Conflict Management Strategy
Currently, all over the world, there is increased competition for market share due to the ever-rising number of companies all around the world. For this reason, companies intending to grow have no choice but to expand their reaches to other countries. One market that is strategically positioned in Africa is Kenya. This is so since it is the leading economy in East Africa that offers investment opportunities to a vast number of companies.
However, those intending to invest in Kenya should be ready to face numerous challenges. This is majorly attributed to different cultures that are present in different parts of the world. Culture, in this case, being the social behavior, customs as well as ideas of certain people in a society (Diehl & Lepgold, 2003). With companies being used to a certain culture, expansion to the Kenyan market may bring about cultural conflict. For this reason, it is of the essence for the company to have an effective conflict management strategy in place.
Potential areas of conflict during cross-cultural negotiations in Kenya include conflict with customers, as well as discrimination issues. Conflicts with customers are usually necessitated by the notion that a given company is defrauding its customers. Foreign companies intending to invest in Kenya tend to encounter this conflict because of the idea that most Kenyan consumer to have, is that foreign companies are meant to improve their living conditions without even putting into consideration the company’s needs. For this reason, companies will end up facing customer conflict if, their plans are not ended at improving living conditions of community setups in Kenya. Secondly, discrimination issues will bring about conflicts, since they point to the fact that there are those who are being underrated because of where they come from (Josephine, 2014).
The best conflict management strategy to mitigate the above two potential areas of conflicts that may arise during cross-cultural negotiations will be to employ the collaborating conflict management style (Indigenous conflict management strategies, 2016).
The use of this conflict management strategy will result in both sides in a negotiation ending up with a win-win situation. This is so since, through collaboration, the foreign company will end up depending on the Kenyan consumers to provide the market for its goods and services while at the same time improving the lives of the Kenyan people through its corporate social responsibilities initiatives. Additionally, to mitigate the issue of discrimination, this strategy will ensure that the company ends up embracing diversity with regard to its workforce, thereby ensuring that it ends up having a working environment that is inclusive.
With stakeholders playing a pivotal role in the success of the company, it is of the essence to ensure that their satisfaction levels are never compromised. In so doing, a company’s management would have ensured that no harm will end up being caused to the business. The use of the collaborating management style will guarantee that every stakeholder ends up being satisfied since it accounts for all of them to be part of the win-win situation (Diehl & Lepgold, 2003). This so since consumers will provide the much-needed market for the business’s products and benefit for the company’s CSR initiatives. Secondly, by embracing diversity, the company will end up boosting the morale of its employees, thereby enabling it to to flourish.
The collaborating management style will not only resolve potential conflicts to be encountered by foreign companies in Kenya, but it will also ensure that the Kenyan culture ends up being respected. This is so since, for the win-win scenario to be realized, it will be imperative for foreign companies to ensure that they are in harmony with the Kenyan culture (Josephine, 2014).
Diehl, P., & Lepgold, J. (2003). Regional conflict management. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Josephine, N. (2014). Implication of Globalization on Organization Culture, Kenyan Experience. International Journal Of Academic Research In Business And Social Sciences, 4(4). doi: 10.6007/ijarbss/v4-i4/784
LEXINGTON BOOKS. (2016). INDIGENOUS CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES. LANHAM.