Reviewed by Bob Little
Conflict is said to cost UK businesses some £40bn a year, yet developing techniques to manage this conflict rarely makes it onto corporate training schedules and is usually absent from leaders’ priorities.
To try to redress this, Clive Johnson and Jackie Keddy’s book offers practical guidance on how to prevent, contain and resolve conflict in the workplace. Moreover, it outlines how effective conflict management can influence how organisations channel their energies and build happier workforces.
The book examines such issues as workforce motivation and corporate responsibility. It contains a range of tools, techniques and templates to support those who facilitate the resolution of employee disputes. At simplest, the book gives some guidance on such issues as understanding conflict and its impact on the individual, team and organisation; methods for recognising and preventing conflict; identifying and channelling constructive conflict; managing and resolving escalated disputes, and implementing a conflict management strategy.
Those who believe that ‘managing conflict;’ is all about mediation should find their horizons broadened by reading this book – and, since the whole issue of workplace conflict does not get the profile it deserves when it comes to training and development, this book should warrant wide and careful readership.
Kogan Page, ISBN: 978-0-7494-5952-9, £24.95