Conflict management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Some information in this article or section is not attributed to sources and may not be reliable.
Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.

Conflict management refers to the long-term management of intractable conflicts. It is the label for the variety of ways by which people handle grievances -- standing up for what they consider to be right and against what they consider to be wrong. Those ways include such diverse phenomena as gossip, ridicule, lynching, terrorism, warfare, feuding, genocide, law, mediation, and avoidance. Which forms of conflict management will be used in any given situation can be somewhat predicted and explained by the social structure -- or social geometry -- of the case.

Conflict management is not the same as "conflict resolution." The latter -- conflict resolution -- refers to resolving the dispute to the approval of one or both parties, whereas the former -- conflict management -- concerns an ongoing process that may never have a resolution. For example, gossip and feuds are very common methods of conflict management, but neither entails resolution.

The scientific study of conflict management (also known as social control) owes its foundations to Donald Black, who typologized its elementary forms and used his strategy of pure sociology to explain several aspects of its variation. Research and theory on conflict management has been further developed by Allan Horwitz, Calvin Morill, James Tucker, Mark Cooney, M.P. Baumgartner, Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Marian Borg, Ellis Godard, Scott Phillips, and Bradley Campbell.

[edit] External links

Party-Directed Mediation - Mediation of interpersonal conflict, including free PDF book. University of California.
Peace Forge -A wiki dedicated to best practices in peace and conflict resolution
Wikia: Conflict Resolution -A wikia dedicated to conflict resolution
Search For Common Ground - One of the world's largest non-government organisations dedicated to conflict resolution
CUNY Dispute Resolution Consortium- 'The Dispute Resolution Headquarters in New York City.
New Conversations Online Library Communication-skills and conflict-resolution books, essays, articles, scholarly papers & teaching materials (all free of charge in PDF or web format).
A list of resources on conflict style inventories and a culturally sensitive tool for assessing personal styles of conflict management.
The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University was one of the first Masters programs in conflict resolution and is the largest recipient of Fulbright Scholars in conflict resolution.
Decision Analysis in Health Care Online course from George Mason University offering lectures and tools for conflict analysis in health care scenarios.