CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

294 GOLDMAN, CROPANZANO, STEIN, AND BENSON
Therefore, empirical tests, while strongly influenced by Sheppard’s work,
employed simplified versions of his taxonomy.
An Abbreviated Taxonomy. In exploring the informal tactics used by
managerial third parties, researchers have distilled Sheppard’s (1984)
taxonomy (cf. Sheppard, 1983) into a few commonly used methods (for
reviews, see Cropanzano, Aguinis, Schminke, & Denham, 1999; Folger &
Cropanzano, 1998, chapter 6; Kolb, 1986; Kolb & Glidden, 1986; Lewicki &
Sheppard, 1985). In general, six approaches seem to predominate, though
researchers have given them different names:
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Advising or facilitation: The manager allows the disputants to maintain
decision control. Acting as a third-party facilitator, the manager
shares process control to the extent it is necessary to keep the conflicting
parties talking constructively about their differences.
Mediation: The third party retains process control but does not exercise
decision control.
Adversarial or arbitration: The manager allows the disputants to control
the process but retains control over the final decision.
Autocratic or inquisitorial: The manager exerts a good deal of control
over both the process and the decision.
Providing impetus or motivational control: The manager does not control
the process or the outcome. However, the third party does provide
incentives—sometimes even threats—in order to get the disputants
to settle the matter themselves.
Avoidance or ignoring: The manager does nothing.
advising or facilitation. When acting as an advisor (Kolb, 1986; Kolb &
Glidden, 1986) or a facilitator (Kozan & Ilter, 1994), the manager takes the
two parties aside and encourages them to engage in productive discussion.
As a third party, the manager is not especially controlling. Rather,
he or she exerts only limited influence on the process in order to reach
an effective conclusion. Individuals report a preference for advising, as
opposed to more autocratic methods. This seems to be true for both students
and practicing managers (Karambayya, Brett, & Lytle, 1992). Crosscultural
surveys lead to similar conclusions. For example, Cropanzano
et al. (1999) found that advising was the top-ranked conflict resolution
procedure among samples from Argentina, the Dominican Republic,
Mexico, and the United States. Kozan and Ilter (1994) found similar results
among Turkish workers. Additionally, in a survey of undergraduates from
Spain and Japan, Leung, Au, Fernández-Dols, and Iwawaki (1992) found
that participants were happiest with interventions that allowed them to
participate actively. However, Leung et al. were not exploring third-party
conflict management per se.
While these results bode well for advising, we should be mindful
of its limitations. As we have seen, research inspired by Thibaut and