conflict resolution reference

[Matthew Shapiro]

Someone wrote to the Follett Foundation website with the following question. Any answers for her?

I am looking for information I think was written by ms. Follet on conflict resolution involving a six level process (dominance, submission, compromise, conversion, and integration. Can you help me with a reference to this text and possible download of the material?

[Marlene S]

i don't know if Follett wrote about conflict resolution, but you can have a look at this:

http://www.konfliktloesning.dk/files/Simple_and_difficult.pdf

[Matthew Shapiro]

Thank you, Marlene. Interesting piece. Of course, Follett did write about conflict resolution, just not in those specific terms. It was more of an acknowledgment of the creative process of which conflict is a necessary and not necessarily bad thing, if seen as opportunity for transcending a limiting situation. Of course, in that kind of conflict, the parties are not objectifying and seeking to destroy each other. I wonder what a world that "embraces conflict yet rejects violence" looks like.

[Marlene S]

like a world where we can really learn from our mistakes and not only say so. :-)
Furthermore, in every conflict both parties have at least small common needs. To focus on them and try to fulfil them for both is the key in successful conflict resolution, I suppose.

[Betsy Geist]

At the beginning of Chapter IX of her book Creative Experience, Follett wrote, "When differing interests meet, they need not oppose, but only confront each other. The confronting of interests may result in either one of four things: (1)voluntary submission of one side; (2) struggle and the victory of one side over the other; (3)compromise; (4) integration." I suspect she would have found "conversion" to simply be another version of submission or domination. She goes on to articulate the weaknesses of the first three approaches, with special attention to the lose-lose quality of compromise. This chapter is called "Experience as Creating," which really captures her thinking about integration-- it is a creative act.