Human Relations - Conflict Resolution - Essay Example

For example, Heitler (1993) focuses a lot of attention on the psychological aspects of a conflict and Varney (1989) gives similar ideas in his own research. It is noted that the primary sources of conflict are based in miscommunications, the relationship of the people involved in the situation and personal biases. All of these are linked directly to psychological issues and thus it may be possible to handle the situation with the tools used by psychologists. The ideas presented in the book are also in agreement with those presented by Nelson (1995) who gives several approaches to resolving conflicts amongst which the first is to directly confront the problem of the conflict.

Psychologically, conflicts may be difficult to bring out to the open but handling them in an objective manner and then deconstructing the issue for a resolution may be the best way to go. Heitler (1993) also links conflicts to emotions and the approach given by PDI (1999) is no different since the approach seeks to build understanding rather than to accept the conflict as a given. If there is understanding between conflicting parties, it would be possible for them to see each other’s viewpoint and then empathize with each other about how one solution could be acceptable to all parties involved in the conflict.

Such inclusion would certainly create a win-win situation that would certainly be taken by all individuals who are seeking fair play and justice. The book goes into a lot of depth about how bargaining and negotiations can be used to arrive at a settlement of many issues but in certain cases, a bargain may even have to be enforced in the case where there is a clear guilty party. However, in most cases the conflict will need to be resolved with negotiations and bargaining where individuals can present their own solutions to the problems they have.

The person mediating the conflict then has to see which parts of the two possible