The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication

Integrating Theory, Research, and Practice

John G. Oetzel, Stella Ting-Toomey

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781483315423
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

This second edition of the award-winning The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication emphasizes constructive conflict management from a communication perspective, identifying the message as the focus of conflict research and practice. Editors John G. Oetzel and Stella Ting-Toomey, along with expert researchers in the discipline, have assembled in one resource the knowledge base of the field of conflict communication; identified the best theories, ideas, and practices of conflict communication; and provided the opportunity for scholars and practitioners to link theoretical frameworks and application tools.

1

DEFINITIONS AND APPROACHES TO CONFLICT AND COMMUNICATION

LINDA L. PUTNAM

Few scholars would deny that communication is an essential feature of conflict. As Thomas and Pondy (1977) noted in their massive review of conflict in organizations, “It is communication with which we are most concerned in understanding conflict management” (p. 1100). Communication aids in the forming of issues, framing of perceptions, translating feelings into conflict, and enacting the conflict itself (Putnam & Poole, 1987). It functions as an impromptu code to signal intentions, exchange information, exercise influence, and coordinate outcomes. Most of all, “communication is the means by which conflict gets socially defined” (Simons, 1974b, p. 3).

Despite the importance of communication in social conflicts, early researchers often cast it as a backdrop or a taken-for-granted activity. In particular, initial studies that include communication in the Prisoner’s Dilemma games often treated it simplistically, as “let the players talk or don’t let them talk” or as tacit cues that conveyed preferences through moves and countermoves (Bostrom, 1968; Gergen, 1969). Disenchanted with the paucity of attention to communication in conflict studies, scholars across the discipline gathered in 1972 in Philadelphia for a conference sponsored by the Speech Communication Association. This conference and subsequent publications that emanated from it (see Bowers, 1974b; Miller & Simons, 1974) nurtured the growth of communication and conflict studies as a distinct area that has mushroomed across the discipline. As this volume demonstrates, research on communication and conflict is alive and well.

Amid this widespread growth, communication scholars are often silent or presumptive about the relationship between communication and conflict. Scholars typically define conflict in a consensual way and then treat the elements of this definition as assumed within their research designs. Thus, characteristics and dimensions are often presumed within the operational nature and measurement instruments of conflict (Weider-Hatfield, 1993). For many scholars, communication is the manifest stage of conflict; that is, it surfaces as social interaction or as strategies and tactics. As such, communication seems bound by a set of presumed relationships between communication and conflict.

This chapter unpacks these relationships through presenting a historical overview of communication and conflict studies, including examining three seminal theories, comparing definitions and assumptions, reviewing models and approaches to conflict, and highlighting research methods. The latter part of the chapter provides an update on recent research in terms, especially, of developments between 2006 and 2012. In particular, it focuses on the roles of communication in conflict as a variable, a process, an interpretation or meaning, and a dialectical relationship. Finally, it sets forth some options for integrating research across the field and promoting theory building through future directions for communication studies.

Given the breadth of communication and conflict research, a full-scale historical treatment of each contextual arena is beyond the scope of this chapter. Moreover, each chapter in this volume offers its own historical background for conflict studies in particular domains. In like manner, this chapter is not an exhaustive state-of-the-art review, as presented in the early articles and handbook chapters (Donohue, Diez, & Stahle, 1983; D. W. Johnson, 1974; Olekalns, Putnam, Weingart, & Metcalf, 2008; Putnam & Jones, 1982b; Putnam & Poole, 1987; Roloff, 1987; Steinfatt, 1974) or summarized in the early textbooks that now appear in multiple editions (Folger & Poole, 1984; Hocker & Wilmot, 1978). What this chapter does, however, is to situate research on communication and conflict in the 1970s as a period that led to the rapid acceleration of conflict studies in family and interpersonal communication (Fitzpatrick & Winke, 1979; Millar, Rogers, & Bavelas, 1984; Sillars, 1980a, 1980b), small group interaction (Pood, 1980; Waln, 1982), negotiation and bargaining (Donohue, 1981a, 1981b; Putnam & Jones, 1982b), organizational conflict styles (Putnam & Wilson, 1982; Riggs, 1983; Shockley-Zalabak, 1981), and intercultural conflict (Gudykunst, 1985; Ting-Toomey, 1985). This period is singled out because the conceptual and theoretical debates at that time clearly shaped the direction of future research. Although scholars have drawn heavily from conflict studies outside our field, this chapter concentrates primarily on the research and conceptual issues that have developed within communication.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT STUDIES

For more than 30 years, communication scholars have studied social conflicts. Initially aligned with rhetorical scholarship, research focused on diplomacy (Oliver, 1950, 1952) and the rhetoric of confrontation and agitation (Bowers & Ochs, 1971; Scott & Smith, 1969). Inspired by campus demonstrations, protest movements, and riots in the 1960s, communication scholars directed their attention to crisis rhetoric, persuasion in social conflicts, and rhetorical strategies of coercion (Burgess, 1973; Simons, 1969; 1972, 1974a). Specifically, Tompkins, Fisher, Infante, and Tompkins (1974) applied Burkian concepts to an analysis of mystery and order in the administration of a public university in the midst of campus conflicts.

Also focusing on public conflicts, Bowers (1974a) compared the perceived costs, potential rewards, and probability of using different individual and institutional forms of communication during community disputes. Individuals in social conflicts differed from institutions in presenting oral and written petitions, engaging in collective actions, and escalating confrontations; institutions, in turn, were limited to avoidance, counterpersuasion, and nonviolent suppression as defensive reactions. Rhetoricians also analyzed the public discourse surrounding the Arab–Israeli conflict (Heisy, 1970) and the argumentative competence of Henry Kissinger’s negotiation (Schuetz, 1978).

Amid this attention to social and political conflicts, other scholars in the field employed experimental methods to study bargaining and conflict in dyads and small groups. Communication scholars were eager to rectify the shortcomings of game theory researchers who ignored social interactions (Beisecker, 1970a; Bostrom, 1968). Their early work focused on comparing tacit nonverbal messages with explicit verbal communication (Harris & Smith, 1974). At first, researchers concluded that an increase in explicit communication between negotiators increased cooperativeness (D. H. Smith, 1969; Steinfatt, Seibold, & Frye, 1974), but additional studies revealed that in highly competitive situations, communication became distorted, leading to error and misinformation (Beisecker, 1970a). Hence, increased opportunity for communication did not necessarily lead to cooperation.

To unpack the explicit versus implicit role of communication, D. W. Johnson, McCarty, and Allen (1976) compared cooperative with competitive bargainers in both verbal and nonverbal conditions. They observed that verbal statements of cooperation led to more agreements in less time than did the other three conditions, including nonverbal expressions of cooperation; thus, explicit cooperative messages had a strong effect on reaching a negotiated settlement. In a similar way, communication scholars contrasted bargaining outcomes in telephone, face-to-face, and written modes of interaction (Turnbull, Strickland, & Shaver, 1976). This study revealed that full, face-to-face interaction between disputants increased the number of successful payoffs and enhanced the diversity of negotiated settlements for cooperative conditions (Greenwood, 1974; D. H. Smith, 1969). Early communication researchers also examined information exchange (D. H. Smith, 1971), argumentation patterns (Reiches & Harral, 1974), cognitive complexity (Saine, 1974), and persuasive strategies that facilitated concession making (Beisecker, 1970b).

Small group researchers also began to study communication in cooperative and competitive groups. Specifically, Baird (1974) found that members of cooperative groups engaged in greater diversity of contributions, exchanged more relevant messages, and were more friendly and attentive to each other than were individuals in competitive teams. Focusing specifically on substantive, affective, and procedural conflicts, Bell (1974, 1979) observed that substantive messages were exchanged reciprocally and led to flexibility in decision making. Affective conflict seemed tied to ego involvement in that individuals who had high ego involvement were less likely to reach agreement than were dyads with minimal ego investment (Sereno & Mortensen, 1973).

In response to this growing work, Jandt (1973) assembled a collection of readings, mostly reprints from classic articles outside the field. The aim of this volume was to apply conflict research to multiple levels of communication studies—from dyads to sociopolitical conflicts. This volume also introduced the field to conflict studies in family, classroom, intraorganizational, racial, and intercultural arenas.

Thus, in the mid-1970s, the stage was set for a significant conference on communication and conflict studies. Attended by scholars throughout the discipline, researchers both agreed and disagreed about the directions for future conflict studies. The book Perspectives on Communication in Social Conflict (Miller & Simons, 1974) embodied this controversy, particularly diverse perspectives and ideological differences among researchers. These differences appeared in Simons’s (1974b) prologue and Miller’s (1974) epilogue and opened communication studies to the myriad perspectives that scholars currently see in the field today. In particular, their dissatisfaction with theories, definitions, and models for conflict research influenced the questions that scholars now pose, hybrid research designs, innovative topics and methods, and a quest to unpack the conceptual relationship between communication and conflict.

CONFLICT THEORIES AND PERSPECTIVES: CHARTING THE DISENCHANTMENT

Scholars at this landmark conference typically concurred that theories and models needed to be expanded. They recommended that research focus on “co-acting entities whose behaviors must be modeled dynamically and relationally” (Simons, 1974b, p. 3). They concurred in their critiques of game theory, but they disagreed on the viability of social exchange and systems theory as options for future studies.

Challenging Game Theory

Scholars at the conference were united in critiquing game theory and in issuing a plea for alternative models. Although pure game theory was never designed for laboratory experiments, social scientists borrowed liberally from it because it contained the basic elements of any conflict situation. Since it treated players as rational beings who aimed to maximize gains and minimize losses (Bostrom, 1968), scholars focused on how players selected moves and how these moves produced different types of rewards.

Communication scholars challenged the single-minded accounts of game theory through arguing that motives and intensions were particularly ambiguous when players could not communicate explicitly (Steinfatt & Miller, 1974). In addition, game theory’s focus on payoffs and outcomes ignored a bargainer’s psychological makeup, his or her relationship with the other negotiator, and concerns for face saving and self-esteem (Mortensen, 1974). This approach was also silent regarding the meanings of payoffs, utilities, and options (Simons, 1974b; D. H. Smith, 1983) and the validity of laboratory experiments (Jandt, 1974; Mortensen, 1974). Game theory also relied on static variables that failed to track changes in the process, goals, or payoff schedules (Hawes & Smith, 1973; Mortensen, 1974). In effect, communication scholars concurred that pure game theory held little promise for guiding research, but they differed as to whether laboratory games per se were problematic (Miller, 1974). With this disenchantment, scholars called for the development of alternatives “to bring forth fresh perspectives and to enliven old ones” (Simons, 1974b, p. 1).

Harnessing Social Exchange

The residue of game theory surfaced in social exchange models of conflict and negotiation. Similar to game theory, social exchange emulated an economic approach in which disputants held rational motives to maximize their own self-interests. Unlike game theory, however, disputants maximized profits based on rewards minus costs that were derived from social resources. For communication scholars, social resources were symbolic (e.g., affection, status, control) and any given exchange had multiple resources involved. Social exchange, then, entailed an interaction process or a series of sequential behaviors in which disputants provided each other with resources through their interactions (Roloff & Campion, 1985).

Critical to exchange theory was the notion of reciprocity, a concept that Bell (1979) identified in small group research. Reciprocity, first explicated by Gouldner (1960); typically referred to helping those who had helped you. Communication scholars invoked this norm by examining reciprocity in a number of ways, including obligations to exchange resources of equivalent value (Roloff & Campion, 1985), symmetrical message patterns in interpersonal and marital conflicts (Bavelas, Rogers, & Millar, 1985; Sillars, 1980b; Ting-Toomey, 1983), and matching integrative or distributive strategies in negotiations (Bednar & Curington, 1983; Donohue, 1981a; Putnam & Jones, 1982a) and divorce mediations (Jones, 1989a). Thus, the decline of game theory in the 1980s led the field to adopt modified versions of social exchange theory.

Recasting System Theory

Early scholars also criticized the linear views of communication employed in conflict studies (Hawes & Smith, 1973; Miller, 1974; Ruben, 1978). Linear models situated communication as the archer’s arrow shot directly into a target that would instantly impact the state of a conflict (Bowers, 1974b; Ruben 1978). This sender-oriented approach characterized much of the early conflict research. In opposition to this view, researchers called for focusing on interdependent messages that developed within the interaction process. Thus, early conflict scholars uniformly rejected the notion that communication breakdowns led to conflict and that shooting more communication at a target would resolve a dispute (Hawes & Smith, 1973; Ruben, 1978).

Moreover, they reacted negatively to the assumptions of early systems theorists that conflict deviated from harmony and normality (Gamson, 1968). At this time, the dominant view was that conflict created an imbalance in the equilibrium of a system and, thus, needed to be resolved or prevented. Conference participants were uniformly dismayed with these anticonflict biase...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Definitions and Approaches to Conflict and Communication
• Chapter 2. Quantitative Methods for Conflict Communication Research
• Chapter 3. Qualitative Research on Communication and Conflict
• Section 1. Interpersonal Conflict
• Section 2. Organizational Conflict
• Section 3. Community Conflict
• Section 4. Intercultural/International Conflict
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors