Conflict Escalation: Five Phase Model

Maya believed that delivery system needs to be improved first since customers complained about that. She understood that customer’s satisfaction is of vital importance for the company’s existence. Since they could not come to an agreement, they decide to schedule another meeting and try again. During the 4th meeting they kept trying to persuade each other unsuccessfully and left the meeting without getting to an agreement. They were both angry and unhappy. They both experienced value conflict; each had different goals in mind when assessing the problem and different criteria when they assessed the performance.
After that meeting they started avoiding each other, all communication was done through emails. During that time they also started creating
To remain credible and to restrain the enemy from an act of force, the threatened party feels compelled to commit acts of force itself. This, in turn, proves to the threatening party the aggressive nature of the threatened and provokes counterforce and further escalation. This process continues until the parties reach financial or physical exhaustion, or the matter is decided in the courtroom.” (Conflict Escalation: Five Phase Model).
Relationship and Emotion
Relationship consists of a set of expectations about self and other, our actions and meanings are organized and they match. Coordination does not mean that all parties have the same understanding. Relationship can be good even if the parties could understand what happing different ways is. Those types of interactions are symmetrical, which we have in case of Maya and Jan. They respond to each other in the similar way, both competitive. There is another type of interaction, complementary interaction which occurs if two partners respond to each other in coordinated way, for example if Jan has proposed changes to ordering department and Maya would agree with him.
“People typically think that emotions are reactions beyond their control.
(Chapter 6)
Our emotions are based on rules which we learned growing up, by being part of the certain society or certain family. Therefore we do not have experience same emotions in the same situations. We could also say that behavior and emotions that both Jan and Maya experienced were connected to the behavior which was expected in this situation in this organization. They were anger and they action symmetrical, they needed someone to help them through the process.
Mediation
“Mediation is essentially facilitated negotiation. It is a process in which a neutral third party helps guide a discussion between disputants about issues between them.
In mediation, a third party facilitates a negotiation process between parties who are experiencing conflict. It is an attempt to help parties whose differences are residing in the spheres of challenge or harm move to the sphere of value.” (ADR process)
Mediator is third party, a neutral third party that leads all parties to reach agreement beneficial for all. In this case the mediator was Human Resource department which engaged to help Maya and Jan resolve the conflict. Human
Resource had a set of few steps that they needed to do in order for