Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Roy Lewicki, a Professor of Management and Human Resources at Ohio State University, discusses how incompatible ways of viewing a conflict (which he calls "frames" )can make conflicts intractable.

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Incompatible Frames
Roy Lewicki
Professor of Management and Human Resources at Ohio State University

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

We felt that in many cases what we thought were environmental conflicts that were intractable were conflicts where the parties had framed the issues or their identity and characterization of the other parties' identity. Also the parties would think about what was appropriate as a conflict resolution process or framed issues of risk or framed issues of power in ways that were fundamentally incompatible. The notion was that if the parties framed them in ways that were incompatible that when they tried to talk to each other, they talked at each other. They talked in a way that never fully engaged each other It was a process that never led to productive resolution.

The story of the human race is characterized by efforts to get along much more than by violent disputes, although it's the latter that make the history books. Violence is actually exceptional. The human race has survived because of cooperation. -- Gerard Vanderhaar

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Beyond Intractability Version IV
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