It is important here to visualize the level at which information and options for action exist. Tilman Grammes and Agnes Tandler differentiate the following levels of reality for educational work:
Documentary Evidence: the oral and written evidence as a legacy of an event: speeches, minutes, notes in files, forms, pamphlets, etc.
Media Evidence: the reports triggered by an event: newspaper articles, radio and television reports, news agency reports, commentaries, readers’ letters, etc.
Reflective evidence: summary reports, analyses, scientific studies, etc.
Didactic Evidence: school books, teaching material, etc.
The subjective experience of those involved in a conflict is represented by differentiating between these levels of reality. In a conflict, various different interests and needs are always joggling for influence (power) and to be heard against different levels of reality and various possibilities.
Analyzing conflicts has nothing to do with compiling a body of information and evidence, but mainly deals with interpreting, appraising and evaluating this information. Since communication in all its forms (verbal, symbolic, non-verbal) needs to be understood as the key to dealing with conflicts constructively, special importance is ascribed to the analysis of the requirements for successful communication. Social psychologists repeatedly point out quite correctly that we can only put our finger on something if we have terms at out disposal to name it, and that we can only comprehend something if we have (at least preliminary) descriptive models at out disposal. Hence, conflict analysis deals with systematizing perception and providing explanatory aids.
It becomes clear here that there is not just one ‘correct’ method of analyzing conflicts, but that various methodological approaches exist and that their useful application depends on the specific situation at hand.
3.2 The Ten Methods of Conflict Analysis Analytical methods with the whole conflict in view:
1. Initial mapping and approaches
2. Systematic questioning: the analytical raster from Ulrike Wasmuth.
3. Systematic questioning, the analytical raster from the media Peace Centre”.
4. Circular questions/Changes in perspectives.
5. Mapping: visualizing conflicts.
6. Working with case studies.
3.2.1 Methods for Visualizing Individual Aspects of a Conflict
7. Frozen pictures.
8. Energy field analysis.
9. Recognizing and formulating one’s own position.
10. Me in conflict: a picture of myself.
3.3 Conflict Progression
Volumes upon volumes have been written about the progression or timeline of the conflict attempting to identify the chronology of a conflict from the first outbreaks of violence to its resolution. Mot theories of conflict stages portray an orderly evolution from peaceful resolution through escalation, de-escalation and finally, termination.
Identifying the stages can be essential for designing successful strategies for prevention or third party intervention. Most conflicts however, do not follow a prescribed trajectory. If they did, it would still be difficult to identify when the conflict advanced from one stage to the next. Some authors have developed time lines that are more dynamic than a straight progression, attempting to catch some additional complex dimensions of conflict.
Some authors have developed time lines that are more dynamic than a straight progression attempting to catch some of the additional dimensions of conflict. One such example is Kriesberg & Thorsons’s two-dimensional Conflict Progression Cycle. It illustrates a conflict progression through a series of common points on a circle while being interspersed with context and conditions that are unique to every conflict. It indicates that a conflict emerges, manifests, escalates, de- escalates, and terminates, resulting in an outcome that also can become the starting point for another circle of renewed conflict.
One of the greater challenges for researchers is to try to integrate either the phases, or time-line of conflict with the different tasks of prevention and intervention into a complex framework of conflict management strategies. One of the most influential conceptual approaches to these challenges is I. William Zartman’s Ripe Moment Theory. Zartman says intervention is rarely successful unless it happens when the conflict is at the point of a mutually Hurting Stalemate. This happens when violence is in a deadlock and parties see negotiation as a better outcome than continued fighting. At such points, third parties can take important steps to facilitate a negotiated outcome. Important to remember is that a
the antagonists can be convinced their present course of action is taking them to an “impending catastrophe,” they may opt for an alternative short of violence as more desirable than continued fighting.
Another scholar who matches the stages of conflict with third party intervention is Donald Rothchild. He suggests that conflicts move through a dynamic process of five phases in order of levels of conflict activity in an adversary relationship. For each phase (the potential conflict phase, the gestation phase, the triggering and escalation phase, the post- conflict and the military/security phase), Rothchild identifies specific problems that third parties should target. Further, he suggests corresponding coercive and non-coercive incentives third parties can use in order to turn the conflict around.
Similarly, Michael Lund attempts to combine conflict progression with different strategies management and prevention. In his book Preventing Violent Conflicts, he presents a dialogue called “The Life History of a conflict,” where different measures are proposed depending on intensity of violence and the progression of deteriorations in a conflict relationship. It includes three dimensions: the progression of conflict and the inherent problems to each stage, including duration, and a chronology of corresponding conflict management strategies to be implemented. Because conflict progression is described in Lund’s diagram by a curve rather than by a one-dimensional continuum, it is more flexible, making possible a description ‘ups and downs’ of most conflicts. Whereas an escalation described on a one-dimension continuum takes you back in time to an earlier point on the graph, the curve allows you escalations and de-escalations as new phases with new opportunities for action.
3.4 Conflict Attitude
According to Richard W. Scholl, Professor of Management, University of Rhode Island;
1. Attitudes are defined as a mental predisposition to act that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Individuals generally have attitudes that focus on objects, people or institutions. Attitudes are also attached to mental categories. Mental orientations towards concepts are generally referred to as values. Attitudes are comprised of four components:
A. Cognitions – Cognitions are our beliefs, theories, expectancies, cause and effect beliefs, and perceptions relative to the focal object.
B. Affect – The affective component refers to our feeling with respect to the focal object such as fear, liking, of anger.
C. Behavioral Intentions – Behavioral intentions are our goals, aspirations, and our expected responses to the attitude object.
D. Evaluation – Evaluations are often considered the central component of attitudes. Evaluations consist of the imputation of some degree of goodness or badness to an attitude object. When we speak of a positive or negative attitude toward an object, we are referring to the evaluative component. Evaluations are function of cognitive, affect and behavioral intentions of the object. It is most often the evaluation that is stored in memory, often without the corresponding cognitions and affect that were responsible for its formation.
3.5 Implications
1. Stage of group development influences other processes (e.g., cohesiveness, conformity, production)
2. Interventions must take group's stage into account (e.g., leadership, therapy)
3. Diagnosing stage group is important both for facilitators and group leaders.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Groups are like relationships - you have to work at them. In the work place, they constitute an important unit of activity but one whose support needs are only recently becoming understood. By making the group itself responsible for its own support, the responsibility becomes an accelerator for the group process. What is vital is that these needs are recognized and explicitly dealt with by the group. Management must allocate time and resources to these needs identified by the group, and the group process must be planned, monitored and reviewed just like any other managed process.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit we treated methods of conflict analysis, conflict progression and conflict attitude. As well, we treated ten methods of conflict analysis, conflict progression, conflict attitude and implications.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT 1. What is conflict progression?
2. Enumerate and discuss the methods of conflict analysis that you know.
3. What is conflict attitude?
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS
Ardrey, R. (1970) The Territorial Imperative, N.Y. Atheneum
UNIT 5 ANGER MANAGEMENT