NCJ Number
94066
Date Published
1983
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This paper describes a preliminary study aimed at identifying how managers intervene in conflict, based upon a procedural taxonomy of conflict intervention, and concludes with a discussion of the correspondence between legal procedure and two frequently used managerial procedures identified in the study.
Abstract
Only the first stage of the study of how managers intervene in conflict has been completed. In this stage, 30 managers were asked to describe the last conflict in which they intervened as a third party, to explain how they intervened in that conflict, and to indicate how successful they felt their intervention has been. In addition, 30 other managers were asked the same questions but were directed to take the perspective of a disputant involved in an intervention by some other manager. Although additional responses and observational measures are necessary before any firm conclusions can be drawn about how managers generally intervene in disputes, an interesting trend can be detected in this study's results. In the majority of the descriptions collected, the third party selected the alternative for resolving the dispute, indicating a surprising absence of more therapeutic intervention styles in which managers guide disputants to a solution as opposed to choosing a solution for them. Two of the procedures used by managers are similar to the two pricipal forms of legal procedure from which their names were derived, i.e., adversary and inquisitorial legal procedures. This correspondence suggests that research and theory on legal procedure may be a useful guide to future research on managerial conflict intervention. Legal writing suggests hypotheses that can begin to form the basis of a contingency model of managerial conflict intervention, indicating when inquisitorial intervention procedures might be preferred and when adversary intervention procedures might be used. Forty-five references are listed.