1998, Paul Wehr / University of Colorado
As conflict emerges, it produces considerable confusion. Interactions between the conflicting parties changes, sometimes radically and abruptly. Levels of unpredictability, uncertainty and emotion rise. Unwise and costly decisions are made from a lack of understanding of what is occurring. Since how a conflict emerges largely determines how costly it will subsequently be, those involved must have the clearest possible understanding of what is going on.
Even the simplest interpersonal conflict has many elements. Conflicts involving multiple parties, large numbers of people, and complex organizations such as governments get to be enormously complicated. Some conflict theorists (Boulding 1988) present general principles for analysis. Others (Deutsch 1973) take a very detailed, microanalytical approach to understanding conflict. Still others (Blalock 1989) do both. Every conflict has certain basic elements permitting us to produce a roadmap by which a conflict opponent, a third party intervenor, or simply a student of conflict can find their way through a particular conflict (Wehr 1979). The primary items in this roadmap include the following:
Conflict Context: The mapper first gathers information about the history of the conflict and its physical and organizational settings. Conflict does not emerge in a vacuum. Sometimes one conflict is nested within another. The university departmental conflict referred to below, for example, was greatly influenced by a concurrent higher-level conflict between the University president and the faculty.
To read the article go to http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/cmap.htm.
