Conflict Case Study

Idalene F. Kesner and Sally Fowler paint with vivid strokes the portrait of an apparently intractable conflict between the newly merged Kellogg-Champion and their hired consultants, the Statler Group. Both consultant and client are exasperated by a scenario that appears to have been doomed from the outset. Unrealistic expectations, an inaccurate rendering of the challenges at hand, and poor preparation on both sides of the conflict are rife, exacerbating an already tenuous mid-merger climate at Kellogg-Champion. In assessing the merger, Kesner and Fowler first employ a host of assessment tools and then enlist the services of some actual commentators in the field to instruct the key players as to how best to proceed. Ultimately, the expert opinions of these commentators are at once astute and over-pessimistic: they diagnose the disease well but offer little hope for a cure. This is a mistake.

Assessing conflict is useful in the case of Kellogg-Champion and the Statler Group for the general reason that the conflict appears at first glance to be insoluble. Kesner and Fowler attempt to render a picture of the conflict from the perspective of each of the conflicting parties. This assessment tool can be an effective way to see more completely around a given conflict. In this case, from the perspective of the consultant, Kellogg-Champion had oversimplified its objective in hiring the Statler Group (Kesner & Fowler, 1997, pp. 2), had overestimated its own effectiveness in

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Category: Business - C