Every Conflict Tells A Story
August 17, 2020
In this eposode we will be talking about the story behind every conflict.
Introducing the Dual Concern Model
June 1, 2020
The dual concern model is a model, one of many that exist, that is used to analyze reactions to conflict. I have mentioned this model in passing before. The dual concern model allows a person to gauge their own behaviors as well as the reactions of their counterparts on the
Three Miles
April 5, 2020
A couple of years ago I ran into a gentleman in the business section of Vroman’s. He was looking for a copy of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. We started a discussion about economics and inequality. A few minutes into the
My First Lessons in Conflict Resolution
March 22, 2020
I first learned about conflict resolution in the United States Army. They didn’t call it conflict resolution in the army, they called it combat. The idea was that you win or you die. Confrontational? Yes. It has proven effective enough to make people think that their nation is doing something
The Problem with Problem Solving
March 15, 2020
As a scholar in the field of conflict I spend a lot of time analyzing the dual concern model. One of the basic ideas of this model is that the actors in a conflict determine how important their goals are in relation to the other party’s concern for or against the
Why Disagreement is Not Conflict
March 7, 2020
The best definition of conflict that I have ever heard was provided by Dr. Ariane David. I attended a training she gave on the topic of Non-Positional Thinking. She said, “You know you are involved in destructive conflict when you start feeling defensive.” It is the feeling that you are
What is Conflict Resolution?
March 7, 2020
Conflict resolution is relatively easy to define. A conflict is a serious disagreement powered by the idea that one has something to lose. The threat of loss is sometimes real. In many cases the threat of loss is a perception of the parties and is powered by the emotional content
Information Asymmetries and Pragmatic Nonviolence
March 1, 2020
Background I first learned about information asymmetries in the 2001 when I read a newspaper article about George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz winning a Nobel prize for their work on the subject. At the time the idea angered me, that one party might use another party’s lack of