Handbook Of Human Conflict Technology by Tina Monberg.
Category: Business
Paperback: 284 pages
Language: English
ISBN: 1899820396

"I have been working with conflict management in organisations for the last five years. My work has been driven by a personal conviction that knowledge about the nature of conflicts will improve relationships between employees and encourage companies and public institutions to see change as an asset. In 2002, this work inspired me to write the book Two winners - Using Mediation for Positive Conflict Resolution, explaining how mediation can be used to solve conflicts that have reached an impasse. In the book you have before you, it has been my wish to focus on the prevention and handling of conflicts, as I believe many destructive conflicts could have avoided if those involved had taken proper steps in advance to deal with them. By providing knowledge about what companies can do about conflicts as something to be avoided, they should see them as vital in an organisation where change, innovation and knowledge management play important roles.

In my work I often witness conflicts that have become so inflamed that the parties involved are no longer able to sit in the same room together in order to find a solution, The parties’ only option is therefore to resort to a court decision. In this way, what they are really asking for is a lose-win outcome. Often, I have also been asked to assist in conflicts which began as a misunderstanding but which could have been resolved long before the initial disagreement turned into an actual conflict. These situations have left me sad and frustrated that conflicts are not being properly addresses within organisations - usually because neither management nor employees know any better: they are not trained to deal with them. In short, they are often not "consciously competent".

Those frustration and sadness provoked me to write this book about what organisations ca do to avoid destructive and negative conflicts which will, at their worst, lead to poor job satisfaction, a low degree of knowledge sharing, an absence of personal social responsibility and a bad working environment resulting in high levels of absence due to ill health."