This brief, theoretically grounded, yet practical text has proven successful with both student and professional
audiences, offering clear, usable advice on how to manage the conflicts that arise on the job and in personal relationships.
Important chapters dealing with issues of intercultural communication and gender have been revised and rewritten
to reflect the most current research, and the unique material on conflict and writing allows students to gain insight
into a medium of communication overlooked by most texts.
The authors have created a five-step model of approaching and analyzing interpersonal conflict, and this model
is applied repeatedly to different topics, providing students with a genuinely effective structure for working
through differences with colleagues, friends, and others they might encounter.
Features:
The Five-Step Model--Assessment, Acknowledgment, Attitude, Action, Analysis--appears in four important chapters
and provides a practical matrix for managing many types of conflict.
Separate chapters on Gender and Conflict (4) and Intercultural Conflict (5) present the most current research
on these newly emerging and extremely important topics.
The text has separate chapters on oral, nonverbal, and written communication behaviors, and suggests how to
recognize and overcome barriers to the productive exchange of ideas and opinions.
Activities at the end of each chapter contain short and illustrative examples and problems that students can
work through to hone their new skills.
New To This Edition:
The coverage of mediation and arbitration has been greatly expanded to provide more information on these problem-solving
processes.
The chapter on Gender and Conflict has been completely rewritten and expanded to include the most current practical
and theoretical information available.
The chapter on Cross-Cultural Conflict has been revised and updated significantly.
Student cases have been added throughout to bring to life the theories that the text surveys and to give students
some real world handles on the subject matter.
The Bibliography has been greatly updated and expanded to reflect the wealth of research that has been published
during the 90s.
