NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions internally through promotions, rather than hiring from outside. Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people to senior executive positions from the engineering areas. Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago as junior engineers. There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more market and service oriented. As a result, four people were hired last year from retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service departments. The external hires were necessary because current employees were not sufficiently qualified. Now, there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities. The four new hires have been thwarted in their attempts to have the company invest more in marketing and customer service instead of investing in technological research, and they blame the senior executives for being hard-headed. The conflict episodes are being viewed by both sides as personal attacks rather than attempts to resolve the problem. The conflict at NewTel appears to be a
A. role ambiguity.
B. lack of communication.
C. sequential task interdependence.
D. overt behaviors.
E. goal incompatibility.