This week I read Megan`s blog work from home  and was quite interested in one of her points that people sought for work flexibility rather than the increased salary. To make employees feel valued, employers should not simply get them promoted and give them a generous wage. Instead, they should attach great importance to the balance between employees` work and personal life.

In her blog, Megan pointed out that flexible work hour is an important part of work flexibility, which reminds of a piece of news I came across on BBC. Suzanne Wright, the mom-of-two from the UK, decided to give up her job as distribution manager and become a self-employed homeopath. Although her salary dropped compared to the previous one, she availed herself of more hours to accommodate her family responsibility, achieve personal growth as mother and homeopath as well as gain the recognition from her customers and children. Therefore, she felt satisfied with her job and motivated to work on, which is a manifestation of motivation-hygiene theory.
The flexible workplace also contributes to the work flexibility. Imagine that one day you don`t need to get up early to catch the crowded bus. Instead, you can just turn on your computer and talk to your client. In this case, work flexibility could save the tremendous amount of energy and time, thereby bringing higher morale and productivity for the company. The employer could hire more talented employee regardless of the mismatch of the labor force and workplace. With social networks, intranets, project-specific groups, and teleconferencing, distances become increasingly irrelevant. (Meghan, 2013) Also, workers will feel more respected and be more devoted to their work. Young mothers don`t have to worry about their children at home because their children are just right beside them and smiling to them, which engaged more women to participate in the labor force.
Work flexibility means not only flexible work hours but also imply flexible workplace, which is a worthy choice for the employees to consider.

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A few weeks ago, I came across an exciting news that Uber was about to entry into Vancouver. Uber is the well-recognized international brand that operates successfully all over the world for its reasonable price and user-friendly application interface. However, it has been rejected several times from entry into Vancouver in the past few years.

The main obstacle for its launch is that Uber will dramatically harm the local taxi driver`s interests because of its much cheaper fare. The taxi drivers are also concerned about the unfair competition since Uber doesn`t share the same background check criteria with them as well as safety inspection and insurance. (Smyth,2016)

Based on what I learned from chapter 9, conflict occurs when people have different lines of thought, approaches, and theories in regards to business operation. Owners of businesses may also encounter conflicts when bargaining with other businesses or individuals. Acquisition of economic resources, such as driving licenses in this case, entails a bargaining process.

Businesspersons and organizations can utilize conflict negotiation in the creation of favorable outcomes when dealing with stronger parties (Singh, 2010). Numerous companies are aware that they are not in a position to attain all requests when dealing with conflict and negotiation. Therefore, possessing the best alternative to negotiated agreements assists in ensuring that the company gets a high number of concessions as negotiation progresses. Nevertheless, such options may result in increased conflict in instances where they continually need the other parties to comprise and thus forfeit more benefits (Rahim, 2001).

My advice for taxi drivers is that they cannot only boycott the entry of Uber since the shared economy today is an irresistible trend in today`s world. What they should do is to figure out the best alternative, such as negotiating with the government to ensure the fair and level playing field, to get the highest number of concessions from Uber. At the same time, they should improve the quality of their service to adjust to the more fierce competition.

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References

Smyth, M. (2016, October 16). Mike Smyth: Threat of Uber looms large for Vancouver taxi drivers. Retrieved April 02, 2017, from http://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/mike-smyth-threat-of-uber-looms-large-for-vancouver-taxi-drivers#comments

Rahim, M. (2001). Managing conflict in organizations (1st ed.). Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books.

Singh, B. (2010). Managing conflict and negotiation (1st ed.). New Delhi: Excel Books.