Collaborative Practices Between Conflicting Parties and New Media

The following article deals with the collaboration and conflicts through the new media means and with new media actors/users. By new media, we will take into consideration Internet and social media.

Three cases of collaborative practices between conflicting parties on new media will illustrate our theoretical part (please consult our personal blogs).

1)    A few words on the emergence of new media (historical perspective) and its impact on collaborations (system and global perspectives)

a)      Historical view

Digital, computerized, networked information and communication technologies emerged in the second half, last third of the 20th century. This is at that time Silicon Valley companies emerged too.

Until the 1980’s, media were mostly represented by TV and radio. These last thirty years and specifically these last ten years have seen a transformation of media through computers, digital softwares and networks. What we could do “by hand” like writing or manipulating photos is now doable on computers. Plus, tools of distance communications have been developed.

 

New media bubbles during the 1990’s

In 2001, Andrew L. Shapiro (founder of GreenOrder, management consulting group specialized in environmental sustainability) claimed that the "emergence of new, digital technologies signals a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources".

At the same period, W. Russell Neuman (University of Michigan) suggested that "we are witnessing the evolution of a universal interconnected network of audio, video, and electronic text communications that will blur the distinction between interpersonal and mass communication and between public and private communication”.

In fact, it seems that the emergence of new media and especially Internet gives the opportunity to democratize the public sphere and allows participation and good information. It permits debates between citizens and this in a non-hierarchical way (difference with the social structure). But, a possible negative appraisal is the too big increase of the global influence of some corporations.

Finally, as Terry Flew (Queensland University of Technology) highlighted: "as a result of the evolution of new media technologies, globalization occurs”. It sort of caused the death of distance, amongst other things.

We think the development of new media and its communication means contributed to globalization and not the opposite.

b-     Collaboration on new media

The emergence of new media as described previously has shifted new types of relationships, collaborations and exchanges between people and organizations.

W. Russell Neuman advanced that new media:

·         Alters the geographical distance severely,

·         Allows a larger amount of communications,

·         Increases the speed of communication,

·         Diversify the means of communication and the ways of interacting.

In the article “Building the Collaborative Enterprise-Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities through Collaboration”, we can read that an important reason for collaborating is to permit a better individual and group productivity, a higher employee engagement, a more flexible and asynchronous work arrangements. But for this, a coordination in time and space is totally required and new media play an important role into that. So, we can say new media constitute a helper to better collaborations.

In 2012,

                                  

Collaboration through new media has advantages in the way it builds high performance teams. As we can read in the ‘mapping teamwork’ (from “The new science of building great teams” by A. Pentland), energy, engagement and exploration are three key words for a great team. The author insists on contribution and volume of communication which are both largely helped by new media means as we said above.

2)    Conflict management on new media (system and global perspectives)

Emergence of new media shifted collaboration. Consequently it has shifted new types of conflicts and a different management of them.

Because diverse backgrounds and cross-cultural people exchange on new media, because new media are across time and insensitive to distance, because new media interactions are quicker, links between people are more numerous and more frequent. Conflicts are also more frequent. Their resolution is different.

Four elements make the conflict easier to happen on new media:

·         The fact that a large part of interactions are public and so everyone is aware of it,

·         Everyone is accountable (responsible for) of what he/she says and can be contested. Negotiations happen among diverse parties because of the plurality of opinions,

·         Fake information can spread faster and create conflicts,

·         There is a co-authority of dialogues since there is no more “hierarchy” and there is a freedom of expression. Thus, the reality is jointly created by several individuals. It is not a “one way truth” anymore.

In despite of the fact conflicts are certainly more numerous with the emergence of new media. We can rightfully argue their resolution is easier. Indeed, if we have a look on the article “Conflict Management – Lessons from the second grade” by Hagemann and Stroope, conflict management needs, among others: avoidance, ignore, taking turns, apologize and postpone. All these actions are much more easier on a new media than in live (in a face-to-face relation).

Also, if the conflict is managed through escalation (described as a good strategy in the article “Want collaboration? Accept and actively manage conflict”), new media is very useful. Indeed, the authors claim that the escalation should be transparent to be efficient, which is the case on most of new media possibilities as we said earlier).  

3)    Future trend?

Collaboration through new media should keep increasing. Indeed, as we said in the previous part, conflict management is easier through new and social media. Thus, increasing new media collaboration will permit a gain of time and create ideas through more well manageable conflicts. More specifically, we can cite “Managing conflicts in today’s organizations” by G. Lippitt and its five style of managing conflict. In fact, new media make easier the five strategies.  

Also, concerning the increase of collaboration through new media, for instance, we can see nowadays even some surgeries are realized at distance with collaboration of different surgeons and nurses. But in this case whose fault in case of problem? Is it always the surgeon operating or can it be the one giving orders on another part of the planet?

Law-making concerning new media conflicts will probably be developed. We can regularly see conflicts between for instance Google and consumers or governments about confidentiality. There are still some lacks in law about these types of conflicts. Also, we can have in mind the recent “leaks” from Edward Snowden or Julian Assange who both took high risks and are not protected now. How will it evolve? Where to put laws to avoid a non respect of confidentiality of top secret documents and of private discussions between citizens or head of states!

As we can read in “Workplace conflict: Three paths to Peace” by Kristie McAllum, a source of conflict can be the unclearness or lack of regulations themselves (quote: “Policy documents may be vague, inadequate or nonexistent»). So, we suggest and tend to think the future will be at defining clear regulations and laws.

New means of communication should be developed and make us discover new functionalities. Things like the 3D printing are developing very fast and we could imagine something like 3D scanning and so we could share an “object” from long distance. It is complicated to develop this tendency since we probably cannot even imagine yet what we will use in five or ten years.

4)    Examples through three conflictual cases on new media

a)      Battles on new media between the People and the Government during the Arab Spring

Please consult Hugo’s blog: http://hugoi53498075.blogspot.com/

b)     Education and new media

Please consult Kathy’s blog: http://musketeerkathyy.blogspot.com/

c)      Political Weibo and new media

Please consult Winnie’s blog: http://53216248winnnie.blogspot.com/

Our references

• Our personal references:

-          « Collaboration and New Media » by P. Lichty from the Columbia College of Chicago in February 2007

-          “New Media: An Introduction” by T. Flew, Oxford University Press, 2007

-          “Media Society: Industries, Images and Audiences” (3rd edition) by Croteau, David and Hoynes, Pine Forge Press, 2003

-          “Introduction to leadership: Concepts and Practice” (6th edition) by P. Northouse, SAGE, February 2012

• Articles from the class:

-          “Conflict Management – Lessons from the second grade” by B. Hagemann and S. Stroope, American Society for Training and Development, July 2012

-          “Want collaboration? Accept and actively manage conflict” by J. Weiss anf J. Hugues, HBR, March 2005

-           “The new science of building great teams” by A. Pentland, HBR, April 2012

-          “Managing conflicts in today’s organizations” by G. Lippitt, Training and Development Journal, July 1982

-          “Building the Collaborative Enterprise-Ten Questions to Ask about Business Opportunities through Collaboration”, from nGenera Corporation, 2009

-          “Workplace conflict: Three paths to Peace” by Kristie McAllum, IESE Insights, 2013

Response to comments received

Thank you all for your comments.

We are now glad to answer you back and have a supplementary opportunity to defend our video and study some sources of improvement. Your comments are very valuable to us.

Indeed, we think that making a contrast between healthy happy dolphins and dolphins attacked by human activity is an efficient way to convince human beings that they have an impact on their survival. It has a direct effect on the Pathos aspect of our strategy of persuasion (fear for their possible extinction, pity, empathy, etc.).

About the proposal to use more Chinese White Dolphins to convince specifically the Hong Kong population, we think it could an improvement in some extent. In fact, we agree on the fact our video probably lacks a specifically Hong Kong perspective. It could for instance also work in Florida or Canary Islands. Consequently, the idea of using Chinese White Dolphins to target Hong Kong people might be good.

However, I think images are not enough because a very few people are able to distinguish a Chinese White Dolphin from another type of dolphins. Thus, insert text would be necessary we think to specify their type and the fact they are “Hong Kong dolphins”.

In the same perspective, we should also put some images of Hong Kong Ocean Park with a focus on the fact it happens in Hong Kong. Once gain to reach our target.

We also have new suggestions to make our video generally more convincing (not only for Hong Kong people).

After watching other groups’ video, we thought about including in our video a part concerning the consumption of dolphins’ meat. We could see plates or soups or whatever containing dolphins’ meat or fin. Besides, showing people directly how they contribute to this disaster by buying a piece of dolphin’s meat at the supermarket would be extremely efficient and could make them feel more responsible.

Sometimes showing how a small gesture can have a big impact is the best way to affect a large amount of people.

Finally, we think that using a larger range of conditions in which dolphins are badly treated could make our video better. Showing a dolphin dying in a boat’s propeller will certainly be significant for the audience.

Thank you for reading us !

The Art of Persuasion by... The Three Musketeers of Persuasion !!

We choosed to defend the dolphins' cause through this video promoting the Dolphin Safe & Dolphin Friendly's logo:




（some parts in our video are tailored from <THE COVE> and <ANIMAL WORLD>）

§  What is our eco label? What is its cause? What are the workings?

 

Our group has chosen the ecological label Dolphin Safe & Dolphin Friendly.

Although the International Dolphin harvesting Commission banned commercial dolphin harvesting in 1986, some countries still refuse to stop its activities of slaying the dolphins.

 

"Without doubt the biggest threat to dolphins comes from man." Let us illustrate the social causes behind it.

 

1-      Food source

 

Some dolphin species are harvested as a food source.

The dolphins are killed to be sold as meat in markets and restaurants. Whale and dolphin meat is big business in Japan despite the fact that dolphin meat is heavily contaminated with mercury, the dolphin meat, they hold the belief that eating that is an essential part of their food culture. There is even a time that the Japanese government provides free dolphin meat for the primary school students.

2-      Commercial harvest

Another major reason that dolphins are slayed is related to business use.

If 30 dolphins are hunt, only one of them can meet the standard of performing on the stage in Japanese, the country that carries out the largest hunt in the world. Then the other 29 dolphins, which have not been chosen, would get killed in the end.

3-      Science studies

Dolphins are also killed for the use of “science studies". Some people claimed that they have to kill the dolphins in order to have a better understanding of their age, gender, food, procreation situation, heredity and  the capacity of gastrostomy.

4-      Disadvantage of  modern fishing

The modern fishing fleet harvests the seas indiscriminately. It does not distinguish between fish and marine mammals, and it is quest for increased efficiency, slaughters thousands of dolphins each year drowned in nets. As the world's fish stocks become more depleted from over-fishing, there is a danger that human's pursuit of protein food will lead to a more determined capture of dolphins to satisfy their demand.

 

The impacts are:

1)      Dolphins’ extinction

Worldwide, dolphins face a variety of impacts that threaten their existence. These threats are mainly a result of human activities.

Every year, approximately 22,000 dolphins in Japan and small whales are cruelly slaughtered in the bays of numerous coastal towns. In recent history the Baiji, also known as the Yangtze river dolphin, was declared extinct. Other species like the Maui's dolphin are on the brink of extinction due to entanglement in fishing gear. The Maui's, a sub-species of the Hector's dolphin found in the waters of New Zealand, teeters on the brink with estimates suggesting less than 100 of these dolphins remain in existence.

 

2)      Harm the ocean ecosystem

Since the scale of dolphin harvesting is too large, it is difficult to estimate the harm to ocean ecosystem, which has become a global environmental issue now.

The workings of the ecological label are:

Nowadays,a growing number of people know the importance of protecting dolphins, but as the article “Telling Tales” written by Stephen Denning in 2004 (HBR) mentioned, “Analysis might excite the mind, but it hardly offers a route to the heart-and that's where we must go to motivate people”. It is time for the ecological label dolphin safe to take actions, to persuade, to motivate the public..

 

Actually, they will conduct the following three steps, in order to arouse people’s awareness and persuade them to protect the dolphins.

Ø  Step 1

The Commerce Dept. has released an official “dolphin safe” mark for tuna labels which threatens the current Dolphin Safe standards for tuna and promises to mislead consumers.

Ø  Step 2

In order for tuna to be considered “Dolphin Safe”, it must meet the following standards:

1. No intentional chasing, netting or encirclement of dolphins during an entire tuna fishing trip;

2. No use of drift gill nets to catch tuna;

3. No accidental killing or serious injury to any dolphins during net sets;

4. No mixing of dolphin-safe and dolphin-deadly tuna in individual boat wells (for accidental kill of dolphins), or in processing or storage facilities;

5. Each trip in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean (ETP) by vessels 400 gross tons and above must have an independent observer on board attesting to the compliance with points 1~4 above.

Ø  Step 3

Earth Island urges consumers to avoid buying any tuna in the US that carries this logo.

 

 

Please feel free to visit these websites:

    http://www.ecolabelindex.com/ecolabel/dolphin-safe

    http://www.earthisland.org/dolphinSafeTuna/consumer/

§  Why is our video convincing?

Let’s use the three components (ethos, logos, pathos) of the art of persuasion to analyze it.

The Ethos apex of the triangle is reinforced by the presence of the logo ‘SAFE’ of our label and the expression of sincere gratitude to the “first line warriors” at the end of the video. It is an official label, recognized and well-known whose credibility is very high. The logo is synonym of respect of dolphins and their close environment. We thought it was important to clearly show the logo of the label in this video to get a credible and trustful video and so increase our persuasive power. Indeed, as we can read in “The necessary art of persuasion” by Jay A. Conger (HBR), in business many managers “overestimate their own credibility” and are consequently not persuasive. That’s the reason why we wanted to show the serious of our clip with the logo.

     The Logos aspect (consistency and logic) of our persuasion is assured by different elements.

First, the video is extremely simple to understand, there are no subtleties and there is no need to read between the lines. Why did we choose simplicity over humor, subtleties or second degree? Because we are looking for a large change in attitudes, behaviors and also a general awareness. 

In the article “Change through persuasion” by David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto (HBR), we are here in the first stage of a persuasion campaign: convincing the change is necessary.

 We used some other tools such as:

-          The repetition of the structure,

-          The contrast between images of free happy dolphins swimming and dolphins in a blood bath,

-          The contrast of nice music and dark music (corresponding to the images),

-          The use of buzzy words such as pestics, kill or heavy metals.

Plus, to increase the persuasion, we use real extracts from movies concerning the topic of dolphins: The Cove and Animal World.

     Finally, we put the accent on the Pathos component of course. This is a specifically important one in our case. Our target is broad and even if dolphins are generally loved and a general empathy for dolphins for their physical aspect and their supposed sweetness exists, people really ready to give money or act are not so numerous (at first only people really crazy about dolphins will concretely act and not just say “it’s sad”).

We are majorly facing a passive audience and so we need to capture their attention in order to engage their mind in a second time. Thus, playing with dark images and make them feel bad for the dolphins is a good way. We are playing on worry (about dolphins’ extinction), horror (blood) and sadness.

Our objective is to, for instance, convert dolphins’eaters to stop eating them or to activate some quite sensitive people to really take some actions to support our cause. Of course, the video is also useful to reinforce the behavior of dolphins’ lovers who are already involved in their protection.

     Our strategy of “kissing” could eventually have the consequence to over simplify our message but we think the delivery of the message is simple but the cause is not so simple. So it can work.

§  Why is this video effective in HK?

We truly think our video can affect Hong Kong people.

First because dolphins are part of Hong Kong sightseeing spots:

-          At Ocean Park Hong Kong,

-          Through excursions to see pink dolphins    http://www.hkdolphinwatch.com/ 

On the top of that, we can guess in Hong Kong, people are already sensitive to the beauty of dolphins and feel kindness for them. They regularly see advertisements with dolphins, etc. The closeness of dolphins for Hong Kong people will be a great good point for our cause and our video.

Secondly, Hong Kong people live close to areas where there is a consumption of dolphin meat, such as Japan. Thus, they concretely understand it is a real fact (more than European people for example for who consuming dolphin meat looks a bit unrealistic).

Also, it exists a real sensitivity for charity in Hong Kong as we can regularly see in the streets. WWF Hong Kong is very active.

Plus, as we can read in “Nature needs a voice in Hong Kong to protect Chinese white dolphins” by Michael Lau in South China Morning Post on the 18 May, 2013, the press informs citizens about this and about how much it is important to take it seriously, like many ecologists confirm.

 

 

 

References:

http://www.seethewild.org/2520/dolphin-threats.html

http://www.idw.org/html/dolphins_in_danger.html

 

 

 

 



Welcome to our blog

   Welcome to our blog!

   Our great international team is composed of three members: Winnie, Hugo and Kathy !

   
      Winnie is a girl from Xiamen, Fujian. She enjoys traveling and playing computer games. She still has no idea of ideal job in the future, so she comes to OCM program to find the answer.

   
      Hugo is a French guy graduated in Management and Finance, interested in working in Asia. He likes traveling and playing squash.He plans to work as a consultant.

      Kathy is a Cantonese girl graduated from Guangdong University of Technology, majoring in human resources management. Her interests are literature, music and animation.

      

        We choose to call ourselves The Three Musketeers first because of their motto “All for one, one for all” which corresponds to the spirit we want to adopt on this blog and more generally in our way of working together. Secondly, this group name fits well with our team because we are three whose a French member (country of Alexandre Dumas the author of The Three Musketeers). And finally, we would like to build a strong team relationship like they do in the book.

Here is our team logo:)

       Our goals for this class related to life and work are to learn how to apply the theories on high performance collaborations both in our daily and work lives. Performing better through collaboration is always necessary. Besides, we think we all three need to learn some interpersonal, intergroup and intercommunity communication abilities. This is still a weak point for the three of us and we want to overcome it. To finish, we would like to prove that a high collaboration leads to a more effective and efficient work because that is our deep belief.

    

       We are really looking forward to study more about persuasion and influence in organizations and also about apologizing for mistakes at work. Persuasion seems important for us because as we saw during semester one's projects, persuasion is a crucial element of team debates and achievements. Then, managing apologies looks exciting for us in the sense we faced this kind of situations in our previous work experiences and had difficulties to deal with it. Plus, it is a totally new topic that we never viewed before during our studies, where we most of the time learn how to do right but not really how to deal with a fail.

       As an additional topic, our team would easily be interested by a course on the different ways to interact with people in function of their age, gender, cultural background and language system. A class that could be called “Interacting with very different people with the right tone”.

       About the myth we would like to confirm or disconfirm, we are concerned about the relationship between team work and friendship. We all totally agree on "after a long project collaboration, relation between teammates is at an extreme".

       To discuss in depth, partners in a team sometimes become closer due to not only the same goal but also the long time they spent together. And so the friendship is highly reinforced. They understand each other very well and the agreement is high. On the contrary, too many debates or fights or too many disagreements can lead to the destruction of a friendship which existed before the team work. Besides, simply choosing teammates inside our closest friends does not guarantee high performance and could be risky to stay good friends. You plan to test this myth on ourselves.

Thank you for reading our post...