Academic Administrator's Guide to Conflict Resolution (Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator's Guides) - Softcover

Cheldelin, Sandra I.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787960535 ISBN 13: 9780787960537

Verlag: Jossey-Bass, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Dealing with conflict is an evitable part of any academic administrator’s job. Often, however, new administrators lack the skills they need to successfully resolve campus conflicts. This important resource includes an array of strategies for identifying and managing conflict between individuals, within a department, and between departments. The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator’s Guide to Conflict Resolution shows how to turn conflicts into problems to be solved. Authors Sandra I. Cheldelin and Ann F. Lucas offer concrete approaches academic administrators can use to analyze conflicts and design effective interventions. The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator’s Guide to Conflict Resolution is an invaluable tool that includes

· Guidelines for knowing when it is appropriate to intervene in a conflict

· Strategies for helping to change irrational and negative thinking to positive rational thought

· Methods for handling interpersonal conflict―between two parties―within a department

· An outline of the major approaches for managing conflict and information¾when they work and when they don’t

· Effective strategies for preventing and solving specific problems

 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sandra I. Cheldelin is an associate professor and former director of the Institute for Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She is a licensed psychologist and expert in organizational behavior, and coeditor of Conflict: From Analysis to Intervention.

Ann F. Lucas is a consultant and professor emerita at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she served as campus chair in the Department of Management and also the Department of Psychology. She is a diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology and author of Leading Academic Change and Strengthening Departmental Leadership both from Jossey-Bass.

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Dealing with conflict is an inevitable part of any academic administrator s job. Often, however, new administrators lack the skills they need to successfully resolve campus conflicts. This important resource includes an array of strategies for identifying and managing conflict between individuals, within a department, and between departments. The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator s Guide to Conflict Resolution shows how to turn conflicts into problems to be solved. Authors Sandra I. Cheldelin and Ann F. Lucas offer concrete approaches academic administrators can use to analyze conflicts and design effective interventions.

The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator s Guide to Conflict Resolution is an invaluable tool that includes

• Guidelines for knowing when it is appropriate to intervene in a conflict
• Strategies for helping to change irrational and negative thinking to positive rational thought
• Methods for handling interpersonal conflict between two parties within a department
• An outline of the major approaches for managing conflict and information about when they work and when they don t
• Effective strategies for preventing and solving specific problems

The book also includes valuable information about third party interventions such as negotiation, facilitation, and arbitration.

The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator’s Guide to Conflict Resolution is an invaluable tool that includes

• Guidelines for knowing when it is appropriate to intervene in a conflict
• Strategies for helping to change irrational and negative thinking to positive rational thought
• Methods for handling interpersonal conflict–between two parties–within a department
• An outline of the major approaches for managing conflict and information about when they work and when they don’t
• Effective strategies for preventing and solving specific problems

The book also includes valuable information about third party interventions such as negotiation, facilitation, and arbitration.

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The Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator's Guide to Conflict Resolution

By Sandra I. Cheldelin Ann F. Lucas

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2003 Sandra I. Cheldelin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-6053-7

Chapter One

Understanding Conflict

Welcome to our study about conflict resolution in higher education. We begin this chapter by laying the groundwork for understanding a conflict situation. After all, to understand its resolution, we must first know what conflict is. We will introduce important concepts and illustrate how to use them. We discuss how conflict is often destructive-even though it need not be so-and how conflict can be changed into a constructive interaction. We conclude with a discussion of conflict prevention-the easiest way to handle conflict.

CONFLICT DEFINED

In the field of conflict resolution, there are many definitions of conflict. One that we think is both basic and applicable to most conflicts in higher education comes from William Wilmot and Joyce Hocker in their study of interpersonal conflict. They identify three conditions: (1) some kind of expressed struggle between at least two parties, (2) these parties have an interdependent relationship, and (3) these parties perceive they are getting interference from each other in achieving their goals. Using this definition to think about conflict is helpful because it implies that conflicts will not change until there is a change in the parties' perceptions about the other(s) and a change in their behavior.

Let's imagine that Charlie, a student at your college, needs to drop a course in the third week of the semester because of an imposed change in his work schedule. The university policy says that at this point students must pay 40 percent of the tuition. Yet Charlie believes he has a special case and therefore should not be assessed the fee. After all, it is not his fault that he can no longer attend the class. Is this a conflict? Not yet, though it has all the ingredients to become one. Conflict will occur when Charlie is told by Eileen, the enrollment management supervisor-to whom Charlie later appeals-that he must still pay 40 percent of the tuition when he drops the class. Now there are incompatible goals (Charlie's special case versus Eileen's responsibility to consistently apply university rules). Charlie perceives interference from Eileen when she makes him pay. What would you do? Can you prevent this from becoming a conflict?

Conflict cannot occur unless there is an interaction between the parties, and therefore the responses Charlie and Eileen have toward each other are critical. (Chapter Four discusses individual preferences or styles of handling this interaction such as taking an aggressive position or avoiding it to prevent confrontation.) As Charlie and Eileen perceive interference from each other, the interaction is likely to escalate to a conflict situation. If they believe they can work together to find a solution, they are likely to respond in ways that prevent a conflict.

WORKING WITH CONFLICT

As adults, most of us have considerable experience with conflict and have learned ways of coping with it. We have encountered conflict since early childhood. In our families we struggled with siblings and parents and learned, early on, ways to handle others and get our way or lose the struggle. Over the years we developed preferences for dealing with conflict. Some of us remain quiet, calm, and restrained; others blow up; some prefer to fight behind the scenes; many avoid or ignore it; and a few intentionally try to get issues out on the table for discussion. During our years in school we struggled with peers and teachers and learned strategies to get ahead, to compromise, to work collaboratively, to be aggressive, or to give in. In the workplace we have struggled with coworkers, bosses, and subordinates and learned how to work with issues of power, authority, and control. In the news we are bombarded with stories of terrorism, war, and political in-fighting, and we continue to learn about protracted, enduring conflicts that seem nearly impossible to resolve. We are savvy about who to fear and who to bully. We are cognizant about issues of status, class, litigation, and fairness. And we bring this rich mosaic of experience-based information about conflict to our work in the university. So why is it, then-with everything that we have all learned-that conflict continues to persist in the academy?

Let us first consider the nature of the organizational context. American higher education is special in its structure, mission, and governance. One way that it is special is its decentralized model-public and private, four-year and two-year, proprietary and nonprofit. Colleges and universities establish their own decision-making models-embedded in and consistent with the larger culture of similar institutions that are public, private, four-year, two-year, and so on. Another variable to consider is that higher education is one of the few places where inconvenient questions can be asked, multiple voices can be heard, and various perspectives can be considered. This means that the heterogeneity of the people, ideas, and issues will encourage differences and therefore increase the likelihood of conflict. The academy also has a primary leadership role because it provides the intellectual and moral foundation for our youth to become leaders and members of society. Yet the rapid advance of knowledge in many fields of study makes this particular task daunting. In addition to higher education's organizational uniqueness and complexity, its context is embedded in a time of challenging resource limitations and enormous economic pressures, where authority and governance structures continue to be scrutinized, and external accountability is increasingly called forth.

WHEN CONFLICT IS DESTRUCTIVE

Returning to and based on our personal experiences, it is not uncommon when we hear the word conflict to think of concepts such as war, anger, destruction, terror, hostility, anxiety, alienation, and frustration. Particularly in U.S. culture, conflict is generally perceived as negative. Simple misunderstandings or minor disagreements can shift into full-fledged battles and become quite destructive. How does this happen? We know that there are three common conditions that encourage conflict escalation: when the parties perceive competition over scarce resources, perceive the use of threatening and contentious influence patterns (bullying, shoving, challenging, posturing, and so on), and perceive unfair highlighting of specific personal characteristics of others (gender, race, disability, and so on). Any of these three conditions will likely result in escalation; the presence of more than one will make conflicts even more difficult to manage or resolve.

Competition over Scarce Resources

The 1990s were financially good for higher education. The economy was unusually strong, investments yielded high returns, and alumni were willing to increase giving. Administrators were adding programs and staff, and upgrading technology. Recently, though, there has been a sharp change in available resources. We read about mandated cuts in budgets across the country. The financing of new buildings is disappearing. At best, the era of growth and prosperity has been put on hold. Why is this important? Because not only do we perceive limited resources, there actually are limited resources, and a common response to this situation is acting on the belief that we must find ways to "fight" for our share or...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0787960535
• ISBN 13: 9780787960537
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 130
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland