Course : Organizational Behavior – X Class

Lecturer : Alif Mirzania, S.E., MBA.

Group 2 :  Siti Sri Wahyuni (200810201001)
 Johan Chrisna Bintoro (200810201239)
 Nabila Fauziah Putri (210810201029)
 Elita Maulidya Naura (210810201061)

CASE INCIDENT 2 – Is More Cash Worth the Clash?

With 3,700 hotels located in 92 countries, Accor’s revenues total more than $6 billion.
About 180,000 people currently work for Accor’s internationally renowned brands, including
Sofitel, Novotel, and Ibis in Europe, the MiddleEast, and Africa, and Huazhu, Grand Mercure
(through domestic brands Mei Jue, Maha Cipta, and Manee Pura), and Sebel in Asia,
Australia, and Latin America. Because Accor is opening one hotel every two days, it will
employ even more people over the next few years directly and via subcontracting temporary
work agencies. Not only does it mean negotiating an increasing number of employment
contracts with individuals, but it also involves local negotiations with subcontractors. Work
conditions and pay are often at the core of most of these negotiations.
In European hotels, labor costs represent almost 50% of revenues. Thus, human capital is
either a competitive advantage you might invest in or a resource you may save money on.
There is often a clash between shareholders, whose goal is to increase profit by lowering
costs and generating more cash, and employees, who expect a higher pay from their
company’s growth.
In France, over the last five years, there have been hundreds of room attendants working
for Accor hotels who publicly went on strike, complaining in the media about their pay and
work conditions. These room attendants were not directly employed by Accor, but by
subcontractors who paid them less than the industry minima and imposed higher production-
rates on them (for example, to clean four rooms an hour) than room attendants directly
employed by Accor, whose unions negotiated work conditions (three rooms an hour is the
key-performance indicator used in Ibis hotels). Although the conflict occurred between
temporary workers and their employing agencies, Accor had to play a role, because room
attendants on strike could not be replaced on the spot and remaining employees could not
accept more supplementary hours. To foster its engagement in CSR and to solve the conflict,
Accor signed a protocol with its subcontractors and the room attendants went back to work.
Unions may play a role in such labor-management conflicts. While it has excellent
relationships with French unions, Accor was actually warned by the French Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) national contact point (NCP) in 2012
after a complaint about the violation of international guidelines was brought against it in 2010
by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and
Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), which represents over 12 million workers. The IUF
stated that Accor Group Accor Group had denied the right of its employees to join collective
negotiation in one hotel in Benin and to establish trade unions in three hotels in Canada.
Because local unions and hotels’ managers were unable to come to any agreement for years,
the social conflict reached a global level with the IUF. In 2014, the French OECD NCP
eventually thanked Accor for their involvement in resolving the conflicts with the IUF, and in
deploying training plans to nurture hotels’ franchisees and managers’ sense of CSR.
Yet such conflicts should have been avoided, for Accor is strongly committed to
developing compensation systems and work conditions that exceed the requirements of local
legislation. In 2014, Accor signed non-discretionary profit-sharing agreements in countries
like Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Gender-neutral compensation
and equal opportunity programs are also vital to Accor, which created a Women at Accor
Generation (WAAG) network designed to help women to evolve within the group. A
Singaporean general counsel states that she had to face cultural pressures that compelled her
to focus on family commitments rather than to work, but WAAG assisted her in solving
work– life conflicts and advancing within Accor. In Dubai, where hotel managerial positions
are usually held by men, the director of two hotels spoke of how WAAG helped her with
training courses and Webinars, which also covered gender-related challenges, to assume her
responsibilities as a female manager.

Questions and Answer

14-13. Labor–management negotiations might be characterized as more distributive
than integrative. Do you agree? Why do you think this is the case? What, if
anything, would you do about it?
Agree. A common problem for unions in negotiations is wages. Negotiations
between labor-management related to wages are often practiced with zero-sum
conditions or distributive negotiations. This means that the profits obtained by one
 party come from the losses experienced by the other party. Labor-management is the
opposite party in the negotiation process. In this case, workers have a goal to get a
decent salary while management will give as little as possible as a form of reducing
company expenses. If this is the case, it would be better if it was turned into an
integrative negotiation. In integrative negotiations, both parties can reach a win-win
solution. With integrative negotiations, both parties can benefit from each other
without anyone feeling defeated.

14-14. Be they dyadic, intragroup, or intergroup ones, labor–management conflicts are

too often considered as dysfunctional while neglecting the role of third-parties
that could make them more functional. Do you agree? Why?
Agree. Although it is stated that they can resolve the problem by negotiating
through each party's representative, the third party will be able to help resolve the
problem with more alternative solutions due to the new understanding. Usually,
negotiations between labor-management often use a mediator as a third party. In this
case, the perception of the mediator is important. However, the mediator must remain
neutral during the negotiation process in order to bring the conflicting parties to a
better solution.

14-15. If you were advising union and management representatives about how to solve
their conflicts, drawing from the artefacts in the UIF-Accor case and the
concepts in this chapter, what would you tell them?
Both parties must use integrative negotiation to come up with innovative and
creative ideas. To achieve a win-win solution during the negotiation process, all
parties must disclose accurate information, consider the needs of the other party, and
maintain flexibility. A mediator can be brought in as a third party to mediate the
discussion to find the best answer if the negotiation process is protracted and it is
difficult to reach a solution.

14-16. What kind of conflicts do the Accor employees involved in WAAG networks
face? Imagine, describe, and analyze both the conflict process and the
negotiation process that one of them might have experienced.
Conflict process:
- Potential opposition or incompatibility.
 This stage is the stage of the emergence of conditions that create opportunities for
conflict to arise. This condition does not lead to direct conflict but triggers the
emergence of conflict. The conditions at this stage are grouped into three namely
communication, structure, and personal variables. Accor employees who are
involved in WAAG experience a personal variable condition where coworkers and
the surrounding culture view women to focus on family commitments rather than
work.
- Cognition and personalization
At this stage, the parties involved are aware of the conflict and can define the
conflict itself. This can continue to create hostility. Awareness of conflict occurs
when Accor employees involved in the WAAG network feel that they have to face
cultural pressures that force them to focus more on family commitments than
work.

Negotiation process:
- Preparation and planning
At this stage, the parties involved in the conflict must be whatever they want with
their reasons. This stage is marked by the establishment of WAAG as a forum that
helps women to develop in groups.
- Clarification and justification
The parties involved must explain their interests and desired expectations. This
stage is marked by the implementation of gender-related training and webinars
with explanations about female managers as the bearers of responsibility.