CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

258 PRUITT
If an employee must be punished, it is essential to clearly link the punishment
to the offender’s actions. Otherwise, biased punctuation may set
in, with the offender viewing the episode as starting with an arbitrary
administrative action rather than with his or her own misdeeds.
It is also important to organize for effective conflict management. Ury
et al. (1988) suggested that if there is tension between two groups, negotiators
should be appointed in both groups, and mediators should be
chosen from the broader community. These people should be trained
in their roles and should get to know each other. This will allow the
organization to move quickly when escalation is looming to prevent the
development of conflict spirals and structural changes. Organizations
often fail to reward people for serving as mediators (Kolb, 1989), but it is
important to do so if escalation is to be avoided. Organizing for conflict
management also involves building crosscutting bonds. Cross-departmental
lunches, company picnics, and the like are a good idea, but crossdepartmental
groups that meet regularly and have some real power are
likely to be more effective.
Another approach to tension between two groups is to run problemsolving
workshops (Fisher, 1997; Kelman, 1992). This involves (a) locating
second-level people in each group who are interested in resolving the
conflict and (b) involving them in meetings to analyze what has happened
and develop plans for alleviating the situation. Sometimes there
is a “reentry problem,” such that these individuals are reabsorbed into
the old escalation-prone system when they return to their home base. If
so, it may be possible to run a workshop involving the entire home base,
using the large-group intervention methods developed by Bunker and
Alban (1997).
Timing is critical when structural changes are imminent and conflicts
threaten to spiral out of control (Pruitt & Kim, 2004). Thus, Varshney
(2002) argued that, when conflict is looming, community leaders must
move fast to quell rumors about atrocities and to silence militant factional
leaders. Strategic apology is also sometimes useful (Ohbuchi, Kameda, &
Agarie, 1989). In the conflict on the author’s campus, the strike committee
was organized a few days after campus police beat two students in full
view of hundreds of others. The result was severe escalation and weeks
of turmoil. This escalation might well have been avoided if the university
president had immediately apologized for the beatings and disciplined
the offending police officers (Pruitt & Kim, 2004).
If directly involved in a conflict spiral, one should avoid retaliation
because that will perpetuate the spiral. But it is also important to avoid
conceding, as that rewards the adversary’s aggressive behavior (Brett
et al., 1998). Instead, some form of problem solving makes most sense.
If intractable conflict develops despite efforts at conflict management,
third parties need to be alert for a “ripe” moment in which both sides see
themselves as in a stalemate or are suffering enough to consider changing
their approaches (Pruitt, 2005; Zartman, 1989, 2000). Alternatively,