The PEQ model of conflict and dispute resolution has been designed for examining, evaluating, and resolving conflict that can be used in training, teaching, practice and research. This framework is simple enough to use in introductory conflict courses but nuanced enough to frame difficult cases and complex research methods. The original 5Ps model has been tested in trainings with directors and staff in non-profit organizations, campus residence halls, international students, public school educators, graduate research methods courses, and research on workplace conflict, parenting coordinators, and divorcing parents.
The model integrates concepts from Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Person-Process-Context-Time theory of human development (with roots in Kurt Lewin’s (1954) Behavior-Person-Environment – BPE – principle); dispute systems design (DSD) (Constantino & Merchant, 1996; Lipsky, Seeber, & Fincher, 2003; Manring, 1993; Slaikeu, 1989; Stitt, 1998); Galtung’s TRANSCEND method (2000); Ury’s Third Side model (2000); Cheldelin, Druckman and Fast’s (2003) framework for conflict analysis, the concepts underlying conflict styles/style inventories like Thomas-Killman Conflict Mode (1974) and the Kraybill Conflict Styles Inventory/Style Matters(2006), and Stone, Patton, & Heen's Difficult Conversations.
The presentation below is a version of the 5Ps model from early 2009, given at the North Carolina Employee Assistance Professionals Association training. Since I see the model as dynamic and evolving based on my own scholarship, teaching, and practice, the model has found itself under some level of revisions constantly. I have also applied this model to classroom teaching.
Below is the most recent formulation (March 2011) of the 5Ps model, which now has 10Ps, 5 each for the level of analysis and the level of intervention and an emerging number of "Qs" and "Es" which better help describe the process by which the analysis and intervention interact with one another. The detail found in the original powerpoint is still relevant for much of the information, but I am working on this model in some detail during 2011.
PEQs of Conflict and Dispute Resolution
Perception - the core of all conflict, rooted in the combination of biology, environment, and experience and unique to the individual. In order to address this, interventions must offer experiences that alter perspective. Most of the processing of conflicts at this level result from qualms that emerge from interactions with other individuals, groups, or ideas (think cognitive dissonance) and may develop as an internal or even external quibble, with the individual, group, or idea. If the problems remain relatively minor and don't engage the other levels (person, policy, practice, or persistence), a minor adjustment in thinking or behavior (resolving the qualm) or an actual disagreement (quibble) may be sufficient to resolve these issues.
Person - conflicts focused or influenced by personal characteristics (usually unchangeable by the person) such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, visible disabilities mental health issues, etc. These conflicts are essentially a manifestation of structural inequalities based on societal values (see description of policies). In addition to altering perspective, interventions must also ask participants to acknowledge and prioritize the importance of these issues to themselves and the other parties. In order to prioritize these issues, individuals and groups must be willing be create a queue for dealing with these problems and go through them in some orderly fashion. It is not enough to prioritize and not queue the issues for management, that's simply avoiding problems.
Policies - conflicts focused on or influenced by the written (formal laws, policies, etc.) and unwritten rules (culture, mores, values, etc.) which govern the context of a situation. Conflicts may be the result of parties ignorance of policies, differing expectations about the importance of the policies, or a mismatch between written and unwritten policies. At this level conflicts are not about implementation or enforcement of policies since those conflicts are covered under the next level of "practices". Interventions at the level of policies require participants to be proactive in understanding and/or altering the written and unwritten policies governing a particular situation. Solving policy problems usually requires weaving together the needs/issues and solutions of individuals, organizations, and the short and longer term goals of each, in a querl (twirling/coiling) or quilt (stitching together patterns), think of a dispute systems design or an effective mediated agreement. A querl is most likely when the needs/issues align closely can can be twisted together in a sensible manner; whereas and a quilt may seem to have disparate parts stitched together. In either case, if the process is done correctly and everyone agrees, then either result can be equally strong.
Practices - conflicts focused on or influenced by actual behaviors that is usually the result of an interaction of individual perceptions, personal characteristics, and the policies governing the context (e.g. people make decisions on their actions based on their interpretation of the policies and abilities to carry them out given the constraints of the situation). Interventions at this level require disputants to be present in the situation by focusing on the behavioral change rather than (mis)interpreting the meanings of those actions through "person" or "policy" lenses. The most effective process for dealing with practices disputes is to develop queries and a questioning attitude (think of Stone et al's "Learning Conversations" from their book "Difficult Conversations").
Persistence - the length of the conflict and its impact on the parties. Persistence is keenly felt in conflicts that are long lasting or the resolutions of which have longer term impacts for the participants. The length of time in a conflict is impacted by a strong/disproportionate interaction between two or more of the other elements. For example, a personal characteristics like race or gender having a strong impact on perception of a group within a specific cultural context, which leads to informal and formal policies and institutionalized practices reinforcing the perception of that group and impacting each individual within that group. Apartheid would be a large scale example. In families, high conflict parenting disputes are often the result of mental health or substance abuse issues on the part of one or both parents which is a personal characteristic affecting perceptions, the historical functioning of the family system (unwritten policies and practices), and having an impact on the types of custody orders issued by courts (written policies). This all ultimately forces unwritten policies to be written and/or re-written and previously unmonitored behaviors to be monitored and new behavioral modes to be enforced by written policies. while all interventions require time and patience on the part of the parties involved, conflicts focused at this level particularly require patience on the part of all parties involved since they fundamentally alter all levels of their experience. In order to effectively take a position on patience one must treat it as a quarry and be careful of the definition of this word. This is not a quarry, as in something to be chased (like a fox) but a quarry as in digging deeply in the earth for rocks or other minerals. Most quarries don't dig themselves over night, nor are they filled in quickly, and the impact on the landscape and environment surrounding them is always significant, which is why digging into or out of them takes careful planning and patience.
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