283). Essentially, interests-based strategies are used in outcomes in which one desires either fairness of organization effectiveness, for the simple fact that this stratagem frequently requires the use of third-party intervention. In most instances, that third party will merely assist in facilitating the resolving of such a conflict by speaking to each disputant and helping them to solve the conflict for themselves. The third-party's role is strictly supplementary, unless it chooses to combine this particular strategy with a power-based one. Those who can intervene as a third party include either supervisors or other organization members, which usually attempt to do so on a fairly informal basis. Disputants can also employ this strategy without a third party by engaging in "positional negotiating" (Schachar, 2001, p. 23) with one another.
The more effective of these strategies, however, appears to be the power-based approach for settling conflicts within an organization. There are a number of aspects of this strategy that implies that it is the most efficacious, such as the fact that when there is a hybridization of this technique and the interests-based one, it is the power-based strategy that ultimately decides the outcome of the conflict. There are even some forms of interests-based strategy, such as mediation, in which a form of "power mediation" (Jameson, 1999, p. 286) is used, emphasizing the dominance and the effectiveness of using power-based strategies.
Power-based strategies generally...
This can be done in a unilateral manner, which may leave a feeling of inequity in one of the disputants (TUI University, slide 6). This sort of exercise of power, after all, is the point in having a hierarchy, which most organizations readily have in place. The particular form of exercising this power, however, is another benefit of using this strategy which emphasizes the fact that it is the best form of conflict resolution. Authority figures within an organization may choose to simply settle a dispute or, even more demonstrative of their power, may alter the very structure of the organization to remove the conflict altogether.
This sort of flexibility and exercise of authority is not just reserved for managers. There is also the notion that power resides with numbers, a fact that is evinced in decisions determined by voting. Other examples of power-based strategies in which the power ultimately resides with the masses, regardless of how little individual authority organization members may have, include picketing.
References
Shachar, M. (2011). Conflict Resolution Management Textbook.
TUI University. "Foundations of conflict resolution." NCM 501. Module 3.
Jameson, J.K. (1999). "Toward a comprehensive model for the assessment and management of intra-organizational conflict: Developing the framework." International Journal of Conflict…
