Relationships Between Communication and Conflict
Early scholars implied, but did not explicitly recommend, altering the ways in which theorists conceived of the communicationconflict relationship. This review revealed four types of relationships that surfaced in the literature—communication (1) as a variable, (2) as a process, (3) as interpretive, and (4) as a dialectical pattern.
In the variable approach, communication and conflict emerged as separate constructs, with conflict acting as a structural variable to shape communication or with communication serving as a structural or an interaction variable that influenced conflict. For example, studies that examined how conflict orientations affected the choice of communication strategies illustrated how conflict served as a structural variable that impinged on interaction. Conversely, research on the ways in which different media influenced negotiated settlements cast communication as a structural variable that shaped conflict outcomes. Studies that examined how types of messages influenced conflict outcomes treated communication as an interaction variable. In each of these approaches, communication and conflict surfaced as discrete variables that impinged on each other in different ways.In the process approach, communication produced conflict through the ways that sequences and phases of interaction determined the direction that conflict took. Patterns of action-reaction formed rhythms that became predictable over time and could influence the formation of conflict spirals. Studies of phases and stages of interaction also showed how particular communication patterns resulted in no-agreement sessions. Also, issue development scholars examined how negotiators shifted levels of abstraction during interactions to reframe issues, bridge differences, and alter conflict definitions.
Interpretive approaches nested the relationship between communication and conflict in jointly constructed meanings.
In this way, communication and conflict were codeveloped; that is, communication constituted conflict that in turn shaped language patterns, symbolic meanings, and negotiated orders. For example, verbal immediacy patterns in hostage negotiations formed relationships that, in turn, altered conflict interactions. In the negotiated order perspective, communication functioned as both a microprocess and a way of altering the social context through changing the rules and resources that, in turn, redefined the conflict and its outcomes.In a similar way, some researchers cast communication and conflict in a dialectical relationship—one that treated the two concepts as not only jointly constituted but also reflecting back on each other. Thus, the relationship between communication and conflict became defined through oppositional tensions that evolved from the continuous interface between conflict and communication. These dialectics infused conflict relationships in mediation, organizational conflicts, and hostage negotiations through tensions between autonomy and connectedness and high and low affiliation that both enabled and constrained the disputants and the conflict process.
Overall, communication is not simply one additional variable in conflict research. Current studies reveal sophisticated approaches to exploring alternative relationships between the two constructs, their codevelopment over time, and the ways in which both concepts shape contexts and outcomes. Context, then, plays a critical role in thinking about the needs for future research.
More on the topic Relationships Between Communication and Conflict:
- Oetzel John, Ting-Toomey Stella. The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication: Integrating Theory, Research and Practice. SAGE Publications,2013. — 912 p., 2013
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