Conflict

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In political terms, "conflict" refers to an ongoing state of hostility between two or more groups of people.

Conflict as taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution commonly has the definition: "when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other's goal-seeking capability."

One should not confuse the distinction between the presence and absence of conflict with the difference between competition and co-operation. In competitive situations, the two or more parties each have mutually inconsistent goals, so that when either party tries to reach their goal it will undermine the attempts of the other to reach theirs. Therefore, competitive situations will by their nature cause conflict. However, conflict can also occur in cooperative situations, in which two or more parties have consistent goals, because the manner in which one party tries to reach their goal can still undermine the other.

A clash of interests, values, actions or directions often sparks a conflict. Conflicts refer to the existence of that clash. Psychologically, a conflict exists when the reduction of one motivating stimulus involves an increase in another, so that a new adjustment is demanded. The word is applicable from the instant that the clash occurs. Even when we say that there is a potential conflict we are implying that there is already a conflict of direction even though a clash may not yet have occurred so to speak

Types and Modes of Conflict

A conceptual conflict can escalate into a verbal exchange and/or result in fighting.

Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:

  • intrapersonal conflict (though this usually just gets delegated out to psychology)
  • interpersonal conflict
  • emotional conflict
  • group conflict
  • organizational conflict
  • community conflict
  • intra-state conflict (for example: civil wars, election campaigns)
  • international conflict
  • environmental resources conflict
  • intersocietal conflict
  • intra-societal conflict
  • ideological conflict
  • diplomatic conflict
  • economic conflict
  • military conflict
  • religious-based conflict (for example: Center For Reduction of Religious-Based Conflict)

Conflicts in these levels may appear "nested" in conflicts residing at larger levels of analysis. For example, conflict within a work team may play out the dynamics of a broader conflict in the organization as a whole. (See Marie Dugan's article on Nested Conflict. John Paul Lederach has also written on this.)

Theorists have claimed that parties can conceptualize responses to conflict according to a two-dimensional scheme; concern for one's own outcomes and concern for the outcomes of the other party. This scheme leads to the following hypotheses:

  • High concern for both one's own and the other party's outcomes leads to attempts to find mutually beneficial solutions.
  • High concern for one's own outcomes only leads to attempts to "win" the conflict.
  • High concern for the other party's outcomes only leads to allowing the other to "win" the conflict.
  • No concern for either side's outcomes leads to attempts to avoid the conflict.

In Western society, practitioners usually suggest that attempts to find mutually beneficial solutions lead to the most satisfactory outcomes, but this may not hold true for many Asian societies.

Several theorists detect successive phases in the development of conflicts.

Often a group finds itself in conflict over facts, goals, methods or values. It is critical that it properly identify the type of conflict it is experiencing if it hopes to manage the conflict through to resolution. For example, a group will often treat an assumption as a fact.

The more difficult type of conflict is when values are the root cause. It is more likely that a conflict over facts, or assumptions, will be resolved than one over values. It is extremely difficult to "prove" that a value is "right" or "correct."

In some instances, a group will benefit from the use of a facilitator or process consultant to help identify the specific type of conflict.

Practitioners of nonviolence have developed many practices to solve social and political conflicts without resorting to violence or coercion.

Examples

  • Approach-avoidance conflict is an example of intrapersonal conflict.
  • The Vietnam Conflict is commonly regarded as a war.
  • The Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland furnishes an example of another notable historic conflict. For information on the conflict, see the Troubles, Bloody Sunday (Northern Ireland 1972), the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan Bombings and the 1998 Omagh bombing.
  • Many conflicts have a supposedly racial or ethnic basis. This would include such conflicts as the Bosnian-Croatian conflict (see Kosovo), the conflict in Rwanda.

An example of ideological conflict is the struggle over slavery between the Noth and South. The dispute would eventually lead to secession.

  • Class conflict forms an important topic in much Marxist thought.
  • Another type of conflict exists between governments and guerrilla groups or groups engaged in asymmetric warfare.

Causes of Conflict

Structural Factors (How the conflict is set up)

  • Specialization (The experts in fields)
  • Interdependance (A company as a whole can't operate w/o other departments)
  • Common Resources (Sharing the same secretary)
  • Goal Differences (One person wants production to rise and others want communication to rise)
  • Authority Relationships (The boss and employees beneath him/her)
  • Status Inconsistencies
  • Jurisdicational Ambiguities (Who can discipline who)

Personal Factors

  • Skills and Abilities
  • Conflict management style
  • Personalities
  • Perception
  • Values and Ethics
  • Emotions
  • Communication barriers
  • Cultural Differences

"Conflict is an emotionally defined and driven," and "does not exist in the absence of emotion."

There are many components to the emotions that are intertwined with conflict. There is a behavioral, physiological, cognitive component.

  • Behavioral- The way emotional experience gets expressed which can be verbal or non-verbal and intentional or un-intentional.
  • Physiological- The bodily experience of emotion. The way emotions make us feel in comparison to our identity.
  • Cognitive- The idea that we “assess or appraise” an event to reveal its relevancy to ourselves.

These three components collectively advise that “the meanings of emotional experience and expression are determined by cultural values, beliefs, and practices.”

  • Cultural values- culture tells people who are a part of it, “Which emotions ought to be expressed in particular situations” and “what emotions are to be felt.”
  • Physical- This escalation results from “anger or frustration.”
  • Verbal- This escalation results from “negative perceptions of the annoyer’s character.”

There are several principles of conflict and emotion.

  • 1. Conflict is emotionally Defined-conflict involves emotion because something “triggers” it. The conflict is with the parties involved and how they decide to resolve it “Events that trigger conflict are events that elicit emotion.”
  • 2. Conflict is emotionally Valenced- Emotion levels during conflict can be intense or less intense. The “intensity” levels “may be indicative of the importance and meaning of the conflict issues for each” party.
  • 3. Conflict Invokes a Moral Stance- When an event occurs it can be interpreted as moral or immoral. The judging of this morality “Influences one’s orientation to the conflict, relationship to the parties involved, and the conflict issues.”
  • 4. Conflict is Identity based- Emotions and Identity are a part of conflict. When a person knows their values, beliefs, and morals they are able to determine whether the conflict is personal, relevant, and moral. “Identity related conflicts are potentially more destructive.”
  • 5. Conflict is Relational- “conflict is relational in the sense that emotional communication conveys relational definitions that impact conflict.” “Key relational elements are power and social status.”

Emotions are acceptable in the workplace as long as they can be controlled and utilized for productive organizational outcomes.


External links


Conflict resolution is any reduction in the severity of a conflict. It may involve conflict management, in which the parties continue the conflict but adopt less extreme tactics; settlement, in which they reach agreement on enough issues that the conflict stops; or removal of the underlying causes of the conflict. The latter is sometimes called “resolution,” in a narrower sense of the term that will not be used in this article. Settlements sometimes end a conflict for good, but when there are deeper issues—such as value clashes among people who must work together, distressed relationships, or mistreated members of one’s ethnic group across a border—settlements are often temporary.[citation needed]

Negotiation Research

Negotiation, the most heavily researched approach to conflict resolution, has mainly been studied in laboratory experiments, in which undergraduate participants are randomly assigned to conditions. These studies have mostly looked at antecedents of the strategies adopted by negotiators and the outcomes attained, including whether agreement is reached, the joint benefit to both parties, and the individual benefit to each party.

Negotiation Research Findings

Here are some of the more prominent findings from these studies (see Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993):

  • Problem solving behavior, such as giving or requesting information about a party’s priorities among the issues, encourages high joint benefit.
  • Contentious behavior, such as making threats or standing firm on one’s proposals, encourages failure to reach agreement or, if agreement is reached, low joint benefit.
  • Conceding makes agreement more likely but favors the other party’s interests.
  • Prosocial motivation (resulting, for example, from positive mood or the expectation of future interaction with the other party) encourages problem solving and high joint benefit and discourages contentious behavior, but only when resistance to yielding is high (De Dreu, Weingart, & Kwon, 2000).
  • The party who makes the first offer tends to achieve greater benefit than the other party.
  • Three states of mind discourage concession making: viewing concessions as producing loss rather than as foregoing gain; focusing attention on one’s goal rather than one’s limit (i.e., the alternative that is minimally tolerable); and adopting a fixed-pie perspective, in which one views the other’s gain as one’s loss, rather than an expandable pie perspective.
  • Adopting any of the states of mind above diminishes the likelihood of agreement; but if agreement is reached, it increases the likelihood of winning, especially if the other party adopts the opposite state of mind (Thompson, Neale, & Sinaceur, 2004).

Cultural Differences in Negotiation Findings

Recent experiments have also found some cultural differences in negotiation behavior (Gelfand & Brett, 2004):

  • Negotiators from individualistic cultures tend to take a more contentious approach, while those from collectivistic cultures are more concerned about maintaining positive relationships and hence more likely to cooperate (concede or engage in problem solving).
  • Accountability to constituents encourages contentious behavior for individualists, it encourages cooperative behavior for collectivists.
  • Research tells us that people with a high need for closure (for rapid decision making) tend to think and act in accustomed ways. It follows that high need for closure should accentuate contentious behavior in individualistic societies and cooperative behavior in collectivistic societies, an hypothesis that has received support.

Research into Third Party Involvement

Third parties often become involved in conflict resolution, either being called in by the disputants or acting on their own because the conflict annoys them or the community they serve. Two common forms of third-party intervention are arbitration and mediation. In arbitration, the third party listens to both sides and then renders a decision, which can be either binding or advisory. Most mediation consists of third-party assistance with negotiation. When conflict is severe and the disputants have difficulty talking calmly with each other, mediators can put them into contact and help them develop a cease-fire or settlement. If the disputants cannot or will not meet each other, mediators commonly become intermediaries and shuttle between them. Sometimes a chain of two intermediaries is necessary because there is no single individual who can communicate effectively with both sides.

Mediation Research Findings

Mediation has been studied in both the laboratory and the field. Research (see Kressel & Pruitt, 1989) suggests that:

  • Interpersonal mediation is usually successful in producing settlements.
  • Disputants generally prefer mediation over arbitration, since it allows them to retain control over the final decision. This means that in med-arb, where failure to reach agreement in mediation is followed by binding arbitration, disputants will work harder to reach agreement than in straight mediation.
  • In the case of small claims disputes, that mediation produces more compliance with the agreement than adjudication (a form of arbitration), perhaps because mediated decisions accord more with the parties’ needs.
  • To be fully successful, mediators must be seen as impartial between the two parties.
  • Having stronger initial ties to one side than the other is less damaging to the perception of impartiality than exhibiting bias during the mediation session.
  • Disputants even sometimes prefer that the mediator be close to the other party so that he or she can exert influence over that party.

Mediator Tactics Discoveries

More than 100 distinct mediator tactics have been identified. Among the tactics that have been shown to work well, in the sense of producing long-lasting agreements beneficial to both sides are:

  • Helping the parties to understand each other’s positions, challenging them to come up with new ideas, and requesting their reactions to new ideas.
  • When conflict is severe, mediators often have to be quite active and even pushy (e.g., telling disputants that their demands are unrealistic) in order to achieve agreement.
  • When conflict is less intense, and the disputants are capable of talking productively with each other, it is best for mediators to be relatively inactive.
  • When disputant discussions are unproductive it is best to separate the parties (“caucusing”) and engage in problem solving with each of them.
  • Compliance to the terms of an agreement is enhanced when the parties emerge from the mediation with a positive relationship and when they view the mediation process as a fair one in which all of the issues came out.
  • Continued third-party attention to the conflict has been found to encourage compliance to agreements reached at the end of internal war (Hampson, 1996).
  • When there is a continuing relationship between disputants, helping them find a settlement for their current disagreement is often not enough. New conflicts may arise or deeper issues resurface.
  • Within the specific continuing relationship of marriage, marital therapists have found that training both the parties in problem solving skills, such as effective communication, identifying key issues, developing solutions that satisfy both parties’ needs, helps ease marital problems. Two evaluation studies have shown the value of this approach, and one of them (Johnson & Greenberg, 1985) has demonstrated that emotionally focused therapy is even more effective.
  • Emotionally focused therapy is the practice where, persistent maladaptive interaction patterns are identified, and husband and wife are encouraged to reveal the feelings and needs associated with these patterns and to “accept and respond to” their partner’s feelings and needs.
  • Programs have also been developed for training school children in problem solving skills, and evaluations of these programs have generally been quite positive.
  • In addition, many school systems have adopted peer mediation programs, in which students are trained to mediate conflicts that arise in their school. Evaluations of these programs have also been quite positive (Coleman & Deutsch, 2001).

Ethno-Political Conflict Research

Investigators have looked at the impact of several kinds of third-party interventions in international and ethno-political conflict, including peacekeeping, mediation, and problem solving workshops. Peacekeeping is the use of lightly armed troops to manage conflict in a war zone. Most peacekeeping has been done by the United Nations, drawing on the military forces of its members. Traditional peacekeeping involved enforcing ceasefires, but in the last few years, the peacekeeper’s duties have grown to include such services as the delivery of humanitarian aid, the supervision of elections, and maintenance of law and order. Research shows that as they go about these new responsibilities, peacekeepers– officers more so than enlisted men— often become heavily involved in negotiation and mediation. One study found that as conflict becomes more severe, peacekeeper mediators are more likely to meet separately with the disputants, to urge the disputants to relax, and to rely on force (Wall, Druckman, & Diehl, 2002).

Peacekeeping Research Findings

Peacekeeper mediation is done at the local level. Mediation at the intergovernmental level is a much older practice that has recently come under study with statistical analyses of large samples of historical mediations (Bercovitch & Houston, 2000). Among the findings in this research are:

  • Mediation is more likely to be successful when the parties are of equal power, when they have been friendly in the past, when there have been relatively few fatalities in the period before mediation, when the mediator is of high rank, and when mediation comes after a test of strength between the parties.
  • The latter finding is compatible with ripeness theory (Zartman, 2000), which was developed from comparative case studies of violent ethno-political conflicts. This theory holds that two conditions are necessary for disputants to enter into and move forward in negotiation, bilateral or mediated: (a) both sides perceive that they are in a hurting stalemate, and (b) both sides develop optimism about the outcome of mediation—a “perceived way out.”

Putting Conflict Research to Use

Several types of problem solving (interactive conflict resolution) workshops have been developed in the last few decades for repairing faulty international and inter-group relations. These are usually held over a period of several days, and attended by mid-level opinion leaders and decision makers from both sides of a conflict, under the leadership of scholar-practitioners. The aims of these workshops are to teach the parties about conflict in general and their conflict in particular, to forge understanding between the parties and, if possible, to develop joint projects that will contribute to reconciliation. Evaluation studies have shown that these workshops improve attitudes toward the other side, increase complexity of thinking about the conflict, and facilitate further communication with people on the other side (Fisher, 1997). There is also evidence that some alumni of these workshops have later contributed to high level negotiations between the conflicting parties.

Research on conflict resolution is still in its infancy and there is much more work to be done. But the findings reported above suggest that this field of study has made a good beginning.


External Links

  • Kelman, H.C., International Conflict and Conflict Resolution Research Papers

Bibliography

  • Bercovitch, J., & Houston, A. (2000). Why do they do it like this? An analysis of the factors influencing mediation behavior in international conflicts. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44, 170-202.
  • Coleman, P., & Deutsch, M. (2001). Introducing cooperation and conflict resolution into schools: A systems approach. In D. J. Christie, R. V. Wagner, & D. D. N. Winter, Peace, conflict and violence: Peace psychology for the 21st century (pp. 223-239). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • De Dreu, C. K. W., Weingart, L. R., & Kwon, S. (2000). Influence of social motives on integrative negotiation: A meta-analytic review and test of two theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 889-905.
  • Fisher, R. J. (1997). Interactive conflict resolution. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
  • Gelfand, M. J., & Brett, J. M. (Eds.) (2004), The handbook of negotiation and culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books.
  • Hampson, F. O, (1996). Nurturing peace: Why peace settlements succeed or fail. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.
  • Johnson, S. M., & Greenberg, L. S. (1985). Differential effects of experiential and problem-solving interventions in resolving marital conflict. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 53, 175-184.
  • Kressel, K., & Pruitt, D. G. (1989). Conclusion: A research perspective on the mediation of social conflict. In Kressel, K., Pruitt, D. G., & Associates, Mediation research (pp. 394-435). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
  • Pruitt, D. G., & Carnevale, P. J. (1993). Negotiation in social conflict. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.
  • Thompson, L., Neale, M., & Sinaceur, M. (2004). The evolution of cognition and biases in negotiation research: An examination of cognition, social perception, motivation, and emotion. In M. J. Gelfand & J. M. Brett (Eds.) (2004), The handbook of negotiation and culture (pp. 7-44). Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books.
  • Wall, J. A., Druckman, D., & Diehl, P. F. (2002), Mediation by international peacekeepers. In J. Bercovitch (Ed.) (2002). Studies in international mediation (pp. 141-164). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave-Macmillan.
  • Zartman, I. W. (2000). Ripeness: The hurting stalemate and beyond. In P. C. Stern & D. Druckman (Eds.), International conflict resolution after the Cold War. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.


This article is general in scope. For information relating to conflict resolution in Wikipedia itself, please see Wikipedia:Conflict resolution
For the episode of the television series The Office, see Conflict Resolution (The Office episode)

Conflict resolution or conflictology is the process of attempting to resolve a dispute or a conflict. Successful conflict resolution occurs by listening to and providing opportunities to meet each side's needs, and adequately address their interests so that they are each satisfied with the outcome. Conflict resolution aims to end conflicts before they start or lead to verbal, physical, or legal fighting.

More common but not popular with practitioners in conflict resolution is conflict management, where Conflict is a deliberate personal, social and organizational tool, especially used by capable politicians and other social engineers.

Among groups

Conflict resolution usually involves two or more groups with opposing views regarding specific issues, and another group or individual who is considered to be neutral in their opinion on the subject. This last bit though is quite often not entirely demanded if the "outside" group is well respected by all opposing parties. Resolution methods can include conciliation, mediation, arbitration or litigation.

These methods all require third party intervention. A resolution method which is direct between the parties with opposing views is negotiation. Negotiation can be the 'traditional' model of hard bargaining where the interests of a group far outweigh the working relationships concerned. The 'principled' negotiation model is where both the interests and the working relationships concerned are viewed as important.

It may be possible to avoid conflict without actually resolving the underlying dispute, by getting the parties to recognize that they disagree but that no further action needs to be taken at that time. In a few cases, such as in a democracy, it may even be desirable that they disagree, thus exposing the issues to others who need to consider it for themselves: in this case the parties might agree to disagree.

It is also possible to manage a conflict without resolution, in forms other than avoidance. For more, see conflict management.

Among non-human primates and other animals

Conflict resolution has also been studied in non-human primates (see Frans de Waal, 2000). Aggression is more common among relatives and within a group, than between groups. Instead of creating a distance between the individuals, however, the primates were more intimate in the period after the aggressive incident. These intimacies consisted of grooming and various forms of body contact. Stress responses, like an increased heart rate, usually decrease after these reconciliatory signals. Different types of primates, as well as many other species who are living in groups, show different types of conciliatory behaviour. Resolving conflicts that threaten the interaction between individuals in a group is necessary for survival, hence has a strong evolutionary value. These findings contradicted previous existing theories about the general function of aggression, i.e. creating space between individuals (first proposed by Konrad Lorenz), which seems to be more the case in between groups conflicts.

In addition to research in primates, biologists are beginning to explore reconciliation in other animals. Up until recently, the literature dealing with reconciliation in non-primates have consisted of anecdotal observations and very little quantitative data. Although peaceful post-conflict behavior had been documented going back to the 1960s, it wasn’t until 1993 that Rowell made the first explicit mention of reconciliation in feral sheep. Reconciliation has since been documented in spotted hyenas, lions, dolphins, dwarf mongooses, and domestic goats.


Bibliography

  • de Waal, Frans B. M. and Angeline van Roosmalen. 1979. Reconciliation and consolation among chimpanzees. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 5: 55-66.
  • de Waal, Frans B. M. 1989. Peacemaking Among Primates. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
  • Judge, Peter G. and Frans B. M. de Waal. 1993. Conflict avoidance among rhesus monkeys: coping with short-term crowding. Animal Behaviour 46: 221-232.
  • Veenema, Hans et al. 1994. Methodological improvements for the study of reconciliation. Behavioural Processes 31:29-38.
  • de Waal, Frans B. M. and Filippo Aureli. 1996. Consolation, reconciliation, and a possible cognitive difference between macaques and chimpanzees. Reaching into thought: The minds of the great apes (Eds. Anne E. Russon, Kim A. Bard, Sue Taylor Parker), Cambridge University Press, New York, NY: 80-110.
  • Aureli, Filippo. 1997. Post-conflict anxiety in non-human primates: the mediating role of emotion in conflict resolution. Aggressive Behavior 23: 315-328.
  • Castles, Duncan L. and Andrew Whiten. 1998. Post-conflict behaviour of wild olive baboons, I. Reconciliation, redirection, and consolation. Ethology 104: 126-147.
  • Aureli, Filippo and Frans B. M. de Waal, eds. 2000. Natural Conflict Resolution. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
  • de Waal, Frans B. M. 2000. Primates––A natural heritage of conflict resolution. Science 289: 586-590.
  • Silk, Joan B. 2002. The form and function of reconciliation in primates. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 21-44.
  • Weaver, Ann and Frans B. M. de Waal. 2003. The mother-offspring relationship as a template in social development: reconciliation in captive brown capuchins (Cebus apella). Journal of Comparative Psychology 117: 101-110.
  • Palagi, Elisabetta et al. 2004. Reconciliation and consolation in captive bonobos (Pan paniscus). American Journal of Primatology 62: 15-30.
  • Palagi, Elisabetta et al. 2005. Aggression and reconciliation in two captive groups of Lemur catta. International Journal of Primatology 26: 279-294.
  • Lorenzen, Michael. 2006. Conflict Resolution and Academic Library Instruction. LOEX Quarterly 33, no. ½,: 6-9, 11.

Additional Resources

The City University of New York Dispute Resolution Consortium (CUNY DRC) serves as an intellectual home to dispute-resolution faculty, staff and students at the City University of New York and to the diverse dispute-resolution community in New York City. At the United States' largest urban university system, the CUNY DRC has become a focal point for furthering academic and applied conflict resolution work in one of the world's most diverse cities. The CUNY DRC conducts research and innovative program development, has co-organized countless conferences, sponsored training programs, resolved a wide range of intractable conflicts, published research working papers and a newsletter. It also maintains an extensive database of those interested in dispute resolution in New York City, a website with resources for dispute resolvers in New York City and since 9/11, the CUNY DRC assumed a leadership role for dispute-resolvers in New York City by establishing an extensive electronic mailing list, sponsoring monthly breakfast meetings, conducting research on responses to catastrophes, and managing a public awareness initiative to further the work of dispute resolvers.

External links

Institutes, sources
NGOs, Movements


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