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date: 13 December 2019

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines how different goals and assumptions about conflict in organizations shape perspectives on managing conflict and resolving disputes. Four frames of reference are described: the neoliberal egoist perspective emphasizing the operation of the free market as the ideal method of resolving conflict; the critical perspective emphasizing broad societal divisions between labor and capital as the source of conflict; the unitarist perspective viewing conflict as primarily a function of interpersonal differences and organizational dysfunction, which can be remedied by improved managerial practice; and the pluralist perspective emphasizing the mixture of common and competing interests in the employment relationship, which requires institutional interventions to remedy the inequality of bargaining power that produces conflict. The pluralist perspective may best balance the often competing goals of efficiency, equity, and voice. It is described further in this chapter together with its implications for the design of dispute resolution procedures and conflict management systems.

Keywords: conflict management, dispute resolution, employment relations

John W. Budd

John W. Budd is the Industrial Relations Land Grant Chair at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. His current research interests include employee voice and frames of reference on work, the employment relationship, and conflict. He is the author of Employment with a Human Face: Balancing Efficiency, Equity, and Voice (Cornell), Labor Relations: Striking a Balance (McGraw-Hill), Invisible Hands, Invisible Objectives: Bringing Workplace Law and Public Policy Into Focus (Stanford), and The Thought of Work (Cornell).

Alexander J. S. Colvin

Alexander J. S. Colvin is the Martin F. Scheinman Professor of Conflict Resolution at the ILR School, Cornell University, where he is also Associate Director of the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution and Associate Editor of the Industrial & Labor Relations Review. His research and teaching focuses on employment dispute resolution, with a particular emphasis on procedures in nonunion workplaces and the impact of the legal environment on organizations. His current research projects include an empirical investigation of the outcomes of employment arbitration and a cross-national study of labor and employment law change in the Anglo-American countries. He is co-author (with Harry C. Katz and Thomas A. Kochan) of the textbook An Introduction to Collective Bargaining and Industrial Relations, 4 th edition (Irwin-McGraw-Hill).

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