Situational Management Support Systems: Accommodating the Growing Range ofWorking Styles, Use Cases, and Access Modes

Digital natives increasingly populate organizations' management. These new-generation managers more naturally accept management support systems (MSS), but also have higher expectations about how they should accommodate their individual user preferences. As a result, managers question MSS that have been developed without configuration mechanisms to accommodate their working style, relevant MSS use cases, and different MSS access modes. The objective of this article is to reveal managers' different MSS use situations and propose levers for tailoring (conceptual) MSS design to them. Use situations generalize classes of similar user-group preferences. We first apply findings from a literature review to cluster managers' user-group preferences into 36 MSS use situations. Second, we propose that the selection of end-user devices can serve as a main lever for MSS configuration. Third, we complete the configuration with a MSS user-interface design. Finally, we demonstrate utility of our configuration model by presenting and evaluating a prototyp

Conflict Style is not a Label: The Relationship of Age, Education Level, Work Level, Reason for Assessment, and Time Between Assessments to Conflict Style Change

Organizations and research that are only measuring conflict style one time, are treating conflict style as a trait or label. However, conflict style can change over time, and with context. Even the circumstances around the conflict itself may impact how individuals handle conflict. This means that individuals may demonstrate different conflict styles in different circumstances. There is little research that explores the implications of individual conflict style change if measured at different times and in different circumstances. Nor is there much research that explores what factors may have an influence on conflict style change. This study explores whether conflict style significantly changes for individuals who completed the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict MODE Instrument (TKI) assessment two times. The research examined data from 11,821 participants and found a statistically significant relationship between conflict style change and age of participants, the highest level of participant education, and the duration of time between taking the first and second assessment. The results of this study suggested that it may be more appropriate to assess conflict style multiple times if conflict style metrics are contributing to research outcomes or organization training determination and planning. Because conflict style can change for individuals, it may be inappropriate to consider conflict style a trait, or use it as a label. Instead, conflict style may be better suited for the evaluation of organizational conflict learning objectives, and situationally specific individual conflict style state observation

Key account manager's internal selling role : an exploration of interpersonal conflict

Acting in a boundary spanning role within their organisations, the key account manager in representing their customers’ needs internally is required to manage a wide range of complex internal relationships. This can often lead to incidents of conflict between the key account manager and other individuals or groups of individuals within the organisation in non-sales functions. Using the Critical Incident Technique (CIT), (Flanagan, 1954) together with an interpretive framework for data coding (Spiggle, 1994), this research investigates conflict and the key account manager’s internal selling role. This research also explores how the key account manager perceives intraorganisational, interpersonal conflicts and investigates the complex behavioural sequences adopted to manage them. In doing so this research addresses some of the shortcomings of the traditional view of the nature of organisational conflict and how it is managed while extending our understanding of the key account manager’s internal selling role. In contrast to the majority of research into personal selling, this research takes an interpretive approach through the analysis of transcripts from a series of CIT interviews with key account managers in the field. Twenty-nine key account managers from seven participating FMCG, Blue Chip organisations in the U.K. and U.S. participated in the research. From the CIT interviews conducted, 112 critical incidents were described with both positive and negative outcomes. This research provides further insight into the complexity of conflict, suggesting conflict is inherent within the key account management internal selling role, that incidents of conflict do not occur in isolation, that these conflict episodes are complex, having multiple components and that a combination of behaviours can be used in their management. In addressing these issues in the key account management context, this research further develops our knowledge of personal selling and the key account manager’s internal selling role by providing an analysis of the recollections of how conflict is perceived and managed by the key account managers involved