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Conflict management.

Patricia Elgoibar , Patricia Elgoibar University of Barcelona
Martin Euwema Martin Euwema Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
and Lourdes Munduate Lourdes Munduate University of Seville
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.5
Published online: 28 June 2017

Conflicts are part of nature and certainly part of human relations, between individuals, as well as within and between groups. Conflicts occur in every domain of life: family, work, and society, local and global. Conflict management, therefore, is an essential competency for each person. People differ largely in their emotional and behavioral responses to conflict and need to learn how to behave effectively in different conflict situations. This requires a contingency approach, first assessing the conflict situation, and then choosing a strategy, matching the goals of the party. In most situations, fostering cooperative relations will be most beneficial; however, this is also most challenging. Therefore, constructive conflict management strategies, including trust building and methods of constructive controversy, are emphasized. Conflict management, however, is broader than the interaction of the conflicting parties. Third-party interventions are an essential element of constructive conflict management, particularly the assessment of which parties are intervening in what ways at what escalation stage.

cooperation
competition
conflict behavior
conglomerate conflict behavior
constructive conflict management
conflict resolution strategies

Definition of Conflict

Conflicts are part of nature, and certainly part of human relations. People experience conflict with other persons, in teams or in groups, as well as between larger entities, departments, organizations, communities, and countries. Conflicts appear at home, at work, and in our spare-time activities with friends, with people we love and with people we hate, as well as with our superiors and with our subordinates and coworkers. Parties need to accept conflicts as part of life dynamics and learn to deal with them effectively and efficiently. Conflict management refers to the way we manage incompatible actions with others, where others can be a person or a group.

Conflict is a component of interpersonal interactions; it is neither inevitable nor intrinsically bad, but it is commonplace (Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014 ; Schellenberg, 1996 ). In the 20th century , Lewin ( 1935 ) concluded that an intrinsic state of tension motivates group members to move toward the accomplishment of their desired common goals. Later on, Parker Follett ( 1941 ) explored the constructive side of conflict and defined conflict as the appearance of difference, difference of opinions or difference of interests. Deutsch ( 1949 ) developed this line of thought and analyzed the relation between the way group members believe their goals are related and their interactions and relationships.

A common definition of conflict argues that there is a conflict between two (or more) parties (individuals or groups) if at least one of them is offended, or feels bothered by the other (Van de Vliert, 1997 ; Wall & Callister, 1995 ). Traditionally, conflict has been defined as opposing interests involving scarce resources and goal divergence and frustration (Pondy, 1967 ). However, Deutsch ( 1973 ) defined conflict as incompatible activities: one person's actions interfere, obstruct, or in some way get in the way of another's action. Tjosvold, Wan, and Tang ( 2016 ) proposed that defining conflict as incompatible actions is a much stronger foundation than defining conflict as opposing interests, because conflicts also can occur when people have common goals (i.e., they may disagree about the best means to achieve their common goals). The key contribution of Deutsch’s ( 1973 ) proposal is that incompatible activities occur in both compatible and incompatible goal contexts. Whether the protagonists believe their goals are cooperative or competitive very much affects their expectations, interaction, and outcomes as they approach conflict (Tjosvold et al., 2016 ).

Characteristics of Conflict

Euwema and Giebels ( 2017 ) highlighted some key elements of conflict.

Conflict implies dependence and interdependence. Parties rely to some extent on the other parties to realize their goals (Kaufman, Elgoibar, & Borbely, 2016 ). This interdependence can be positive (a cooperative context), negative (a competitive context), or mixed. Positive interdependence is strongly related to cooperative conflict behaviors, while negative interdependence triggers competitive behaviors (Johnson & Johnson, 2005 ). Interdependence also reflects the power difference between parties. A short-term contractor on a low-paid job usually is much more dependent on the employer than vice versa. Many conflicts, however, can be seen as “mixed motive” situations.

Conflicts are mostly mixed motive situations because parties have simultaneous motives to cooperate and motives to compete. Parties are, on the one hand, dependent on each other to realize their goal, and, on the other hand, they are at the same time competitors. For example, two colleagues on a team are cooperating for the same team result; however, there is competition for the role as project leader. In a soccer team, the players have a team goal of working together to win, but they can be competing to be the top scorer. The mixed motive structure is very important to understand conflict dynamics. When conflicts arise, the competitive aspects become more salient, and the cooperative structure often is perceived less by parties. Interventions to solve conflict, therefore, are often related to these perceptions and the underlying structures.

Conflict is a psychological experience. Conflict is by definition a personal and subjective experience, as each individual can perceive and manage the same conflict in a different manner. Conflict doesn’t necessarily have an objective basis (Van de Vliert, 1997 ). It depends on the perception of the specific situation, and the perception is by definition subjective and personal.

Conflict concerns cognitive and affective tension. When someone perceives blocked goals and disagreements, he or she can also, although not necessarily, feel fear or anger. Many authors consider that conflict is emotionally charged (Nair, 2007 ; Pondy, 1967 ; Sinaceur, Adam, Van Kleef, & Galinky, 2013 ), although the emotion doesn’t need to be labeled necessarily as a negative emotion. Some people actually enjoy conflict. Emotional experiences in conflict are also scripted by cultural, historical, and personal influences (Lindner, 2014 ).

Conflict can be unidirectional. One party can feel frustrated or thwarted by the other while the second party is hardly aware of, and doesn’t perceive the same reality of, the conflict.

Conflict is a process. Conflict is a dynamic process that does not appear suddenly, but takes some time to develop and passes through several stages (Spaho, 2013 ). Conflict is the process resulting from the tension in interpersonal interactions or between team members because of real or perceived differences (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003 ; Thomas, 1992 ; Wall & Callister, 1995 ).

Type of Conflict: Task, Process, and Relationship Conflict

Early conflict and organizational research concluded that conflict interferes with team performance and reduces satisfaction due to an increase in tension and distraction from the objective (Brown, 1983 ; Hackman & Morris, 1975 ; Pondy, 1967 ; Wall & Callister, 1995 ). Jehn ( 1995 ) differentiated between task and relational conflict, and later also included process conflict (De Wit, Greer, & Jehn, 2012 ). Task conflict refers to different opinions on content (Jehn & Mannix, 2001 ). Examples of task conflict are conflict about distribution of resources, about procedures and policies, and judgment and interpretation of facts (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003 ). Process conflict refers to how tasks should be accomplished (Jehn, Greer, Levine, & Szulanski, 2008 ). Examples are disagreements about logistic and delegation issues (Jehn et al., 2008 ). Finally, relationship conflict refers to “interpersonal incompatibility” (Jehn, 1995 , p. 257). Examples of relationship conflict are conflict about personal taste, political preferences, values, and interpersonal style (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003 ). All three types of conflict—task, process, and personal (relational) conflicts—are usually disruptive, especially personal conflict, which is highly disruptive (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003 ; Jehn, 1995 , 1997 ). A review and meta-analysis by De Wit et al. ( 2012 ) showed that, under specific conditions, task conflict can be productive for teams. Moreover, conflict can wreck a team’s efforts to share information and reach a consensus (Amason & Schweiger, 1994 ). Therefore, research supporting the benefit of task and relationship conflict is not conclusive and each situation varies. What seems to be clear is that managing conflict efficiently to avoid escalation is a priority for teams.

Conflict Behavior, Conflict Management, and Conflict Resolution

Conflict behavior, conflict management, and conflict resolution are different layers of a conflict process and therefore should be distinguished. Conflict behavior is any behavioral response to the experience of frustration, while conflict management is the deliberate action to deal with conflictive situations, both to prevent or to escalate them. Also, conflict management is differentiated from conflict resolution, which is specific action aimed to end a conflict.

Conflict Behavior

Conflict behavior is the behavioral response to the experience of conflict (Van de Vliert et al., 1995 ). Conflict behavior is defined as one party’s reaction to the perception that one’s own and the other party’s current aspiration cannot be achieved simultaneously (Deutsch, 1973 ; Pruitt, 1981 ; Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim, 1994 ). It is both what people experiencing conflict intend to do, as well as what they actually do (De Dreu, Evers, Beersma, Kluwer, & Nauta, 2001 ; Van de Vliert, 1997 ). In conflict situations people often respond primarily, following their emotions, more or less conscientiously.

Many factors affect how people respond to the experience of conflict. Social psychology shows the processes are largely unconscious (Wilson, 2004 ). For example, how people respond to intimidating behavior by their supervisor might be primarily influenced by the context and individual perception, as well as previous relations with persons in authority, including parents and teachers (Gelfand & Brett, 2004 ; Van Kleef & Cote, 2007 ). These natural behavioral responses are also referred to as “conflict styles.” They are rooted in our personality and can differ in context. Some people will naturally respond by being friendly and accommodating, where others will start arguing or fighting (Barbuto, Phipps, & Xu, 2010 ; Kilmann & Thomas, 1977 ; Van Kleef & Cote, 2007 ).

Conflict behavior becomes more effective once we are more aware of our natural tendencies and are also able not to act upon them, and instead to show flexibility in behavioral approaches. This is where conflict behavior becomes conflict management. Therefore, one can be a naturally highly accommodating person who will spontaneously give in to others who make demands, but one will be more effective after learning to assess the situation at hand and to carefully decide on a response, which might be quite different from the natural or spontaneous reaction.

Dual-Concern Model

The dual-concern model holds that the way in which parties handle conflicts can de described and is determined by two concerns: concern for self (own interests) and concern for others (relational interests) (Blake & Mouton, 1964 ; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986 ; Rahim, 1983 ; Thomas, 1992 ; Van de Vliert, 1999 ) (see Figure 1 ). Usually, the two concerns define five different conflict behaviors: forcing, avoiding, accommodating, compromising, and problem solving or integrating. These behaviors are studied at the level of general personal conflict styles, closely connected to personality, as well as at the level of strategies and tactics (Euwema & Giebels, 2017 ).

The different conflict styles have been studied intensively, with three approaches. A normative approach, wherein integrating (also known as problem solving) is seen as the preferred behavior for conflict resolution; a contingency approach, exploring conditions under which each of the behaviors is most appropriate; and a conglomerate approach, focusing on a combination of the behaviors (see “ Conglomerate Conflict Behavior ”).

Figure 1. Dual-concern model.

In forcing, one party aims to achieve his or her goal by imposing a solution onto the other party. Concern for one’s own interests and own vision is what matters. There is little attention and care for the interests and needs of the other party, or the relationship with the other (Euwema & Giebels, 2017 ). This style is appropriate when the outcome is important for one party but trivial to the opponent, or when fast decision making is necessary. It becomes inappropriate when issues are complex, when both parties are equally powerful, when the outcome is not worth the effort for one party, or when there is enough time to make a collective decision. Moreover, forcing decisions can seriously damage a relationship and contribute to bullying in the workplace (Baillien, Bollen, Euwema, & De Witte, 2014 ); however, normative forcing, which is referring to rules and imposing them, can be effective (De Dreu, 2005 ). Note that some alternative terms that have been used for forcing in the literature are competitive , contending , or adversarial behavior .

With avoiding, one party aims to stay out of any confrontation with the other. This behavior prevents efforts to yield, to negotiate constructively, or to compete for one’s own gains. The conflict issue receives little attention, usually because the avoiding party thinks he or she won’t gain from entering into the conflict (Euwema & Giebels, 2017 ; Van de Vliert, 1997 ). Avoiding may be used when the benefits of resolving the conflict are not worth confronting the other party, especially when the problem is trivial or minor; when no good solutions are available for now; or when time is needed (Van Erp et al., 2011 ). An important motive for avoiding also is to prevent loss of face and to maintain the relationship. This is particularly true in collectivistic cultures, particularly in Asian societies (Oetzel et al., 2001 ). Avoiding is inappropriate when the issues are important to a party, when the parties cannot wait, or when immediate action is required (Rahim, 2002 ). Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim ( 1994 ) distinguished between long-term avoidance, which is a permanent move to leave the conflict, and short-term avoidance, defined as temporary inaction.

Accommodating

Accommodating is giving in or going along with the ideas, wishes, and needs of the other party. Accommodating usually is the result of a low concern for one’s own conflictive interests combined with a high concern for the interests and needs of the other party. Giving in often is related to a strong need for harmony and a sensitivity to the needs of the other. Accommodation is useful when a party is not familiar with the issues involved in the conflict, when the opponent is right, when the issue is much more important to the other party, and in order to build or maintain a long-term relationship, in exchange for future consideration when needed. Giving in also can be an educational strategy, giving space to the other to find out what the effect will be. Accommodating is less appropriate when the issue is of great concern, when accommodation creates frustration, or when accommodation reinforces dynamics of exploitation (Spaho, 2013 ). Note that an alternative term for this concept that can be found in the literature is yielding .

Compromising

Compromising involves searching for a middle ground, with an eye on both one’s own interest and the interest of the other. The premise is that both parties must find a middle ground where everyone receives equal consideration, meaning that each party makes some concession (Van de Vliert, 1997 ). Compromising is appropriate when a balance of forces exists and the goals of parties are mutually exclusive (Buddhodev, 2011 ). Compromise leads to a democratic solution; however, it may prevent arriving at a creative solution to the problem and a limited effort to increase resources before distributing them (Spaho, 2013 ).

Problem Solving or Integrating

Problem solving is a win–win strategy aimed at “optimizing rather than satisfying the parties” (Van de Vliert, 1997 , p. 36). Great value is attached to one’s own interests and vision, but also a lot of attention is given to the needs, ideas, and interests of the other. One looks for open and creative solutions that meet both interests. Problem solving or integrating is useful in dealing with complex issues, and it allows both parties to share skills, information, and other resources to redefine the problem and formulate alternative solutions. It is, however, inappropriate when the task is simple or trivial, and when there is no time. Also, it is more difficult to develop when the other party does not have experience in problem solving or when the parties are unconcerned about the outcomes (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986 ). Note that some alternative terms that can be found in the literature for this concept are cooperation and collaboration .

The dual-concern model is used as a contingency model, describing which conflict behaviors are used best under what conditions (Van de Vliert et al., 1997 ), and also as a normative model, promoting integrating behaviors as the most effective style, particularly when it comes to joined outcomes and long-term effectiveness. Forcing, in contrast, is often described as a noncooperative behavior, with risk of escalated and unilateral outcomes (Blake & Mouton, 1964 ; Burke, 1970 ; Deutsch, 1973 ; Fisher & Ury, 1981 ; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986 ; Rahim, 2010 ; Thomas, 1992 ). As a result, authors define forcing and integrating as two opposed behavioral approaches (Tjosvold, Morishima, & Belsheim, 1999 ). Following this model, many scholars during the 1970s and 1980s proposed that individuals use a single behavior in conflict, or that the behaviors should be seen as independent. Therefore, the antecedents and effects of different conflict behaviors are often analyzed separately (Tjosvold, 1997 ; Volkema & Bergmann, 2001 ). However, parties usually try to achieve personal outcomes, and try to reach mutual agreements by combining several behaviors in a conflict episode (Van de Vliert, 1997 ). This is the basic assumption of the conglomerate conflict behavior (CCB) theory (Van de Vliert, Euwema, & Huismans, 1995 ), which established that conflict behaviors are used in a compatible manner, sequentially or simultaneously.

Conglomerate Conflict Behavior (CCB)

In the dual-concern model, a contrast is made between forcing (contending with an adversary in a direct way) and integrating (reconciling the parties’ basic interests) as two opposed behavioral approaches (Tjosvold et al., 1999 ). However, the CCB framework assumes that individual reactions to conflict typically are complex and consist of multiple components of behavior (Van de Vliert, 1997 , Van de Vliert et al., 1995 ). The CCB theory covers the idea that behavioral components may occur simultaneously or sequentially and that the combination drives toward effectiveness (Euwema & Van Emmerik, 2007 ; Medina & Benitez, 2011 ). The theory has been supported in studies analyzing conflict management effectiveness in different contexts, such as in managerial behavior (Munduate, Ganaza, Peiro, & Euwema, 1999 ), in military peacekeeping (Euwema & Van Emmerik, 2007 ) and by worker representatives in organizations (Elgoibar, 2013 ).

The main reason that people combine different behaviors is because conflicts are often mixed-motive situations (Euwema, Van de Vliert, & Bakker, 2003 ; Euwema & Van Emmerik, 2007 ; Walton & McKersie, 1965 ). Mixed-motive situations are described as situations that pose a conflict between securing immediate benefits through competition, and pursuing benefits for oneself and others through cooperation with other people (Komorita & Parks, 1995 ; Sheldon & Fishbach, 2011 ). Therefore, a person's behavior in a conflict episode is viewed as a combination of some of the five forms of conflict behaviors. An example of sequential complex behavior is to first put the demands clearly (forcing), followed by integrating (searching for mutual gains, and expanding the pie), and finally compromising, where distributive issues are dealt with in a fair way. An example of serial complexity can be found in multi-issue conflict, when for some issues conflict can be avoided, while for high priorities, demands are put on the table in a forcing way. Another CCB pattern is the conglomeration of accommodating and forcing. This pattern is sometimes referred to as “logrolling” (Van de Vliert, 1997 , p. 35), and it is a classic part of integrative strategies, to maximize the outcomes for both parties. Logrolling behavior consists of accommodating the high-concern issues of the other party and forcing one’s own high-concern issues. This approach is usually helpful in multi-issue trade negotiations; however, it requires openness of both parties to acknowledging key interests.

How to Explore Your Tendency in Conflict

The most famous and popular conflict behavior questionnaires are:

MODE (Management of Differences Exercise). MODE, developed in 1974 by Thomas and Killman, presents 30 choices between two options representing different conflict styles.

ROCI (Rahim's Organizational Conflict Inventory). The ROCI is a list of 28 items that measures the five styles of conflict behavior described.

Dutch Test of Conflict Handling. This list of 20 items measures the degree of preference for the five styles (Van de Vliert & Euwema, 1994 ; De Dreu et al., 2001 , 2005 ). It has been validated internationally.

Conflict management is deliberate action to deal with conflictive situations, either to prevent or to escalate them. Unlike conflict behavior, conflict management encompasses cognitive responses to conflict situations, which can vary from highly competitive to highly cooperative. Conflict management does not necessarily involve avoidance, reduction, or termination of conflict. It involves designing effective strategies to minimize the dysfunctions of conflict and to enhance the constructive functions of conflict in order to improve team and organizational effectiveness (Rahim, 2002 ).

Conflicts are not necessarily destructive (De Dreu & Gelfand, 2008 ; Euwema, Munduate, Elgoibar, Pender, & Garcia, 2015 ), and research has shown that constructive conflict management is possible (Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014 ). The benefits of conflict are much more likely to arise when conflicts are discussed openly, and when discussion skillfully promotes new ideas and generates creative insights and agreements (Coleman et al., 2014 ; De Dreu & Gelfand, 2008 ; Euwema et al., 2015 ; Tjosvold, Won, & Chen, 2014 ). To make a constructive experience from conflict, conflict needs to be managed effectively.

Deutsch’s classic theory of competition and cooperation describes the antecedents and consequences of parties’ cooperative or competitive orientations and allows insights into what can give rise to constructive or destructive conflict processes (Deutsch, 1973 , 2002 ). The core of the theory is the perceived interdependence of the parties, so that the extent that protagonists believe that their goals are cooperative (positively related) or competitive (negatively related) affects their interaction and thus the outcomes. Positive interdependence promotes openness, cooperative relations, and integrative problem solving. Perceived negative interdependence on the other hand, induces more distance and less openness, and promotes competitive behavior, resulting in distributive bargaining or win–lose outcomes (Tjosvold et al., 2014 ).

Whether the protagonists believe their goals are cooperative or competitive very much affects their expectations, interactions, and outcomes. If parties perceive that they can reach their goals only if the other party also reaches their goals, the goal interdependence is positively perceived and therefore parties will have higher concern for the other’s goals and manage the conflict cooperatively (De Dreu et al., 2001 ; Tjosvold et al., 2014 ). On the contrary, if one party perceives that they can reach their goals only if the other party fails to obtain their goals, the interdependence becomes negatively perceived and the approach to conflict becomes competitive (Tjosvold et al., 2014 ). Goals can also be independent; in that case, conflict can be avoided (the parties don’t need to obstruct each other’s goals to be successful). Therefore, how parties perceive their goals’ interdependence affects how they negotiate conflict and whether the conflict is constructively or destructively managed (Alper et al., 2000 ; Deutsch, 1973 ; Johnson & Johnson, 1989 ; Tjosvold, 2008 ).

Successfully managing conflict cooperatively requires intellectual, emotional, and relational capabilities in order to share information, to contribute to value creation, and to discuss differences constructively (Fisher & Ury, 1981 ; Tjosvold et al., 2014 ). In contrast, a competitive-destructive process leads to material losses and dissatisfaction, worsening relations between parties, and negative psychological effects on at least one party—the loser of a win–lose context (Deutsch, 2014 ).

Deutsch’s theory proposes that emphasizing cooperative goals in conflict by demonstrating a commitment to pursue mutually beneficial solutions creates high-quality resolutions and relationships, while focusing on competitive interests by pursuing one’s own goals at the expense of the other’s escalates conflict, resulting in imposed solutions and suspicious relationships (Tjosvold et al., 2014 ).

In summary, Deutsch’s theory states that the context in which the conflict process is expressed drives parties toward either a cooperative or a competitive orientation in conflicts (Alper et al., 2000 ; Deutsch, 2006 ; Johnson & Johnson, 1989 ). In other words, a cooperative context is related to a cooperative conflict pattern, and a competitive context is related to a competitive conflict pattern. When parties have a cooperative orientation toward conflict, parties discuss their differences with the objective of clarifying them and attempting to find a solution that is satisfactory to both parties—both parties win (Carnevale & Pruitt, 1992 ). On the contrary, in competition, there is usually a winner and a loser (Carnevale & Pruitt, 1992 ) (see Table 1 ). In the CCB model, the patterns can include cooperative (i.e., integrating) and competitive (i.e. forcing) behavior; however, the cooperative pattern will be dominated by integrating while the competitive pattern will be dominated by forcing (Elgoibar, 2013 ).

Table 1. Characteristics of Cooperative and Competitive Climates

Source : Coleman, Deutsch, and Marcus ( 2014 ).

How to Manage Conflicts Constructively

The need for trust.

Trust is commonly defined as a belief or expectation about others’ benevolent motives during a social interaction (Holmes & Rempel, 1989 ; Rousseau et al., 1998 ). Mutual trust is one important antecedent as well as a consequence of cooperation in conflicts (Deutsch, 1983 ; Ferrin, Bligh, & Kohles, 2008 ). As Nahapiet and Ghoshal pointed out, “Trust lubricates cooperation, and cooperation itself breeds trust” ( 1998 , p.255). There is ample evidence that constructive conflict and trust are tightly and positively related (Hempel, Zhang, & Tjosvold, 2009 ; Bijlsma & Koopman, 2003 ; Lewicki, Tonlinson, & Gillespie, 2006 ).

Successful constructive conflict management requires maximal gathering and exchange of information in order to identify problems and areas of mutual concern, to search for alternatives, to assess their implications, and to achieve openness about preferences in selecting optimal solutions (Bacon & Blyton, 2007 ; Johnson & Johnson, 1989 ; Tjosvold, 1999 ). Trust gives parties the confidence to be open with each other, knowing that the shared information won’t be used against them (Zaheer & Zaheer, 2006 ). Various studies revealed that trust leads to constructive conglomerate behaviors and to more integrative outcomes in interpersonal and intergroup conflicts (Lewicki, Elgoibar, & Euwema, 2016 ; Lewicki, McAllister, & Bies, 1998 ; Ross & LaCroix, 1996 ).

How can trust be promoted? Developing trust is challenging (Gunia, Brett, & Nandkeolyar, 2014 ; Hempel et al., 2009 ). Numerous scholars have noted that trust is easier to destroy than to create (Hempel et al., 2009 ; Meyerson et al., 1996 ). There are two main reasons for this assertion. First, trust-breaking events are often more visible and noticeable than positive trust-building actions (Kramer, 1999 ). Second, trust-breaking events are judged to have a higher impact on trust judgments than positive events (Slovic, 1993 ). Furthermore, Slovic ( 1993 ) concluded that trust-breaking events are more credible than sources of good news. Thus, the general belief is that trust is easier to destroy than it is to build, and trust rebuilding may take even longer than it took to create the original level of trust (Lewicki et al., 2016 ).

However, there is room for optimism, and different strategies have been shown to promote trust. As held in social exchange theory (Blau, 1964 ), risk taking by one party in supporting the other party has been found to signal trust to the other party (Serva et al., 2005 ). Yet, fears of exploitation make trust in conflict management and negotiation scarce. Therefore, the use of trust-promoting strategies depends on the specific situation, and parties need practical guidance on how and when to manage conflict constructively by means of promoting mutual trust.

How does the possibility of trust development between parties depend on the conflict context? Based on this practical question, some strategies for trust development have been proposed (Fisher & Ury, 1981 ; Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012 ; Gunia, Brett, & Nandkeolyar, 2012 ; Lewicki et al., 2016 ). In relationships where trust is likely, the following strategies can help: assume trustworthiness, prioritize your interests and give away a little information about them, engage in reciprocity (concessions), highlight similarities and spend time together, get to know your counterpart personally and try to be likable, behave consistently and predictably, and paraphrase your counterpart’s positions. In relationships where trust seems possible: emphasize common goals; focus on the subject, not on the people; look to the future and find a shared vision; mix questions and answers about interests and priorities—the fundamental elements of information sharing—with making and justifying offers; take a break; suggest another approach; call in a mediator; and forgive the other party’s mistakes. In relationships where trust is not possible, more cautious strategies can help: make multi-issue offers; think holistically about your counterpart’s interests; engage in reciprocity (concessions); express sympathy, apologize, or compliment your counterpart; and look for preference patterns in your counterpart’s offers and responses.

Constructive Controversy

C onstructive controversy is defined as the open-minded discussion of conflicting perspectives for mutual benefit, which occurs when protagonists express their opposing ideas that obstruct resolving the issues, at least temporarily (Tjosvold et al., 2014 ). Indicators of constructive controversy include listening carefully to each other’s opinion, trying to understand each other’s concerns, and using opposing views to understand the problem better. These skills are considered vitally important for developing and implementing cooperative problem-solving processes successfully and effectively.

Deutsch ( 2014 ) stated that there haven’t been many systematic discussions of the skills involved in constructive solutions to conflict, and he proposed three main types of skills for constructive conflict management:

Rapport-building skills are involved in establishing effective relationships between parties (such as breaking the ice; reducing fears, tensions, and suspicion; overcoming resistance to negotiation; and fostering realistic hope and optimism).

Cooperative conflict-resolution skills are concerned with developing and maintaining a cooperative conflict resolution process among the parties involved (such as identifying the type of conflict in which the parties are involved; reframing the issues so that conflict is perceived as a mutual problem to be resolved cooperatively; active listening and responsive communication; distinguishing between effective relationships between parties and positions; encouraging, supporting, and enhancing the parties; being alert to cultural differences and the possibilities of misunderstanding arising from them; and controlling anger).

Group process and decision-making skills are involved in developing a creative and productive process (such as monitoring progress toward group goals; eliciting, clarifying, coordinating, summarizing, and integrating the contributions of the various participants; and maintaining group cohesion).

Tjosvold et al. ( 2014 ) and Johnson et al. ( 2014 ) also elaborate on the skills needed for facilitating open-minded discussions and constructive controversy. They developed four mutually reinforcing strategies for managing conflict constructively:

Developing and expressing one’s own view. Parties need to know what each of the others wants and believes, and expressing one’s own needs, feelings, and ideas is essential to gaining that knowledge. By strengthening expression of their own positions, both parties can learn to investigate their position, present the best case they can for it, defend it vigorously, and try at the same time to refute opposing views. However, expressing one’s own position needs to be supplemented with an open-minded approach to the other’s position.

Questioning and understanding others’ views. Listening and understanding opposing views, as well as defending one’s own views, makes discussing conflicts more challenging but also more rewarding; therefore, the parties can point out weaknesses in each other’s arguments to encourage better development and expression of positions by finding more evidence and strengthening their reasoning.

Integrating and creating solutions. The creation of new alternatives lays the foundation for genuine agreements about a solution that both parties can accept and implement. However, protagonists may have to engage in repeated discussion to reach an agreement, or indeed they may be unable to create a solution that is mutually acceptable, and then they can both learn to become less adamant, to exchange views directly, and to show that they are trying to understand and integrate each other’s ideas so that all may benefit.

Agreeing to and implementing solutions. Parties can learn to seek the best reasoned judgment, instead of focusing on “winning”; to criticize ideas, not people; to listen and understand everyone’s position, even if they do not agree with it; to differentiate positions before trying to integrate them; and to change their minds when logically persuaded to do so.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution processes are aimed at ending a conflict. So, while conflict management can also include escalation, conflict resolution searches for a way of ending the conflict. The difference between resolution and management of conflict is more than semantic (Robbins, 1978 ). Conflict resolution means reduction, elimination, or termination of conflict.

To find a resolution, parties have to bring an extra piece of information, relate the information they have differently, or transform the issue, change the rules, change the actors or the structure, or bring in a third party (Vayrynen, 1991 ). The most popular conflict resolution processes are: negotiation, mediation, conflict coaching, and arbitration (Rahim, 2002 ). Conflict resolution can also be accomplished by ruling by authorities. Integration of the different techniques sequentially or simultaneously has been shown to support optimal conflict resolution (Jones, 2016 ).

Negotiation

Negotiation is a process in which the parties attempt to jointly create an agreement that resolves a conflict between them (Lewicki & Tomlinson, 2014 ). Walton and McKersie ( 1965 ) were the first to identify the two polar yet interdependent strategies known as distributive and integrative negotiation. Distributive negotiation means that activities are instrumental to the attainment of one party’s goals when they are in basic conflict with those of the other party. Integrative negotiation means that parties’ activities are oriented to find common or complementary interests and to solve problems confronting both parties. Other scholars also focused on the opposite tactical requirements of the two strategies, using a variety of terms, such as contending versus cooperating (Pruitt, 1981 ), claiming value versus creating value (Lax & Sebenius, 1987 ), and the difference between positions and interests (Fisher & Ury, 1981 ).

If a distributive strategy is pursued too vigorously, a negotiator may gain a greater share of gains, but of a smaller set of joint gains, or, worse, may generate an outcome in which both parties lose. However, if a negotiator pursues an integrative negotiation in a single-minded manner—being totally cooperative and giving freely accurate and credible information about his/her interests—he or she can be taken advantage of by the other party (Walton & McKersie, 1965 ). The different proposals that have been formulated to cope with these central dilemmas in negotiation are mainly based on a back-and-forth communication process between the parties, which is linked to the negotiators’ interpersonal skills (Brett, Shapiro, & Lytle, 1998 ; Fisher & Ury, 1981 ; Rubin et al., 1994 ).

Mediation is process by which a third party facilitates constructive communication among disputants, including decision making, problem solving and negotiation, in order to reach a mutually acceptable agreement (Bollen, Munduate, & Euwema, 2016 ; Goldman, Cropanzano, Stein, & Benson, 2008 ; Moore, 2014 ). Using mediation in conflict resolution has been proven to prevent the negative consequences of conflict in the workplace (Bollen & Euwema, 2010 ; Bollen et al., 2016 ), in collective bargaining (Martinez-Pecino et al., 2008 ), in inter- and intragroup relations (Jones, 2016 ), and in interpersonal relations (Herrman, 2006 ). However, mediation is not a magic bullet and works better in conflicts that are moderate rather than extreme, when parties are motivated to resolve the conflict, and when parties have equal power, among other characteristics (Kressel, 2014 ).

Conflict Coaching

Conflict coaching is a new and rapidly growing process in the public as well as private sector (Brinkert, 2016 ). In this process, a conflict coach works with a party to accomplish three goals (Jones & Brinkert, 2008 ): (a) analysis and coherent understanding of the conflict, (b) identification of a future preferred direction, and (c) skills development to implement the preferred strategy. Therefore, a conflict coach is defined as a conflict expert who respects the other party’s self-determination and aims to promote the well-being of the parties involved. Giebels and Janssen ( 2005 ) found that, when outside help was called in, parties in conflict experienced fewer negative consequences in terms of individual well-being than people who did not ask for third-party help.

Sometimes, the leader of a team can act as conflict coach. A study by Romer and colleagues ( 2012 ) showed that a workplace leader’s problem-solving approach to conflicts increased employees’ perception of justice and their sense that they had a voice in their workplace, as well as reduced employees’ stress (De Reuver & Van Woerkom, 2010 ; Romer et al., 2012 ). In contrast, the direct expression of power in the form of forcing behavior can harm employees’ well-being (Peterson & Harvey, 2009 ). A forcing leader may become an additional party to the conflict (i.e., employees may turn against their leader; Romer et al, 2012 ).

Conflict coaching and mediation are different processes. First, in conflict coaching, only one party is involved in the process, while in mediation, the mediator helps all the parties in conflict to engage in constructive interaction. Second, conflict coaching focuses on direct skills instructions to the party (i.e., negotiation skills). In that, conflict coaching is also a leadership development tool (Romer et al., 2012 ). There is a growing tendency to integrate conflict coaching and workplace mediation, particularly in preparation for conflict resolution, because the coach can help the coached party to investigate options and weigh the advantages of the different options (Jones, 2016 ).

Arbitration

Arbitration is an institutionalized procedure in which a third party provides a final and binding or voluntary decision (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2014 ; Mohr & Spekman, 1994 ). Arbitration allows the parties to have control over the process, but not over the outcomes. Therefore, arbitration differs from negotiation, mediation, and conflict coaching, in which the parties decide the agreement themselves (Posthuma & Dworkin, 2000 ; Lewicki et al., 2014 ). In arbitration, the third party listens to the parties and decides the outcome. This procedure is used mainly in conflicts between organizations, in commercial disputes, and in collective labor conflicts (Beechey, 2000 ; Elkouri & Elkouri, 1995 ).

Decision Making by Authorities

The strategies of negotiation, mediation, conflict coaching, and arbitration have in common that the parties together decide about the conflict process, even when they agree to accept an arbitration. This is different from how authorities resolve conflict. Decision making by authorities varies from parents’ intervening in children’s fights to rulings by teachers, police officers, managers, complaint officers, ombudsmen, and judges. Here, often one party complains and the authority acts to intervene and end the conflict. This strategy is good for ending physical violence and misuse of power. However, the authorities’ decisive power is limited, and therefore in most situations authorities are strongly urged to first explore the potential for conflict resolution and reconciliation among the parties involved. The authority can act as an escalator for the process, or as a facilitator, and only in cases of immediate threat can intervene or rule as a last resort. Authorities who employ this strategy can improve the learning skills of the parties and can impose upon the parties an acceptance of responsibility, both for the conflict and for the ways to end it.

It is important to emphasize the natural and positive aspects of conflict management. Conflict occurs in all areas of organizations and private lives and its management is vital for their effectiveness. Through conflict, conventional thinking is challenged, threats and opportunities are identified, and new solutions are forged (Tjosvold et al., 2014 ). Therefore, when conflict occurs, it shouldn’t be avoided but should be managed constructively.

Mastering The Collaborating Conflict Style In 2024 [Easy Guide]

Table of contents:.

In the ever-evolving landscape of hybrid and remote work environments, conflicts among team members are inevitable. To minimize negativity and cultivate a healthy and proactive culture, effective conflict management is absolutely crucial.

Today’s distributed workforces demand a more dynamic approach to conflict resolution than the one-size-fits-all solutions used in the past.

Enter: the collaborating conflict style.

This article will cover the definition, key principles, common misconceptions, and pros and cons of the collaborating conflict style.

Let’s jump in.

Quick Summary:

Collaborative conflict resolution encourages teams to work through disagreements through empathy, listening, and mutually beneficial solutions.
Powerful conflict management styles are more necessary than ever, with more widely dispersed teams and less face-to-face interaction.
Collaboration, unlike compromise, doesn’t focus on both sides making sacrifices. Instead, both parties come up with mutually beneficial solutions.

What Is the Collaborating Conflict Style?

The collaborating conflict style is a powerful approach to conflict resolution built on cooperation, open communication, and finding win-win outcomes.

This conflict style aims to:

Preserve relationships
Build trust
Promote long-term positive change

At its core, collaborative conflict resolution is about going beyond surface-level compromises and finding solutions that satisfy the needs and interests of everyone involved.

It involves fostering an inclusive, participative environment that collectively tackles the conflict’s root causes. It also requires good collaborative communication skills and great mastery of asynchronous communication .

According to Lesley University president and conflict management expert, Jeff Weiss, encouraging collaboration amongst team members can give leaders a better understanding of the motives and interests at the root of a conflict, so they can make more informed decisions.

And that’s how collaborating conflict style views these conflicts. Rather than battles won or lost, they’re an opportunity to grow, learn, and connect.

The Principles of Collaborating Conflict Style

The collaborating style relies on several key principles for its use. We’ll discuss a few of them below.

Ensuring Open Communication

Open communication is the cornerstone of the collaborating conflict style.

And unfortunately, hybrid and remote work can make open communication more challenging. Without face-to-face interactions, the risk of miscommunication and misunderstandings increases.

Nonetheless, hybrid teams can leverage digital tools to prioritize continuous communication and opportunities for feedback.

To communicate well, teams must practice the following:

Empathic listening
Clear, constructive dialogue
A respectful exchange of opinions

Finding Common Ground

Finding a middle ground is another fundamental principle of collaborating conflict style.

Hybrid and remote work team members who are physically dispersed and have varying perspectives and experiences may find it difficult to establish common ground.

However, the absence of physical proximity can also encourage a broader exploration of ideas and perspectives.

To find common ground, teams should cultivate the following:

Shared interests and goals
Clear expectations and common objectives
A forward-looking approach

We have an extensive guide on dealing with difficult situations at work that would further help.

Creating a Culture of Trust

The absence of non-verbal cues and personal connections can make it more difficult to establish trust among team members.

However, embracing diverse perspectives is crucial in a hybrid/remote setup, as it brings together individuals with different backgrounds and experiences.

You can establish a culture of trust by:

Embracing multiple perspectives:
Ensuring a safe and non-judgmental environment
Modeling collaborative conflict resolution

How Does Collaboration Differ from Compromise?

In both collaboration and compromise, the goal is to resolve conflict. However, their approaches to doing this are quite different. In collaboration , parties seek mutually beneficial solutions. They look for true win-win possibilities.

In a compromise , one or both parties must make a sacrifice to achieve a resolution.

Compromising is certainly necessary sometimes. But it can also open the door to only partial satisfaction — or even resentment.

For example, if two employees disagreed on a major decision, they’d have to meet in the middle with a compromise. But if they collaborated, they could work together to resolve the situation.

The Pros of Collaborative Conflict Resolution

Collaborative conflict management has several benefits for both employees and the work environment as a whole. Here are three of the best ones:

Better Problem-Solving

The collaborating conflict style leads to constructive decision-making. Encouraging active engagement and open dialogue helps others think outside of the box and explore innovative paths forward.

Collaborative problem-solving helps address not only the surface-level symptoms but also the underlying root causes of conflicts, leading to more effective and sustainable resolutions.

Better Relationships

Another significant advantage of collaborative conflict management is its ability to strengthen relationships among team members.

Emphasizing trust-building, open communication, and empathizing with each other’s perspectives goes beyond resolving conflicts to facilitate deeper understandings of each other. This leads to better interpersonal connections.

Higher Morale

When a workplace conflict is addressed in a collaborative manner, employees feel heard, valued, and empowered.

Their opinions and perspectives are respected and considered during the conflict resolution process, boosting their morale and helping them move past conflicts.

The Cons of Collaborative Conflict Resolution

This conflict management style also has several cons. We’ll discuss a few of them below.

Requires a Time Investment

Implementing collaborative conflict resolution demands significant time and resource investment.

Thorough discussions, active participation, and exploring multiple perspectives take time. The process may require patience and dedication to ensure all voices are heard and meaningful resolutions are reached.

Consensus-Building Can Be Difficult

Achieving consensus in collaborative conflict resolution can be a complex process that requires various collaborative skills .

Balancing different perspectives, reaching agreements, and satisfying all parties’ needs requires careful navigation.

Conflicting opinions, varying conflict goals, and emotional variables can make the consensus-building process challenging and time-consuming.

Potential for Manipulation

People with strong personalities, more power, or better communication skills can manipulate the collaborative conflict resolution process to their advantage, undermining the resolution’s fairness and effectiveness.

It’s crucial to ensure that all participants have an equal opportunity to contribute and that power imbalances are addressed to maintain a truly collaborative environment.

Harmful Misconceptions About Conflict Resolution

Be wary of misconceptions, as they can get in the way of effective conflict resolution in your workplace.

They include the following.

Thinking Conflict Is Always Negative

We tend to think of conflict as negative or something to avoid.

But when conflict is seen as a natural process — not something to fear — a healthier handling of the conflict results.

Conflict is something that should be embraced, as working through it is a chance for each party to make improvements. Every collaborative leader knows this.

Thinking Conflict Is Always Confrontational

Part of the reason we often avoid conflict is that we often think of it as something that requires confrontation.

But disagreements don’t have to lead to long-term division. Conflicts can be resolved without hurtful language or subverting the opponent’s position.

Thinking Conflict Always Has Winners and Losers

If a team member believes that there’ll always be winners and losers in a conflict, they’ll fight at all costs to make sure they win.

Shifting your team’s mindset to craft mutually beneficial solutions allows for a collaborative resolution to occur.

How to Use Collaborative Conflict Resolutions in a Hybrid Workplace

Consider the following strategies for effectively applying collaborative conflict resolutions in a hybrid workplace.

Establish Communication Standards

In a hybrid workplace with dispersed team members, it’s crucial to establish clear communication norms that promote open dialogue and mutual understanding.

Define guidelines for virtual communication, encourage active participation, and establish channels for transparent and efficient information-sharing.

Use Digital Tools

Employ collaborative tools , such as video conferencing for face-to-face interaction, collaborative document editing for real-time brainstorming and decision-making, and project management software to streamline workflows and encourage accountability.

Provide Conflict Resolution Training

By prioritizing active listening, empathy, negotiation, and problem-solving, managers can equip employees with the necessary tools to effectively navigate conflicts in a hybrid setting.

This training will help team members understand and adapt to different communication channels, maintain clarity in their virtual interactions, and foster a culture of constructive conflict management.

Plan Team-Building Activities

Building rapport and trust among team members is essential for effective conflict resolution in a hybrid workplace.

Virtual team-building activities can help foster a sense of camaraderie and collaboration.

So don’t just reactively manage conflicts — build a sense of teamwork and shared purpose into your work culture.

Unlock the Power of the Collaborating Conflict Style

Now that you understand how the collaborating conflict style works, you can employ it in your workplace to create a stronger, more resilient organizational culture.

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Why Is Collaboration Better Than Competition?

Collaboration is better than competition because it promotes synergy, builds positive relationships, and focuses on long-term success rather than a win-lose mentality.

How Does Collaboration Resolve Conflict?

Collaboration resolves conflict by encouraging active listening, finding common ground, and promoting problem-solving and compromise to reach mutually beneficial solutions.

How Do You Build Strong Collaboration?

You can build strong collaboration by establishing a shared purpose, cultivating trust, encouraging active participation, and promoting effective communication.

Is Collaboration a Conflict Style?

Collaboration is often considered a conflict resolution style rather than a conflict style itself. It’s one of the strategies used to approach and resolve disagreements or conflicts.

The collaboration style aims to address the concerns of all parties involved in the conflict by finding a mutually acceptable solution that, ideally, satisfies all their underlying needs and interests. This approach is often seen as a win-win situation where all parties work together to find a solution that benefits everyone.

Why is Collaborating Conflict Style the Best?

Collaborating as a conflict resolution style is often considered highly effective and is seen by many as the “best” approach in certain situations.

However, it’s essential to recognize that what may be considered the best approach can vary depending on the context, the relationship between the parties, the nature of the conflict, and the desired outcomes. Here’s why collaboration is often highly regarded:

Win-Win Outcome: Collaboration seeks a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of all parties. Unlike compromise, where each party may have to give something up, collaboration aims to find an innovative solution where everyone wins.
Builds Relationships: By working together to find a solution, parties often develop a deeper understanding of each other’s needs and concerns. This can lead to increased trust and a stronger relationship in the long run.
Highly Creative: Collaborative solutions often require creative thinking and problem-solving, allowing for innovative solutions that might not have been considered with a more confrontational or competitive approach.
Long-Term Solution: Solutions reached through collaboration are often more durable and satisfactory in the long term because they address the underlying needs and interests of all parties.
Enhances Communication: Collaboration encourages open communication, empathy, and active listening. This helps all parties involved to understand each other better, reducing misunderstandings and promoting a more harmonious relationship.

Is Collaboration the Most Preferred Style of Conflict?

Collaboration is often considered a highly effective conflict resolution style, particularly when building trust and finding win-win solutions is essential. However, its preference depends on various factors such as the nature of the conflict, relationships, time constraints, and specific needs of the situation. Different conflicts may call for different approaches, and collaboration may not always be the most suitable method.

Miro Miroslavov

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Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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August 24, 2020

When someone is confronted with a conflict situation, they usually have a number of concerns. One concern is whether or not they will be able to get what they want or need. Another is how the conflict will affect the other party and their own relationship with the other(s). A third concern is how much trouble the conflict is going to be and how much it is going to cost to lose or to prevail. Generally, people have a tendency to balance those concerns by adopting one of five conflict styles, which are represented in the diagram below.

People who are most concerned about getting their own needs met and are minimally concerned about the relationship or the other side's needs will most likely compete . They will do whatever it takes to win, and disregard the consequences, particularly those accruing to the other side. This may bring short term gains, but it risks longer term losses, as the losers may be angry and seek to "get back" at the competitor at a later time.

People who are most concerned about the relationship and less concerned about getting their own needs met are likely to accommodate, meaning they give in, going along with whatever the other party wants. That usually preserves the relationship, although it can cause harm over the long term if "the other" loses respect for the accommodator because they are a "push over." There also is a tendency for the accommodator to get resentful of the other party over time, although it is hardly the other side's fault that the accommodator gave in.

People who are mostly just afraid of conflict tend to avoid it. They might pretend that there is no conflict, or they might simply avoid the person that they are in conflict with. This doesn't get their needs met, and sometimes it fails to get the other side's needs met either, if they need something from the avoider, or they need a decision. As a result, it can easily annoy the other side (or worse), damaging the relationship.

Avoiding may make sense if the conflict is silly and inconsequential and if it will be solved by simply waiting. But if the conflict involves something that matters, avoidance can cause real problems. Feelings get pent up, the conflict simmers along until it finally gets hot enough to blow up, and then it may well destroy the relationship. (When I taught conflict styles in class I showed a picture of Old Faithful for "avoidance." It simmers along underground, but predictably, every so often, it explodes with gushing steaming water sailing sky high. That's what tends to happen when important conflicts are ignored.)

When people are concerned about getting their own needs met and are concerned about the relationship, they may try to compromise. Compromise is a give-and-take approach where you give up some of what you want to allow the other side to get some of what they want (hence the picture of the knife cutting the apple in half.) This is generally seen as "fair," but it doesn't get people everything they wanted, and it doesn't improve the relationship as much as the fifth conflict style, collaboration. However, it is usually faster and easier to accomplish than is collaboration.

When people are concerned about getting their own needs met and are concerned with the relationship, plus they have time and patience, they may try collaboration. Here they take the time to really understand the interests and needs of the other side, make sure the other side understands their's, and then you work together to craft a solution that meets both sides' needs as fully as possible, ideally, without making concessions. When one takes the time to do this, one's needs are usually met more fully than they are with any of the other conflict styles (with the possible exception of competing), but this approach doesn't have the relationship downsides of competing, as collaboration usually strengthens relationships.

In their best-selling negotiation book Getting to Yes, Fisher, Ury, and Patton tell "the orange story," which I (and many others) use in their teaching to explain the difference between compromise and collaboration. As the story goes, two children are standing in the kitchen, fighting over the last orange. Mom, sick of the squabbling, takes a knife, cuts the orange in half, and gives each half to each of the children. That's compromise. If, instead, she asked each child why she wanted the orange, the mom might have discovered that one child wanted to eat it, and the other wanted the rind for an art project. Voilà! Peel the orange, give the flesh to one child to eat, and the rind to the other for the art project. They both got 100% of what they wanted. That's collaboration!

Collaboration isn't usually as quick or easy as that—that's just a parable that makes the point clear. It often takes a considerably long time and a great deal of creativity to figure out solutions to meet everyone's needs. But it is possible to do so much more often than is often recognized, even in situations that are generally considered to be "intractable."

Many people who teach conflict styles do so by first having students fill out and score a questionnaire that labels them according to their dominant conflict style. When I did that, I found out that many (probably most) of my students found that they tended to avoid conflicts; the next most common categories were competitors and accommodators (usually about evenly matched). Fewer people were habitual compromisers or collaborators, although there usually were a few.

After we did the questionnaire, I pointed out that it is actually to people's benefit to broaden their repertoires and to learn what conflict style best matches what situation and be able to use all five. Probably not surprisingly, what style is best is generally determined by the level of concern one has for one's self and the other, the importance of the situation, and the time and effort available to give to the situation.

If a conflict is trivial to you, it might be best to accommodate. Why put up a fight and make the other person annoyed or angry when you don't really care what the outcome is?
If you do want to get your needs met, but you don't want to harm the relationship or the other person, then better to compromise or collaborate. If the issue is easy to split in half and isn't all that important, compromise is fine. So, if the conflict is over what to cook for dinner, agree to cook one person's choice tonight and the other's choice tomorrow. It's quick, it's fair, and everyone is satisfied.
But if the conflict is more substantial, and involves things that really matter to you and the other side, the best option is usually collaboration. This means you need to take the time to really understand the other sides' needs and concerns, and to explain yours, so that you can work together to create a solution that meets everyone's needs, ideally without anyone having to give up anything that is important to them.
If getting your needs met is high priority and you don't really care about the relationship or the other party, you might be able to go ahead and compete. And if you are a good competitor, you might win. This often has the advantage of being faster than collaboration (though often not faster than compromise) and you may be able to get 100% of what you want. But often that comes at the cost of a damaged relationships with the other side and the risk that they will "come back" later to "get theirs."
If the situation is trivial and is likely to go away on its own soon, avoidance might be a sensible approach. But when you avoid conflicts that really do matter—even if only to the other side, not to you—your risk an "Old Faithful" blow up that will burn everyone involved. Therefore, accommodation, though not optimal, is usually better than avoidance for trivial issues.

The Intractable Conflict Challenge

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts. More...

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Crisis, Contradiction, Certainty, and Contempt -- Columbia Professor Peter Coleman, an expert on intractable conflict, reflects on the intractable conflict occurring on his own campus, suggesting "ways out" that would be better for everyone.
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Essays About Conflict in Life: Top 5 Examples and Prompts

Conflict is a broad and gripping topic, but most struggle to write about it. See our top essays about conflict in life examples and prompts to start your piece.

Conflict occurs when two people with different opinions, feelings, and behaviours disagree. It’s a common occurrence that we can observe wherever and whenever we are. Although conflicts usually imply negative aspects, they also have benefits such as stronger relationships and better communication.

To aid you in your paper, here are five examples to familiarize you with the subject:

1. Useful Notes On 4 Major Types Of Conflicts (Motivational Conflict) By Raghavendra Pras

2. encountering conflict by julius gregory, 3. complete guide to understanding conflict and conflict resolution by prasanna, 4. analysis of personal conflict experience by anonymous on gradesfixer, 5. personal conflict resolving skills essay by anonymous on ivypanda, 1. conflict: what is and how to avoid it, 2. conflicts in our everyday lives, 3. review on movies or books about conflicts, 4. actions and conflicts , 5. conflicts at home, 6. conflicts that changed my life, 7. my personal experience in covert conflict, 8. cascading conflicts, 9. how does conflict in life benefit you, 10. the importance of conflict management.

“Conflict… results when two or more motives drive behaviour towards incompatible goals.”

Pras regards conflict as a source of frustration with four types. Experimental psychologists identified them as approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, approach-avoidance, and multiple approach-avoidance. He discusses each through his essay and uses theoretical analysis with real-life examples to make it easier for the readers to understand.

“The nature of conflict shows that conflict can either push people away or bring them into having a closer, more comfortable relationship.”

The main points of Gregory’s essay are the typical causes and effects of conflicts. He talks about how people should not avoid conflicts in their life and instead solve them to learn and grow. However, he’s also aware that no matter if a dispute is big or small, it can lead to severe consequences when it’s wrongly dealt with. He also cites real-life events to prove his points. At the end of the essay, he acknowledges that one can’t wholly avoid conflict because it’s part of human nature.

“…it is important to remember that regardless of the situation, it is always possible to resolve a conflict in some constructive or meaningful way.”

To help the reader understand conflict and resolutions, Prasanna includes the types, causes, difficulties, and people’s reactions to it. She shows how broad conflict is by detailing each section. From simple misunderstandings to bad faith, the conflict has varying results that ultimately depend on the individuals involved in the situation. Prasanna ends the essay by saying that conflict is a part of life that everyone will have to go through, no matter the relationship they have with others.

“I also now understand that trying to keep someone’s feelings from getting hurt might not always be the best option during a conflict.”

To analyze how conflict impacts lives, the author shares his personal experience. He refers to an ex-friend, Luke, as someone who most of their circle doesn’t like because of his personality. The author shares their arguments, such as when Luke wasn’t invited to a party and how they tried to protect his feelings by not telling Luke people didn’t want him to be there. Instead, they caved, and Luke was allowed to the gathering. However, Luke realized he wasn’t accepted at the party, and many were uncomfortable around him.

The essay further narrates that it was a mistake not to be honest from the beginning. Ultimately, the writer states that he would immediately tell someone the truth rather than make matters worse.

“To me if life did not have challenges and difficult circumstances we were never going to know the strength that we have in us.”

The essay delves into the writer’s conflicts concerning their personal feelings and professional boundaries. The author narrates how they initially had a good relationship with a senior until they filed for a leave. Naturally, they didn’t expect the coworker to lie and bring the situation to their committee. However, the author handled it instead of showing anger by respecting their relationship with the senior, controlling their emotion, and communicating properly.

10 Helpful Prompts On Essays About Conflict in Life

Below are easy writing prompts to use for your essay:

Define what constitutes a conflict and present cases to make it easier for the readers to imagine. To further engage your audience, give them imaginary situations where they can choose how to react and include the results of these reactions.

If writing this prompt sounds like a lot of work, make it simple. Write a 5-paragraph essay instead.

There are several types of conflict that a person experiences throughout their life. First, discuss simple conflicts you observe around you. For example, the cashier misunderstands an order, your mom forgets to buy groceries, or you have clashing class schedules.

Pick a movie or book and summarize its plot. Share your thoughts regarding how the piece tackles the conflicts and if you agree with the characters’ decisions. Try the 1985 movie The Heavenly Kid , directed by Cary Medoway, or Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

In this essay, describe how actions can lead to conflict and how specific actions can make a conflict worse. Make your essay interesting by presenting various characters and letting them react differently to a particular conflict.

For example, Character A responds by being angry and making the situation worse. Meanwhile, Character B immediately solves the discord by respectfully asking others for their reasons. Through your essay, you’ll help your readers realize how actions significantly affect conflicts. You’ll also be able to clearly explain what conflicts are.

Essays about conflict in life: Conflicts at home

Your home is where you first learn how to handle conflicts, making it easier for your readers to relate to you. In your essay, tell a story of when you quarreled with a relative and how you worked it out. For instance, you may have a petty fight with your sibling because you don’t want to share a toy. Then, share what your parents asked you to do and what you learned from your dispute.

If there are simple conflicts with no serious consequences, there are also severe ones that can impact individuals in the long run. Talk about it through your essay if you’re comfortable sharing a personal experience. For example, if your parents’ conflict ended in divorce, recount what it made you feel and how it affected your life.

Covert conflict occurs when two individuals have differences but do not openly discuss them. Have you experienced living or being with someone who avoids expressing their genuine feelings and emotions towards you or something? Write about it, what happened, and how the both of you resolved it.

Some results of cascading conflict are wars and revolutions. The underlying issues stem from a problem with a simple solution but will affect many aspects of the culture or community. For this prompt, pick a relevant historical happening. For instance, you can talk about King Henry VIII’s demand to divorce his first wife and how it changed the course of England’s royal bloodline and nobles.

People avoid conflict as much as possible because of its harmful effects, such as stress and fights. In this prompt, focus on its positive side. Discuss the pros of engaging in disputes, such as having better communication and developing your listening and people skills.

Explain what conflict management is and expound on its critical uses. Start by relaying a situation and then applying conflict resolution techniques. For example, you can talk about a team with difficulties making a united decision. To solve this conflict, the members should share their ideas and ensure everyone is allowed to speak and be heard.

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Conflict Style, Essay Example

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The conflict styles as presented in the conflict styles inventory usually varies depending on applicable situation. The five conflict styles involve compromising, accommodating, collaborating, Competing and avoiding. Compromising is the conflict styles that best describe my preferred style because it is marked by the willingness to come to an agreement through making superficial concessions and bargaining. The reason why I give first priority to compromising is because the use of concessions and bargaining as conflict styles leads to settling on a common agreement that is suitable to both parties (Raines, 2013). My secondary conflict style involves accommodating. I highly value this as my secondary conflict style because it involves is a situation that parties are involved in cooperation leading to one party giving in and agreeing with the demands of the other. Although the outcome of a particular situation must favor the party that is ready to agree to the demands of the other, the end result is that an agreement is reached at last. It is naturally acceptable that most common situations offer higher benefits to some people, more than others and any parties in conflict must appreciate this as a fact.

I have successfully applied superficial concessions your conflict style as a compromising conflict style in business transaction leading to I and my rival party coming to an agreement. Conflicts arising in business transactions was thus solved through compromise due to the understanding that time and money was at the center of the agreement for both of us, thus require a democratic approach.

The use of compromising as a conflict style has prevented me from engaging in violent confrontation with my rivals in business because it is usually democratic and posits to achieve the willingness of concerned parties to come to an agreement through making superficial concessions and bargaining.

Raines, Susan A. 2013. Conflict Management for Managers: resolving workplace, client, and policy disputes. 1 st Ed. Jossey-Bass Publishers.

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What Is the Collaborating Conflict Management Style and When Should You Use It?

Jul 16, 2021

The collaborating conflict management style is an excellent tool for helping resolve conflicts in the workplace amicably while ensuring your project gets done. It takes time while you listen to all parties involved, but the payback is huge since every party emerges from the conflict satisfied.

The four other conflict management styles are:

Accommodating style
Competing style
Compromising style
Avoiding style

$ 75.00 USD | 1H 4M

What is the collaborating conflict style?

The collaborating conflict style focuses on coming up with the most cooperative solution to conflicts. That means having an honest discussion about important issues with all parties involved and making sure that they’ve all had their say. It also means listening carefully, exploring alternative solutions, and maintaining a nonthreatening environment so everyone feels comfortable laying out their concerns in the open. From there, you work to find a solution that factors in everyone’s feedback and will generally make everyone feel satisfied with the outcome.

Example of the collaborating style in practice

Imagine you’re a contractor with two crews, and one always gets to use the better tools. The crew using the mediocre tools is resentful because they don’t feel their manager respects them or what they do. When you hear both sides of the issue, you grasp what’s happening and which team members are using which tools, and why. Armed with this information, you can now reallocate the tools according to usage rather than crew, so both parties now feel they have what they need to work more productively.

Collaboration vs. compromise: What’s the difference?

In both compromising and collaborating styles, both parties get their needs met. The difference is the degree to which those needs are met. With the compromising style, all parties give up something they want in order to move forward to a mutually agreed upon solution. For example, an electrical crew may give up an afternoon of work in order to let a plumbing crew get into the site to finish their job. The electricians may have to scramble to meet their tight deadline, but the plumbing crew will appreciate the gesture, and a conflict will have been resolved.

When collaborating, all parties get what they want because they found a solution that serves everyone, ideally long-term. For example, both the electrical crew and plumbing crew could work alongside each other, despite their initial plans. They may have to pare down their crew, in order to make room for each other, but they’d both be able to meet their deadlines.

When to use the collaborating style

Collaborating style is best used in the following scenarios:

When you’re looking to build relationships.
When you are less concerned with getting your way and more focused on fostering an atmosphere of cooperation.
When you’re new to a job and want to build trust.

When to avoid the collaborating style

In some situations, collaboration just isn’t possible—or advisable. For example:

When safety is involved: Ensuring workers’ safety is critical and there’s no room for disagreement on the issue—it’s the law. If crew members are complaining about wearing protective goggles, for instance, it’s best to enforce the rules so no one gets hurt.
Tight deadlines: If you simply don’t have the time to speak to everyone, get their feedback, and make a decision, you may need to be assertive instead of collaborative.

Advantages and disadvantages of the collaborating style

The clear advantage of collaborating conflict style is that all parties feel heard and respected. When there is room to vent, it creates a feeling of respect, which translates to higher morale and productivity on the job. This style can also set the tone for future disputes, encourage accountability, and promote a sense of shared responsibility.

Still, there are disadvantages to the collaborating style: Listening to everyone air their grievances can be time-consuming, and sometimes, despite making your best effort to hear everyone out, you may not always find a solution everybody can live with.

MT Copeland offers video-based online classes that give you a foundation in construction fundamentals with real-world applications, like managing conflict on the jobsite .

Classes include professionally produced videos taught by practicing craftspeople, and supplementary downloads like quizzes, blueprints, and other materials to help you master the skills.

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Dr. Christine Fiori is the Program Director of the Construction Management Program at Drexel University where she teaches courses in Project Controls, Equipment Applications and Economics, Leadership, Safety and Strategic Management. Prior to joining the faculty at Drexel University, she was the Preston and Catharine White Fellow and Associate Director of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction at Virginia Tech. She received her PhD in Civil Engineering from Drexel University in 1997. She served as a Civil Engineering officer in the United States Air Force and taught at both the US Air Force Academy and Arizona State University. Her passion for building was stoked early in her life as both her father and grandfather were carpenters.

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Illustration of a missile made from words.

In the campus protests over the war in Gaza, language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction.

By Zadie Smith

A philosophy without a politics is common enough. Aesthetes, ethicists, novelists—all may be easily critiqued and found wanting on this basis. But there is also the danger of a politics without a philosophy. A politics unmoored, unprincipled, which holds as its most fundamental commitment its own perpetuation. A Realpolitik that believes itself too subtle—or too pragmatic—to deal with such ethical platitudes as thou shalt not kill. Or: rape is a crime, everywhere and always. But sometimes ethical philosophy reënters the arena, as is happening right now on college campuses all over America. I understand the ethics underpinning the protests to be based on two widely recognized principles:

There is an ethical duty to express solidarity with the weak in any situation that involves oppressive power.

If the machinery of oppressive power is to be trained on the weak, then there is a duty to stop the gears by any means necessary.

The first principle sometimes takes the “weak” to mean “whoever has the least power,” and sometimes “whoever suffers most,” but most often a combination of both. The second principle, meanwhile, may be used to defend revolutionary violence, although this interpretation has just as often been repudiated by pacifistic radicals, among whom two of the most famous are, of course, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr . In the pacifist’s interpretation, the body that we must place between the gears is not that of our enemy but our own. In doing this, we may pay the ultimate price with our actual bodies, in the non-metaphorical sense. More usually, the risk is to our livelihoods, our reputations, our futures. Before these most recent campus protests began, we had an example of this kind of action in the climate movement. For several years now, many people have been protesting the economic and political machinery that perpetuates climate change, by blocking roads, throwing paint, interrupting plays, and committing many other arrestable offenses that can appear ridiculous to skeptics (or, at the very least, performative), but which in truth represent a level of personal sacrifice unimaginable to many of us.

I experienced this not long ago while participating in an XR climate rally in London. When it came to the point in the proceedings where I was asked by my fellow-protesters whether I’d be willing to commit an arrestable offense—one that would likely lead to a conviction and thus make travelling to the United States difficult or even impossible—I’m ashamed to say that I declined that offer. Turns out, I could not give up my relationship with New York City for the future of the planet. I’d just about managed to stop buying plastic bottles (except when very thirsty) and was trying to fly less. But never to see New York again? What pitiful ethical creatures we are (I am)! Falling at the first hurdle! Anyone who finds themselves rolling their eyes at any young person willing to put their own future into jeopardy for an ethical principle should ask themselves where the limits of their own commitments lie—also whether they’ve bought a plastic bottle or booked a flight recently. A humbling inquiry.

It is difficult to look at the recent Columbia University protests in particular without being reminded of the campus protests of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, some of which happened on the very same lawns. At that time, a cynical political class was forced to observe the spectacle of its own privileged youth standing in solidarity with the weakest historical actors of the moment, a group that included, but was not restricted to, African Americans and the Vietnamese. By placing such people within their ethical zone of interest, young Americans risked both their own academic and personal futures and—in the infamous case of Kent State—their lives. I imagine that the students at Columbia—and protesters on other campuses—fully intend this echo, and, in their unequivocal demand for both a ceasefire and financial divestment from this terrible war, to a certain extent they have achieved it.

But, when I open newspapers and see students dismissing the idea that some of their fellow-students feel, at this particular moment, unsafe on campus, or arguing that such a feeling is simply not worth attending to, given the magnitude of what is occurring in Gaza, I find such sentiments cynical and unworthy of this movement. For it may well be—within the ethical zone of interest that is a campus, which was not so long ago defined as a safe space, delineated by the boundary of a generation’s ethical ideas— it may well be that a Jewish student walking past the tents, who finds herself referred to as a Zionist, and then is warned to keep her distance, is, in that moment, the weakest participant in the zone. If the concept of safety is foundational to these students’ ethical philosophy (as I take it to be), and, if the protests are committed to reinserting ethical principles into a cynical and corrupt politics, it is not right to divest from these same ethics at the very moment they come into conflict with other imperatives. The point of a foundational ethics is that it is not contingent but foundational. That is precisely its challenge to a corrupt politics.

Practicing our ethics in the real world involves a constant testing of them, a recognition that our zones of ethical interest have no fixed boundaries and may need to widen and shrink moment by moment as the situation demands. (Those brave students who—in supporting the ethical necessity of a ceasefire—find themselves at painful odds with family, friends, faith, or community have already made this calculation.) This flexibility can also have the positive long-term political effect of allowing us to comprehend that, although our duty to the weakest is permanent, the role of “the weakest” is not an existential matter independent of time and space but, rather, a contingent situation, continually subject to change. By contrast, there is a dangerous rigidity to be found in the idea that concern for the dreadful situation of the hostages is somehow in opposition to, or incompatible with, the demand for a ceasefire. Surely a ceasefire—as well as being an ethical necessity—is also in the immediate absolute interest of the hostages, a fact that cannot be erased by tearing their posters off walls.

Part of the significance of a student protest is the ways in which it gives young people the opportunity to insist upon an ethical principle while still being, comparatively speaking, a more rational force than the supposed adults in the room, against whose crazed magical thinking they have been forced to define themselves. The equality of all human life was never a self-evident truth in racially segregated America. There was no way to “win” in Vietnam. Hamas will not be “eliminated.” The more than seven million Jewish human beings who live in the gap between the river and the sea will not simply vanish because you think that they should. All of that is just rhetoric. Words. Cathartic to chant, perhaps, but essentially meaningless. A ceasefire, meanwhile, is both a potential reality and an ethical necessity. The monstrous and brutal mass murder of more than eleven hundred people, the majority of them civilians, dozens of them children, on October 7th, has been followed by the monstrous and brutal mass murder (at the time of writing) of a reported fourteen thousand five hundred children. And many more human beings besides, but it’s impossible not to notice that the sort of people who take at face value phrases like “surgical strikes” and “controlled military operation” sometimes need to look at and/or think about dead children specifically in order to refocus their minds on reality.

To send the police in to arrest young people peacefully insisting upon a ceasefire represents a moral injury to us all. To do it with violence is a scandal. How could they do less than protest, in this moment? They are putting their own bodies into the machine. They deserve our support and praise. As to which postwar political arrangement any of these students may favor, and on what basis they favor it—that is all an argument for the day after a ceasefire. One state, two states, river to the sea—in my view, their views have no real weight in this particular moment, or very little weight next to the significance of their collective action, which (if I understand it correctly) is focussed on stopping the flow of money that is funding bloody murder, and calling for a ceasefire, the political euphemism that we use to mark the end of bloody murder. After a ceasefire, the criminal events of the past seven months should be tried and judged, and the infinitely difficult business of creating just, humane, and habitable political structures in the region must begin anew. Right now: ceasefire. And, as we make this demand, we might remind ourselves that a ceasefire is not, primarily, a political demand. Primarily, it is an ethical one.

But it is in the nature of the political that we cannot even attend to such ethical imperatives unless we first know the political position of whoever is speaking. (“Where do you stand on Israel/Palestine?”) In these constructed narratives, there are always a series of shibboleths, that is, phrases that can’t be said, or, conversely, phrases that must be said. Once these words or phrases have been spoken ( river to the sea, existential threat, right to defend, one state, two states, Zionist, colonialist, imperialist, terrorist ) and one’s positionality established, then and only then will the ethics of the question be attended to (or absolutely ignored). The objection may be raised at this point that I am behaving like a novelist, expressing a philosophy without a politics, or making some rarefied point about language and rhetoric while people commit bloody murder. This would normally be my own view, but, in the case of Israel/Palestine, language and rhetoric are and always have been weapons of mass destruction.

It is in fact perhaps the most acute example in the world of the use of words to justify bloody murder, to flatten and erase unbelievably labyrinthine histories, and to deliver the atavistic pleasure of violent simplicity to the many people who seem to believe that merely by saying something they make it so. It is no doubt a great relief to say the word “Hamas” as if it purely and solely described a terrorist entity. A great relief to say “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people” as they stand in front of you. A great relief to say “Zionist colonialist state” and accept those three words as a full and unimpeachable definition of the state of Israel, not only under the disastrous leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu but at every stage of its long and complex history, and also to hear them as a perfectly sufficient description of every man, woman, and child who has ever lived in Israel or happened to find themselves born within it. It is perhaps because we know these simplifications to be impossible that we insist upon them so passionately. They are shibboleths; they describe a people, by defining them against other people—but the people being described are ourselves. The person who says “We must eliminate Hamas” says this not necessarily because she thinks this is a possible outcome on this earth but because this sentence is the shibboleth that marks her membership in the community that says that. The person who uses the word “Zionist” as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as it meant in 1890 or 1901 or 1920—that person does not so much bring definitive clarity to the entangled history of Jews and Palestinians as they successfully and soothingly draw a line to mark their own zone of interest and where it ends. And while we all talk, carefully curating our shibboleths, presenting them to others and waiting for them to reveal themselves as with us or against us—while we do all that, bloody murder.

And now here we are, almost at the end of this little stream of words. We’ve arrived at the point at which I must state clearly “where I stand on the issue,” that is, which particular political settlement should, in my own, personal view, occur on the other side of a ceasefire. This is the point wherein—by my stating of a position—you are at once liberated into the simple pleasure of placing me firmly on one side or the other, putting me over there with those who lisp or those who don’t, with the Ephraimites, or with the people of Gilead. Yes, this is the point at which I stake my rhetorical flag in that fantastical, linguistical, conceptual, unreal place—built with words—where rapes are minimized as needs be, and the definition of genocide quibbled over, where the killing of babies is denied, and the precision of drones glorified, where histories are reconsidered or rewritten or analogized or simply ignored, and “Jew” and “colonialist” are synonymous, and “Palestinian” and “terrorist” are synonymous, and language is your accomplice and alibi in all of it. Language euphemized, instrumentalized, and abused, put to work for your cause and only for your cause, so that it does exactly and only what you want it to do. Let me make it easy for you. Put me wherever you want: misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward. It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay. The only thing that has any weight in this particular essay is the dead. ♦

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Conflict Management: Styles, Strategies, and Their Effect Essay

Conflicts are an inevitable and, more importantly, an integral part of communication. As unpleasant as they are, these experiences in communication are still crucial to leaning the art of compromising, coming to terms and proving one’s point. Therefore, it is essential for both individuals and organizations to be able to approach a conflict from the right angle and find a viable solution to the problem, trying to satisfy all the stakeholders involved.

Identifying the key theoretical frameworks for the conflict management process, one must give credit to Marx’s concept of the Social Conflict Theory (Shakib, 2010). Outlining the key tensions between the ruling class and the inferior ones, Marx explained that the Capitalist environment creates the premises for a social clash. More to the point, Marx states explicitly that the given structure of society presupposes negligence towards the needs of the inferior class and, therefore, creates the factors leading to a major conflict.

Though doubtlessly profound and significant, Marx’s theory seems to have aged impressively and needs to be updated. As a result, a range of alternative theories have appeared over the past few decades. The key ones include the Feminist Theory, the Race-Conflict Approach, the Critical theory, the Post-Modern theory, etc. It should be noted, though, that, with all due respect to the specified theories, each of them focuses on a particular source of a conflict, therefore, narrowing the research field down to a specific type of demographics (Shakib, 2010).

Mapping the conflict is an efficient way of analyzing the key factors affecting the problem, as well as identifying the key approaches towards generating a solution. More importantly, a map can be viewed as a tool for identifying the factors that have caused the problem and, therefore, helping define the strategy that will lead to eliminating the root cause and, thus, solving the issue.

A closer look at the phenomenon in question will reveal that a conflict map works as a method of arranging the facts related to a particular problem in a specific order so that the links between these facts could become obvious and the roles of the parties involved in the conflict could be defined. As soon as the cause of the conflict is identified, a viable solution based on the map created is designed.

However, mapping the conflict can only be viewed as a method of defining the strategy for addressing the concern. As far as the approaches towards conflict management (CM) are concerned, five key methods of handling a specific issue are traditionally identified. As a rule, the CM styles mentioned above are viewed in the context of two key dimensions, i.e., assertiveness and cooperativeness (Mesko, Lang, Andrea, Szijjarto & Bereczkei, 2014); while four of the strategies to be specified below are the obvious extremes, the fifth one is the “golden mean.”

Avoiding, as one may guess easily, presupposes that the premises for possible conflicts should be detected and removed immediately; competing presupposes that the parties should pursue their own goals without the regard for the others’ needs and demands; accommodation, on the other hand, requires that the opponent should feel as comfortable as possible in the course of the discussion; compromising means locating the solution, which will be beneficial or, at the very least, neutral in its effect to all those involved; finally, collaboration demands that the parties involved should work together on identifying the possible solution and solving the emerging issues.

As hard and nearly impossible as the latter seems, it is often posed as the most reasonable approach to be undertaken, since it leads to a win-win situation for all those concerned and, therefore, an outstandingly positive effect on the relationships between the has-been opponents (Mesko, Lang, Andrea, Szijjarto & Bereczkei, 2014).

As far as the desirable conflict management strategies are concerned, it is traditionally suggested to use a mixed approach based on the specifics of the negotiation process, the characteristics of my opponent, and the required outcomes. As a rule, the approach based on cooperativeness is adopted; however, in order to pursue the interests of the company, a compromising approach is often utilised as well. Basically, the choice of the strategy depends on the key stakeholders involved; therefore, depending on whether collaboration with the opponents or the parties involved in the negotiation process is in the perspective, the choice of the strategy used for the conflict solving process may vary from the most assertive to the least assertive.

In addition, it should be born in mind that a conflict cannot be viewed outside of its context in general and the cultural environment in particular. For example, even though the competitive approach as a method of problem solving is infamous for triggering major problems, it is still viewed as a rather adequate method in the instances when time is of essence (Cingöz-Ulu & Lalonde, 2009). Likewise, when handling a particular misconception within a specific cultural setting, one must choose the conflict management strategy, which complies with the requirements of the setting in question.

For instance, in the low context communication styles, the approach presupposing a direct confrontation, i.e., competing, traditionally works well in the low-context communication processes (Cingöz-Ulu & Lalonde, 2009, p. 447). The same can be said about the negotiation process carried out in the intercultural environment (Cingöz-Ulu & Lalonde, 2009). The latter, in fact, seems to have become quite an issue over the past few years due to the globalization process; with the necessity for a range of companies to go global and to expand into the world market, the need for managing intercultural conflicts has emerged (Dreher, Gassebner & Siemens, 2010).

Hence, the process of globalism allowed for stretching the conflict theory to the point where it can be tailored to meeting the needs of a particular type of demographics, i.e., women, national and ethnic minorities, etc. (Olzak, 2011). On the one hand, the opportunities for reaching out for the social groups, which have been either neglected or oppressed for quite long, is a major step forward in identifying new methods and tools for communication and negotiation. On the other hand, the focus on specific scenarios may be seen as a retreat from the classic theory and, therefore, the refusal from creating an all-embracing approach, which could help explore the concept of a conflict as a phenomenon (Tindal, 2011).

Being a part and parcel of communication, conflicts must be approached from a rational perspective. In order to handle conflicts efficiently, one must bear in mind the key strategies of addressing interpersonal conflicts, therefore, developing their own unique approach towards conflict management. Once learning to confront the problem instead of avoiding it, one will be able to draw important lessons even from the experiences related to disagreement and conflicting situations, therefore, acquiring the basic diplomatic skills.

Reference List

Cingöz-Ulu, B. & Lalonde, R. N., 2009. The role of culture and relational context in interpersonal conflict: do Turks and Canadians use different conflict management strategies? International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 31: 443–458.

Dreher, A., Gassebner, M. & Siemens, L. H.-R. 2010, Globalization, economic freedom and human rights, Econstor, 115: 2–59.

Mesko, N., Lang, A., Andrea, C., Szijjarto, L. & Bereczkei, T. 2014. Compete and compromise: Machiavellianism and conflict resolution. Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, 19(1): 14–18.

Olzak, S., 2011. Does globalization breed ethnic discontent? Journal of Conflict Resolution, 00: 1–30.

Shakib, M. K., 2010. Marxist feminism and postmodernism. Journal of Language and Culture, 1(3): 28–34.

Tindal, L. S., 2011. Conflict resolution: cultural understanding imperative. The Journal of Value Based Leadership, 4(2): para. 1–24. Web.

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South Sudan mediation talks launched in Kenya with a hope of ending conflict

South Sudanese president Salva Kiir Mayardit, left, shakes hands with Pagan Amum Okiech, leader of the Real-SPLM group, during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Kenyan President William Ruto gives an address during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Africa heads of States and delegations, pose for a photo during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Kenya’s President William Ruto, centre, shakes hands with South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit after addressing the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Kenyan President William Ruto gives an address during the launch of high-level mediation talks for South Sudan at State House, in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, left, shakes hands with Pagan Amum Okiech, leader of the Real-SPLM group, during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Pagan Amum Okiech, leader of the Real SPLM, walks after addressing the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, smiles as he walks to the podium to address the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit, left, shakes hands with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched Thursday in Kenya with African presidents calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country’s economy for years.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir thanked his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto , for hosting the talks and said that his government would negotiate in good faith and with an open mind.

“We hope that the opposition groups have a similar conviction and desire for peace in South Sudan, which, when fully achieved, will bring everlasting stability and economic development in the region, not just South Sudan,” he said.

The talks are between the government and rebel opposition groups that were not part of an 2018 agreement that ended a five-year civil war that left 400,000 people dead.

Ruto reiterated Thursday the need for inclusive and home-grown solutions to African issues.

“This initiative exemplifies the Pan-African policy of African solutions to African challenges, contributing to the ‘Silencing the Guns in Africa’ initiative and fostering an environment for transformational development in South Sudan, our region, and the entire African continent,” he said.

Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera, Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema, Namibia’s Nangolo Mbumba, and Central African Republic’s Faustin-Archange Touadera also attended the launch that took place after an African Union agricultural summit earlier in the day.

U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer welcomed the talks.

“The United States applauds Kenya’s commitment to regional stability and support for peace in South Sudan,” the U.S. Embassy in Kenya wrote on X, after the launch.

The chief mediator in the South Sudan peace process, Lazarus Sumbeiywo, exuded confidence that the talks would resolve the outstanding issues.

“After this launch, we plan to engage in sustained and continuous mediation to ensure a speedy and comprehensive resolution of the issues, so long as the parties go along with the plan,” he said.

South Sudan remains fragile despite the 2018 peace agreement, which is yet to be fully implemented. The country is expected to hold elections in December but key issues including a unified security force are yet to be resolved. The opposition has been calling for a speedy implementation of the agreement to pave the way for free and fair elections.

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Guest Essay

The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism

An illustration of a scene of mayhem with men in Colonial-era clothing fighting in a small room.

By Steven Hahn

Dr. Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of “Illiberal America: a History.”

In a recent interview with Time, Donald Trump promised a second term of authoritarian power grabs, administrative cronyism, mass deportations of the undocumented, harassment of women over abortion, trade wars and vengeance brought upon his rivals and enemies, including President Biden. “If they said that a president doesn’t get immunity,” Mr. Trump told Time, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.”

Further evidence, it seems, of Mr. Trump’s efforts to construct a political world like no other in American history. But how unprecedented is it, really? That Mr. Trump continues to lead in polls should make plain that he and his MAGA movement are more than noxious weeds in otherwise liberal democratic soil.

Many of us have not wanted to see it that way. “This is not who we are as a nation,” one journalist exclaimed in what was a common response to the violence on Jan. 6, “and we must not let ourselves or others believe otherwise.” Mr. Biden has said much the same thing.

While it’s true that Mr. Trump was the first president to lose an election and attempt to stay in power, observers have come to recognize the need for a lengthier view of Trumpism. Even so, they are prone to imagining that there was a time not all that long ago when political “normalcy” prevailed. What they have failed to grasp is that American illiberalism is deeply rooted in our past and fed by practices, relationships and sensibilities that have been close to the surface, even when they haven’t exploded into view.

Illiberalism is generally seen as a backlash against modern liberal and progressive ideas and policies, especially those meant to protect the rights and advance the aspirations of groups long pushed to the margins of American political life. But in the United States, illiberalism is better understood as coherent sets of ideas that are related but also change over time.

This illiberalism celebrates hierarchies of gender, race and nationality; cultural homogeneity; Christian religious faith; the marking of internal as well as external enemies; patriarchal families; heterosexuality; the will of the community over the rule of law; and the use of political violence to achieve or maintain power. This illiberalism sank roots from the time of European settlement and spread out from villages and towns to the highest levels of government. In one form or another, it has shaped much of our history. Illiberalism has frequently been a stalking horse, if not in the winner’s circle. Hardly ever has it been roundly defeated.

A few examples may be illustrative. Although European colonization of North America has often been imagined as a sharp break from the ways of home countries, neo-feudal dreams inspired the making of Euro-American societies from the Carolinas up through the Hudson Valley, based as they were on landed estates and coerced labor, while the Puritan towns of New England, with their own hierarchies, demanded submission to the faith and harshly policed their members and potential intruders alike. The backcountry began to fill up with land-hungry settlers who generally formed ethnicity-based enclaves, eyed outsiders with suspicion and, with rare exceptions, hoped to rid their territory of Native peoples. Most of those who arrived in North America between the early 17th century and the time of the American Revolution were either enslaved or in servitude, and master-servant jurisprudence shaped labor relations well after slavery was abolished, a phenomenon that has been described as “belated feudalism.”

The anti-colonialism of the American Revolution was accompanied not only by warfare against Native peoples and rewards for enslavers, but also by a deeply ingrained anti-Catholicism, and hostility to Catholics remained a potent political force well into the 20th century. Monarchist solutions were bruited about during the writing of the Constitution and the first decade of the American Republic: John Adams thought that the country would move in such a direction and other leaders at the time, including Washington, Madison and Hamilton, wondered privately if a king would be necessary in the event a “republican remedy” failed.

The 1830s, commonly seen as the height of Jacksonian democracy, were racked by violent expulsions of Catholics , Mormons and abolitionists of both races, along with thousands of Native peoples dispossessed of their homelands and sent to “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi.

The new democratic politics of the time was often marked by Election Day violence after campaigns suffused with military cadences, while elected officials usually required the support of elite patrons to guarantee the bonds they had to post. Even in state legislatures and Congress, weapons could be brandished and duels arranged; “bullies” enforced the wills of their allies.

When enslavers in the Southern states resorted to secession rather than risk their system under a Lincoln administration, they made clear that their Confederacy was built on the cornerstone of slavery and white supremacy. And although their crushing defeat brought abolition, the establishment of birthright citizenship (except for Native peoples), the political exclusion of Confederates, and the extension of voting rights to Black men — the results of one of the world’s great revolutions — it was not long before the revolution went into reverse.

The federal government soon allowed former Confederates and their white supporters to return to power, destroy Black political activism and, accompanied by lynchings (expressing the “will” of white communities), build the edifice of Jim Crow: segregation, political disfranchisement and a harsh labor regime. Already previewed in the pre-Civil War North, Jim Crow received the imprimatur of the Supreme Court and the administration of Woodrow Wilson .

Few Progressives of the early 20th century had much trouble with this. Segregation seemed a modern way to choreograph “race relations,” and disfranchisement resonated with their disenchantment with popular politics, whether it was powered by Black voters in the South or European immigrants in the North. Many Progressives were devotees of eugenics and other forms of social engineering, and they generally favored overseas imperialism; some began to envision the scaffolding of a corporate state — all anticipating the dark turns in Europe over the next decades.

The 1920s, in fact, saw fascist pulses coming from a number of directions in the United States and, as in Europe, targeting political radicals. Benito Mussolini won accolades in many American quarters. The lab where Josef Mengele worked received support from the Rockefeller Foundation. White Protestant fundamentalism reigned in towns and the countryside. And the Immigration Act of 1924 set limits on the number of newcomers, especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were thought to be politically and culturally unassimilable.

Most worrisome, the Ku Klux Klan, energized by anti-Catholicism and antisemitism as well as anti-Black racism, marched brazenly in cities great and small. The Klan became a mass movement and wielded significant political power; it was crucial, for example , to the enforcement of Prohibition. Once the organization unraveled in the late 1920s, many Klansmen and women found their way to new fascist groups and the radical right more generally.

Sidelined by the Great Depression and New Deal, the illiberal right regained traction in the late 1930s, and during the 1950s won grass-roots support through vehement anti-Communism and opposition to the civil rights movement. As early as 1964, in a run for the Democratic presidential nomination, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama began to hone a rhetoric of white grievance and racial hostility that had appeal in the Midwest and Middle Atlantic, and Barry Goldwater’s campaign that year, despite its failure, put winds in the sails of the John Birch Society and Young Americans for Freedom.

Four years later, Wallace mobilized enough support as a third-party candidate to win five states. And in 1972, once again as a Democrat, Wallace racked up primary wins in both the North and the South before an assassination attempt forced him out of the race. Growing backlashes against school desegregation and feminism added further fuel to the fire on the right, paving the way for the conservative ascendancy of the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, the neo-Nazi and Klansman David Duke had won a seat in the Louisiana Legislature and nearly three-fifths of the white vote in campaigns for governor and senator. Pat Buchanan, seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1992, called for “America First,” the fortification of the border (a “Buchanan fence”), and a culture war for the “soul” of America, while the National Rifle Association became a powerful force on the right and in the Republican Party.

When Mr. Trump questioned Barack Obama’s legitimacy to serve as president, a project that quickly became known as “birtherism,” he made use of a Reconstruction-era racist trope that rejected the legitimacy of Black political rights and power. In so doing, Mr. Trump began to cement a coalition of aggrieved white voters. They were ready to push back against the nation’s growing cultural diversity — embodied by Mr. Obama — and the challenges they saw to traditional hierarchies of family, gender and race. They had much on which to build.

Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Democracy in America,” glimpsed the illiberal currents that already entangled the country’s politics. While he marveled at the “equality of conditions,” the fluidity of social life and the strength of republican institutions, he also worried about the “omnipotence of the majority.”

“What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there,” Tocqueville wrote, “but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.” He pointed to communities “taking justice into their own hands,” and warned that “associations of plain citizens can compose very rich, influential, and powerful bodies, in other words, aristocratic bodies.” Lamenting their intellectual conformity, Tocqueville believed that if Americans ever gave up republican government, “they will pass rapidly on to despotism,” restricting “the sphere of political rights, taking some of them away in order to entrust them to a single man.”

The slide toward despotism that Tocqueville feared may be well underway, whatever the election’s outcome. Even if they try to fool themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump won’t follow through, millions of voters seem ready to entrust their rights to “a single man” who has announced his intent to use autocratic powers for retribution, repression, expulsion and misogyny.

Only by recognizing what we’re up against can we mount an effective campaign to protect our democracy, leaning on the important political struggles — abolitionism, antimonopoly, social democracy, human rights, civil rights, feminism — that have challenged illiberalism in the past and offer the vision and political pathways to guide us in the future.

Our biggest mistake would be to believe that we’re watching an exceptional departure in the country’s history. Because from the first, Mr. Trump has tapped into deep and ever-expanding illiberal roots. Illiberalism’s history is America’s history.

Steven Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of “ Illiberal America: a History .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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In this essay, write about historical and current conflicts and explain their origins. Then, examine the efforts made by past and present governments to resolve these disputes, including the positive or negative impacts of these conflicts on the world at large. 4. Karl Marx's Theory of Conflict.
Mastering The Collaborating Conflict Style In 2024 [Easy Guide]
The collaborating conflict style is a powerful approach to conflict resolution built on cooperation, open communication, and finding win-win outcomes. This conflict style aims to: Preserve relationships. Build trust. Promote long-term positive change. At its core, collaborative conflict resolution is about going beyond surface-level compromises ...
Culture and Conflict
By Michelle LeBaron July 2003 Culture is an essential part of conflict and conflict resolution. Cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgments, and ideas of self and other. Though cultures are powerful, they are often unconscious, influencing conflict and attempts to resolve conflict in ...
How to Write an Essay on Conflict
Start Writing. Once you've found your examples and written your thesis, write your first draft. Remember to start your essay with a "hook" - a question, a quote, or a statistic, for example that will introduce the conflict you'll be analyzing. Start each body paragraph with a topic sentence that states a main point, and then support ...
Compromising Conflict Management Style, Explained
In a compromise, each party gives up some of what they want in order to move forward. Everyone handles conflict differently. As conflict management skills go, the compromising conflict style works well when there are two equally formidable parties willing to make concessions in the interest of maintaining a good working relationship. The ...
Conflict Styles
As a result, it can easily annoy the other side (or worse), damaging the relationship. Avoiding may make sense if the conflict is silly and inconsequential and if it will be solved by simply waiting. But if the conflict involves something that matters, avoidance can cause real problems. Feelings get pent up, the conflict simmers along until it ...
Essays About Conflict in Life: Top 5 Examples and Prompts
There are several types of conflict that a person experiences throughout their life. First, discuss simple conflicts you observe around you. For example, the cashier misunderstands an order, your mom forgets to buy groceries, or you have clashing class schedules. 3. Review On Movies Or Books About Conflicts.
How to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace Essay
From the Thomas-Kilmann model for conflict management, the techniques involve avoiding, challenging, teamwork, negotiation, and accommodation. In the context of the Gramberg (2005), arbitration, reconciliation, and mediation can suffice as solutions to workplace conflicts.
Conflict Style, Essay Example
The five conflict styles involve compromising, accommodating, collaborating, Competing and avoiding. Compromising is the conflict styles that best describe my preferred style because it is marked by the willingness to come to an agreement through making superficial concessions and bargaining. The reason why I give first priority to compromising ...
PDF 10.2 C ONFLICT STYLE QUESTIONNAIRE
1. To identify your conflict style 2. To examine how your conflict style varies in different contexts or relationships Directions 1. Think of two different situations (A and B) where you have a conflict, a disagreement, an argument, or a dis-appointment with someone, such as a roommate or a work associate. Write the name of the person for each
Avoiding Conflict Management Style: Pros, Cons, Examples
Share: When you refuse to deal with a conflict, you are employing the avoiding conflict management style. It's not always an effective strategy, but in certain situations you may feel you have no choice. The avoiding conflict style is one of five styles of conflict management: Accommodating style. Collaborative style. Compromising style.
Essay about Personal Conflict
Essay about Personal Conflict. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. According to Hocker & Wilmot conflict is an "expressed struggle" between at least two "interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and ...
Collaborating Conflict Management Style, Explained
The collaborating conflict management style is an excellent tool for helping resolve conflicts in the workplace amicably while ensuring your project gets done. It takes time while you listen to all parties involved, but the payback is huge since every party emerges from the conflict satisfied. The four other conflict management styles are:
War in Gaza, Shibboleths on Campus
In the campus protests over the war in Gaza, language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction. By Zadie Smith. May 5, 2024 ...
Echoes Across Borders: Macroeconomic Spillover Effects of Conflict in
This paper quantifies the macroeconomic spillover effects of conflict within sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using a new Conflict Spillover Index (CSI), which accounts for conflict intensity and distance from conflict-affected countries. Our findings reveal an escalation in conflict spillovers across SSA since 2011, marked by considerable cross-country heterogeneity.
Conflict Management: Styles, Strategies, and Their Effect Essay
As far as the approaches towards conflict management (CM) are concerned, five key methods of handling a specific issue are traditionally identified. As a rule, the CM styles mentioned above are viewed in the context of two key dimensions, i.e., assertiveness and cooperativeness (Mesko, Lang, Andrea, Szijjarto & Bereczkei, 2014); while four of ...
Opinion
To the Editor: I write this as I mark Israeli Independence Day in the changed landscape of my neighborhood. Across the street: the home of a soldier killed in Gaza. Up the block: those of three ...
South Sudan mediation talks launched in Kenya with a hope of ending
2 of 9 |. Kenyan President William Ruto gives an address during the launch of high-level peace talks for South Sudan at State House in Nairobi, Kenya, on Thursday, May 9, 2024. High-level mediation talks on South Sudan were launched in Kenya with African presidents in attendance calling for an end to a conflict that has crippled the country's ...
NeurIPS 2024 Call for Papers
Call For Papers. Abstract submission deadline: May 15, 2024. Full paper submission deadline, including technical appendices and supplemental material (all authors must have an OpenReview profile when submitting): May 22, 2024 01:00 PM PDT or. Author notification: Sep 25, 2024. Camera-ready, poster, and video submission: Oct 30, 2024 AOE.
Opinion
434. By Steven Hahn. Dr. Hahn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University and the author, most recently, of "Illiberal America: a History.". In a recent interview with Time ...
5 ChatGPT Prompts To Reveal Your Leadership Style (Inspire ...
Share to Linkedin. 5 ChatGPT prompts to reveal your leadership style (inspire your team) getty. You own your company but your team does not. So it makes sense that their levels of motivation are ...