IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING AND PRACTICE
We suggest that rather than being taught separately, in different training programs, problem-solving and decision-making approaches to cooperative conflict resolution should be taught together in integrated fashion.
In the previous section, we have made an argument for considering the conflict resolution process in roughly four phases, incorporating problem solving and decision making throughout. We also recommend the development of training programs and intervention designs that approach the process in the same way. In this section, we briefly highlight a few factors that should be part of such efforts.Conditions That Encourage Problem Solving
Training in problem-solving approaches should include information about the conditions that are likely to lead to parties’ willingness to engage in problem solving. We know for example, that a psychological climate characterized by cohesion, fairness, recognition of success, and openness to innovation encourages people to choose problem-solving and persuasion strategies, and less likely to engage in bargaining and politicking (Strutton, Pelton, and Lumpkin, 1993). Training for mediators, designs for organizational alternative dispute resolution (ADR) programs, and conflict resolution programs for high schools, to name a few, could all make use of this information.
In addition, encouraging problem solving through cultivating concern for the other can be important (for example, Carnevale and Pruitt, 1992; Pruitt and Kim, 2004). One common approach is to engage parties in perspective taking to help them see the other’s concerns as legitimate. Our work on social perspective coordination (Weitzman and Weitzman, 2000) suggests not only that people must learn to take the perspective of the other but also that attention must be paid to translating perspective-taking ability into the choice of conflict resolution strategy.
(See Chapters One and Three for more on the conditions that encourage conflict resolution.)Although working to improve conditions that encourage problem solving is important, it is also essential to provide people with the tools to do it well. Trainings and intervention plans should include the sorts of specific problemsolving techniques referred to earlier, such as expanding the pie, logrolling, nonspecific compensation, and bridging. Further, a consideration of some of the issues raised here can lead to novel approaches to intervention. To take an example from our practice, we were recently asked to mediate a community dispute in which there were known to be many “sides” with different perspectives. A consideration of the concern discussed as a critique, that people may not agree on a definition of the problem in the first place and that this alone can undermine conflict resolution efforts, led to an approach based on the very issue of problem definition. A group of about thirty community members were asked to begin the “mediation” session by engaging in brainstorming definitions of “the problem” they were facing. As the session proceeded, the group gradually worked toward a mutually agreed definition of the problem. By the time the group reached agreement on a definition of the problem, the solution was close to obvious and was easily agreed to.
Teaching the Lessons from the Decision-Making Literature
The information from the aforementioned decision-making literature that would be particularly helpful if built into conflict resolution training includes the concepts of anchors, frames, and reference points. Kahneman (1992) suggests what he calls the Lewinian prescription, based on the concept of loss aversion: concessions that eliminate losses are more effective than concessions that improve on existing gains. Mediators as well as negotiators could learn to look for these opportunities.
Earlier, we presented selected information about the decision-making phenomena that help explain and predict disputant behavior.
Such information is often incorporated into negotiation training aimed at “winning” in competitive negotiations, but it seems, at least anecdotally, much less often to be a part of mediation training. Yet understanding issues such as the impact of stress, power imbalance, disclosure of information, egocentric interpretations of fairness, and preferences for relative outcomes, as well as the role of issues of risk taking and the factors that influence risk-taking propensity, would seem to be of enormous value for mediators.One more approach from the decision-making literature needs introduction here. Building on the sort of literature described earlier, Brett argues for “transforming conflict in organizational groups into high quality group decisions” (1991, p. 291) and prescribes techniques for doing so. Her approach is based in the assumption that by harnessing negotiation and decision theory, one can bring conflict to a constructive outcome through a decision-making approach. Her prescriptions include:
• Criteria for determining if a high-quality decision has been reached
• Guidelines for improving the decision-making process
• Methods for integrating differing points of view
• Tactics for creating mutual gain, coalition gain, and individual gain
• Choosing decision rules that maximize integration of information
• Guidelines about when to use mutual gain, individual gain, and coalition gain approaches
This approach offers concrete, structured advice, based solidly in the research literature, for applying decision-making techniques to resolving group conflict. These techniques can be helpful at many of the decision-making moments identified in the PSDM model.
In a similar vein, Janis and Mann’s approach (1977) suggests that parties sit down together and analyze their conflict as a difficult decision. Their book offers devices such as the decisional balance sheet, a form for listing choice criteria (the things that matter to each party), assigning numerical values and valences (+ or -) to each, and manipulating the results.
In this approach, disputants sit down together with a decisional balance sheet, carefully consider their own and the other’s concerns, and look for a solution that maximizes each side’s benefit and minimizes cost. With reference to the PSDM model presented here, such techniques might be helpful either at the stage of generating alternatives or at the stage of choosing among alternatives; in fact, it bridges the two.Approaches such as those of Brett (1991) and Janis and Mann (1977) represent formalized, detailed technologies that can and should be taught more widely than they currently are. Though we have criticized some underlying assumptions of some of these approaches (questioning, for example, the common currency assumptions in the Janis and Mann approach), they remain tools that can be of great value if applied appropriately and as tools integrated into a problem-solving and decision-making approach. Our training programs would benefit from offering students more in the way of such concrete, specified techniques for incorporation into their toolkits.