travel to and from work on the bus. As a manager, there are some areas that you are able to negotiate and some that the company regulations would not allow. You are able to negotiate on pay; flexibility of working hours and location of work; benefits in terms of an annual bonus, training, company car, mobile and laptop. You are not able to agree to longer holidays, a reduction in monthly hours worked, and you’d have trouble with any benefits not necessary to the job, such as foreign travel, unless there was a good business reason offered. You are a little uncertain what the rules say regarding company pension scheme and the membership of the profit sharing scheme.

The Bristol CC