Conflict Resolution the Desired Outcomes

Conflict Resolution

The desired outcomes of disputants in conflicts include (but are not limited to): fairness, efficiency, effectiveness, and participant satisfaction.

Conflict resolution strategies are highly dependent on the leadership and conflict arbitration styles of managers and leaders (Jameson, 1999). Modeling and taxonomies of conflict resolution continue to evolve in an effort to explain conflict characteristics, disputant characteristics, and characteristics of conflict settings (Kirca, 2006). The majority of these models take into account the optimization of fairness, efficiency, effectiveness and participant satisfaction (Jameson, 1999). Managers move towards or away from conflict, often correlating to their transformational vs. transactional leadership skill sets, Emotional Intelligence (EI) including their use of coordinating vs. controlling leadership strategies (Kirca, 2006). All of these factors are taken into account when the fairness, efficiency, effectiveness and participant satisfaction are taken into account in a conflict resolution framework (Guy, 1986).

Leaders who have a high level of EI and have transformational skill sets can mediate conflicts more effectively, creating a balance between the four factors of fairness, efficiency, effectiveness and participant satisfaction (Strutton, Knouse, 1997). The study of factors that contribute to the most effective conflict management and arbitration taxonomies are often predicated on leadership skills that can create shared meaning in conflict-based conditions, giving each disputant the opportunity to find shared trust and empathy through the arbitration process (Kirca, 2006). The reliance on frameworks for taking these inherently unquantifiable factors and putting them into a context of meaning has significant value across an enterprise, as they can be used for the basis of creating an effective training and ongoing conflict management programs over the long-term as well (Strutton, Knouse, 1997).

Please elaborate on the importance of: fairness, effectiveness, and participant satisfaction.

The important of fairness, effectiveness and participant satisfaction are directly correlated to the long-term resolution of both simple and complex conflicts and the long-term stability of collaboration between employees (Guy, 1986). Fairness, effectiveness and participant satisfaction are also more correlated to the level of transformational leadership a senior manager has and less about the structural components of the organizational structure (Nguyen, Mohamed, 2011). While the efforts to create these values from a purely taxonomy-driven approach are many (Strutton, Knouse, 1997) (Jameson, 1999) it is in reality more dependent on the level of cultural congruency leading to trust (Kirca, 2006) and transformational leadership that matters most (Nguyen, Mohamed, 2011).

These three factors are also crucial for the defining of relational communication and collaboration that an organization will be capable of accomplishing over the long-term (Strutton, Knouse, 1997). These are the values any organization also needs to take into account in creating and sustaining a model of conflict resolution across departmental and divisional boundaries, where the level of organizational ethnocentrism can often create a lack of effectiveness in collaboration as well (Strutton, Knouse, 1997). Participant satisfaction needs to pervade the development of taxonomies as an entirely different dimension, apart from the current set of 35 factors that are being used in the development of conflict resolution frameworks as well (Jameson, 1999). As these three factors of fairness, effectiveness and participant satisfaction are inherently unquantifiable, the metrics of collaboration and shared performance across organizational boundaries needs to be considered their proxy. To the extent an organization can embed or internalize these values is often a barometer or measure of how resilient they can also be in the face of rapid and turbulent change (Nguyen, Mohamed, 2011). The connection of conflict resolution and management is a catalyst of organizational stability, resilience, and it time of rapid change, agility in the face of disruptive forces reshaping their markets. That is why, from a strategic level, paying attention to these issues and concerns is so critical.

The three Major Conflict Resolution Strategies proposed by the author are: interest-based, rights-based, and power-based strategies.

Interest-based, rights-based and power-based strategies all have specific roles in the broader strategies of conflict mediation and resolution that many companies face while competing in turbulent economic environments (Jameson, 1999). The author states that interest- and rights-based strategies taken a more transformational vs. transactional approach to leading change however (Nguyen, Mohamed, 2011). While power-based strategies may be the most efficient for getting work done, they in fact could be the last effective in attaining lasting change (Jameson, 1999). For a long-term change to occur in any company, employees must appreciate; understand they align their internal beliefs and values to the change necessary (Strutton, Knouse, 1997). While conflict resolution at first analysis appears to be focused on reducing the amount of time and resources wasted in conflict mediation, it is most often more critical as a means to preserve organizational agility in the face of disruptive organizational change (Kirca, 2006).