Conflict Management Minor

An important part of being a competent conflict manager is the ability to use conflict theory to inform practice. In this course students will explore interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks for interpreting conflict through a broad range of academic disciplines — communication, law, social psychology, anthropology, and dispute resolution. Students critically evaluate the respective bodies of theory and test theoretical principles against their own experiences in managing conflict. Current models, approaches, styles of mediation and their theoretical underpinnings and applications are also introduced.

Conflict managers do not check their conflict selves at the door-every intervenor is influenced by beliefs about conflict and the ways they engage conflict in their own lives. This course invites you to explore your conflict self, the ways your own conflict engagement behavior enhances and limits your effectiveness as an intervener. You will confront conflict as a way to more deeply understand and appreciate the experience you ask your parties to undertake in each mediation.

Negotiation is one of the basic components of conflict engagement. This course is designed to integrate knowledge of negotiation theory and behaviors into students’ conflict intervention strategies. Students will focus on basic negotiation theory and principles and explore the strengths and weaknesses of integrative and distributive bargaining techniques. The course will ask students to alternate between being parties in negotiation and being third parties to others’ negotiations.

Students learn how to view conflict as a process of social interaction in which communication plays a key role in determining its outcome. Students will learn to identify and overcome possible sources of conflict in interpersonal, group, and organizational contexts, and how to work through conflict appropriately and successfully when it occurs in these contexts. Students will examine their own conflict styles and learn how to reshape behaviors that do not foster constructive conflict, and develop strategies designed to transform conflict into a productive experience. Primarily, students will study how to interpret the conflict behavior of others, and how to use communicative behavior to manage conflict to the benefit of all participants involved.