Managing “No” to Work-Related Requests: What, Really, Do We Know?

Despite the many changes that have occurred in workplace trends over time and, especially since the onset and still-not-ended global pandemic of Covid 19, one aspect of managing remains unchanged: the need to manage “no” to variety of work-requests. Indeed, decades ago in his classic study regarding how managers spend their time, Mintzberg (1973) noted that managing conflict was the bulk of it. The need to manage “no” is probably exponentially higher now than ever given that employees over time have become increasingly culturally diverse, hence more likely to bring divergent values and/or preferences to their work (Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001; Von Glinow, Shapiro, & Brett, 2004); and have also become increasingly self-managing, or empowered (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999), hence expected to autonomously (without managerial intervention) resolve conflicts they have at work. It is, thus, a matter of practical as well as theoretical importance to understand how to effectively manage “no” in the workplace—wherever this may occur. What, really, do we know about how to manage “no” at work? The answer is surprisingly little; and the papers comprising this symposium each promise to meaningfully address this gap. More specifically, as a set, these papers illuminate the fact that the source of “no” that may cause tensions or frictions among individuals at work is broader than traditionally thought; this is because these tensions may arise from conflicts individuals at work have—not only between individuals who may or may not be teammates, but also—within themselves. As a result, this symposium promises to alert managers (which includes self-managing employees) as well as management scholars to a broader array of potential strategies for effectively managing “no”—and thereby enhancing agreements and their associated positive affect and behaviors— in the workplace. The Need to Standardly Assess How Dispute-resolvers Reach Agreement Presenter: Sudeep Sharma; U. of Illinois Springfield I Just want to Feel Heard: Validation in Conversation Presenter: Zhiying Ren; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Resolving Relational Conflict: Why Engaging in, Not Avoiding, Conflict is Wise Presenter: Einav Hart; George Mason U. INTRApersonal influences on ‘no’: Unrecognized defenses of negotiators Presenter: Renee M. Rinehart; George Mason U.