Conflict Resolution: Definition, Process - Case Study Example

A Fortune 500 company hires specialists to deal with disputes between employees and s. The Department's Center for the Study of ForeignAffairs holds a number of symposia and workshops that bring together diplomats who have been active in recent international negotiations and academicians who have studied these negotiations in an attempt to formulate techniques that can be taught to American foreign service officers. A Catholic bishop is summoned as a mediator when Cuban-American prisoners begin to riot. Neutral third parties are called in to help resolve community housing disputes in the Midwest. Thousands of couples, instead of retaining a divorce lawyer, seek out mediators who help facilitate the process whereby the couples work out the conditions of the divorce on their own. Environmentalists and executives of a company accused of polluting a stream meet to resolve their differences at a university-run mediation center in the Southeast. All of these examples are part of a new way of dealing with conflict. These new approaches to conflict are usually referred to by the general term "conflict resolution." Something whose roots can be traced to four (sometimes separate, sometimes intertwining) movements, all of which began in the mid-1960s and early 1970s: (1) new developments in organizational relations; (2) the introduction of the "problem-solving workshop" in international relations; (3) a redirection of religious figures from activist work in peace-related endeavors to an emphasis upon "peacemaking"; and (4) the criticism of lawyers and the court system by the general public that resulted in what is known as alternative dispute resolution (ADR). These four movements, which comprise the major divisions in the new field of conflict resolution, are all part of a more encompassing phenomenon in recent American history--the realization that the bureaucratization of the modern world has resulted in extreme depersonalization. This realization resulted in the questioning of legitimate authority characteristic of the 1960s and early 1970s in America. Thus, the emergence of the field of conflict resolution must be seen in the context of the larger framework of social and cultural change in American society. In the United States, as in all industrialized societies, legitimacy is based on authority embodied in the legal system, bureaucratic administration, and centralization. Indeed, we live in a society characterized by the rationalization of law, centralization and concentration within industry, and the subsequent extension of state intervention to previously private human actions. Like the civil rights movement, the women's liberation movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the questioning of every major institutional order in the 1960s, conflict resolution was born in a time of questioning whether traditional legal authority served the needs of people or supported a status quo that reinforced social and political inequality. The 1960s ushered in a time of change and conflict. It was perceived by an active and vocal, if not large, part of the population that change was good, and the conflict that often produced the change was also a positive thing and not something to be avoided. Each of the four movements in conflict resolution, in their own unique way, represents a challenge to traditional authority, a part of this new way of looking at change and conflict. In the area of organizational relations this took the form of a questioning of top-down, centralized decision making and the role conflict played in organizations. In international relations, the "power paradigm" (the view that there are severe limitations to political reform because human beings are power-seeking creatures by nature and must be controlled by strong government action) was challenged via the notion that human beings seek to fulfill their basic needs rather than always seeking power and material interests. In certain religious organizations this took the form of an emphasis upon the religious community's ability to deal with its own disputes rather than resorting to the secular legal system, and the expanding of these procedures to the international arena. Finally, the growth of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) represented a reaction against the rationalization of law in the form of common law, and a reemergence of a distrust of lawyers who were seen as being in the service of elites who perpetuated a legal system that produced unequal justice. Evidence for the acceptance of conflict intervention in the United States is mixed. Although there is some movement toward collaborative problem solving in organizations (see Peters and Waterman 1982; Ouchi 1981; Gilley et al. 1986), the norm still seems to be hierarchical decision making, and conflict is still usually seen as something to be avoided. Although mediation has been a formal part of the institutionalized framework of labor relations from the time labor unions came into prominence in the late nineteenth century ( Kolb 1983:2), with the possible exception of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) established in 1913, mediation has had little impact outside of limited government or public policy conflicts. Although the international problem-solving workshop has been adopted by the Foreign Service Institute of the United States as one means of training diplomats and foreign service officers, it would be foolish to argue that the U.S. government in its negotiations with foreign powers operates in anything other than the power-politics mode. Religious peacemaking interventions seem to be growing particularly at the local levels, with the Quakers and the Mennonites expanding their services. At the international level, however, the results are mixed at best. Anglican Terry Waite was himself taken hostage, and although there are successes as reported in this volume by John Paul Lederach, priests are still being murdered in Latin America. On the surface, conflict resolution seems to meet the service orientation test. Both the international problem-solving workshops and the emphasis upon peacemaking by religious practitioners point to the service orientation. When we look closely at the use of conflict resolution techniques in organizations and in the ADR movement, however, certain questions can be raised. For example, although the emphasis is upon resolving conflicts so that work and interactions can proceed smoothly in organizations, there is little or no focus upon the conditions that produced the conflict in the first place. Oftentimes conflicts are dealt with by facilitating the individual's adjustment to the conditions of the workplace, conditions that ultimately may be harmful to the individual or may only produce short-term solutions at the expense of long-term resolutions ( Scimecca 1991). A number of universities have institutionalized conflict resolution programs. In May 1984, George Mason University awarded the first graduate degrees in conflict management in the United States; in the fall of 1988 it began the first Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution. The University of Colorado has a specialty in conflict resolution within its Ph.D. program in sociology; and Syracuse University offers a conflict and peace studies specialty under its doctorate in social science. Nevertheless, there are still far too many workshops and training sessions that claim to teach the techniques of conflict resolution in anywhere from twelve to forty hours. Furthermore, the field of conflict resolution lacks a theoretical base that can undergird its practice. And although there are many comprehensive theories of conflict, theories of conflict resolution are few and far between. Indeed it can be argued that conflict resolution theories can be divided into two categories: game theoretical frameworks and human needs theory. While this excludes a whole history of conflict theory, namely, the Marxist and Weberian frameworks, they are not theories of conflict resolution and as such have not played any real role in the development of conflict resolution. As Avruch and Black ( 1989) say, "The current state of conflict resolution theory and practice reflects the diverse backgrounds of those who have been drawn to it." We can go even farther and argue that state of theory is even worse than Avruch and Black state, given that game theory and human needs theory are at present quite flawed. Game theory uses assumptions of perfect information (that is, every party perfectly understands everyone else's possible actions), and therein lies its most basic weakness as a theory. Conditions of perfect information rarely if ever exist. Game theory also assumes that the parties or players, in the end, cooperate--their actions are in accordance with some agreed upon plan. This, in turn, assumes communication between them, and also a mechanism for enforcing the agreements they reach. Players may jockey for relative position, but they end up working together toward a rational and mutually efficient goal ( Schellenberg 1982:188). Such assumptions do not take into consideration that deep-seated conflicts are often irrational, nor does the assumption of an essential vacuum consider the role that culture and social structure (read power) play in conflicts. Human needs theory fares no better. Although this approach has been a part of social science for some time, indeed has provided the foundation for the "Goals, Processes, and the Indicators of Development" (GPID) project of the United Nations University, which resulted in a major edited publication, Human Needs ( Lederer 1980), it is John Burton who is most often associated with human needs theory of conflict resolution. Burton's theory has been criticized for its emphasis upon genetic determinism and its subsequent failure to take culture and social institu tions into consideration ( Scimecca 1990). Avruch and Black ( 1987) ask, "Where do these needs come from' And why these and not others'" Christopher Mitchell ( 1990) raises the question of whether some needs are more important than others. Although Burton originally saw these needs as genetically based, in a response to Avruch and Black ( Burton and Sandole 1987:97), he modifies his position somewhat by accepting the thesis of Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson ( 1986) that humans have a "dual inheritance system," one cultural and the other genetic. What is important "is that universal patterns of behavior exist" ( Burton and Sandole 1987:97). Although this represents a movement from a pure genetically determined position, it still places Burton in the sociobiologist camp and does not answer the question of where needs come from, or whether some are more important than others; nor does it resolve the dilemma of ascertaining just how much culture influences human needs, dual inheritance system notwithstanding. Finally, Burton ( 1987, 1990a) sees power as irrelevant, claiming that it has no role in problem solving or conflict resolution processes. Conflict resolution as envisioned by Burton is a purely analytical process. Power becomes a "nonvariable" when the parties to a conflict, with the help of a facilitation team engage in analytical problem solving. Although Burton's assumption about power in the resolution process raises interesting possibilities, at best, that is all it is: an assumption with no empirical support. To speak of conflict and conflict resolution without speaking of power, even in a workshop setting, seems naive. Burton to his credit has been one of the few scholars in the field of conflict resolution to call for a conflict resolution process that is derived from a theory of conflict. In the end, however, he violates his own assumptions and makes a leap of faith when he relegates power to irrelevance in his conflict resolution process. Without a theory of conflict resolution the field is left with a number of processes that are dependent upon the idiosyncratic expertise of the individual practitioners. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in ADR. Although conflict resolution has had a tremendous growth in the United States in the past quarter of a century, and despite the claims of its practitioners that it has achieved the status of a profession, professionalism still eludes the field. The acceptance by the general public is mixed, as is the evidence that conflict resolution meets the service orientation test of a profession. It is the third criterion--that of a prolonged specialized training in a body of abstract knowledge--that seems to be the most problematic at the present time. Conflict resolution simply does not have a theoretical base to undergird its practice, and until it does, even if it meets the first two criteria, it still will not be a profession. 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"Procedural Justice, of, by, and for American EthnicGroups: A Comparison of Interpersonal Conflict Resolution Procedures Used by Korean-Americans and American Community Mediation Centers with Procedural Justice Theories" Read More