The embedded conflict management practitioner: exploring the potential and maximizing impact for constructive conflict engagement in organizations

Eva Malisius wanted to find out about the role of conflict managers in businesses.

Conflict happens in every workplace, but fortunately the outcomes don't have to be all negative. Conflict managers are professionals who enhance the positive aspects of conflict - like learning opportunities - while helping mitigate the negative aspects. Many businesses bring in conflict managers to help them overcome hurdles, never realizing that they may actually have hidden conflict managers within their ranks.

Anyone with specific knowledge, skills, and an ability to see the constructive and learning opportunities in a conflict is a conflict manager without a mandate. These people help improve decision making, manage the complexity of modern business life, and often they do it naturally.

Dr. Malisius set out to learn what impact people like this have in their industries, and to help managers nurture these natural conflict managers, to highlight their skills, and to build a body of work around those skills, to provide theory where practice already exists.