LibGuides: Conflict Resolution: Home

Welcome! This guide introduces resources at UMSL Libraries related to conflict resolution. In addition to the books and databases below, you can search Discover@UMSL for other resources. Some search terms to get you started:

conflict resolution
conflict management
interpersonal conflict
nonviolence
reconciliation
mediation
communication and conflict

The Conflict Resolution Toolbox by Gary T. Furlong; Christopher W. Moore (Foreword by)
Call Number: Access via O'Reilly
ISBN: 9781119717584
Publication Date: 2020-09-16
Shows mediators, negotiators, managers, and professionals at all levels how to simply and effectively assess conflict situations and choose the right tools to resolve the issue in a meaningful way.
Encyclopedia of Conflict Resolution by Heidi Burgess; Guy M. Burgess
Call Number: HM136 .B783 1997
ISBN: 9780874368390
Publication Date: 1997-11-01
Topics covered include events, people, organizations, and training and academic programs. This is a useful reference work for students, parents, teachers, and business people, as well as mediators and other conflict resolution professionals.
The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution by Bernard S. Mayer
Call Number: BF637.I48 M39 2000
ISBN: 9780787950194
Publication Date: 2000-04-18
This empowering guide goes beyond observable techniques to offer a close look at the creative internal processes--both cognitive and psychological--that successful mediators and other conflict resolvers draw upon.
The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Communication by John G. Oetzel (Editor); Stella Ting-Toomey (Editor)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781412987790
Publication Date: 2013-02-14
Emphasizes constructive conflict management from a communication perspective, identifying the message as the focus of conflict research and practice.
The Handbook of Conflict Resolution by Peter T. Coleman (Editor); Morton Deutsch (Editor); Eric C. Marcus (Editor)
Call Number: Access via O'Reilly
ISBN: 9781118810323
Publication Date: 2014-02-28
Written for both the seasoned professional and the student who wants to deepen their understanding of the processes involved in conflicts and their knowledge of how to manage them constructively, this book provides an understanding for managing conflicts at all levels--interpersonal, intergroup, organizational, and international. Each chapter focuses around a central case or illustration of the practice with a discussion for both training and direct intervention.
Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively by Stella Ting-Toomey; John G. Oetzel
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9780803948433
Publication Date: 2001-07-25
Ting-Toomey and Oetzel accomplish two objectives: to explain the culture-based situational conflict model, including the relationship among conflict, ethnicity, and culture; and, second, integrate theory and practice in the discussion of interpersonal conflict in culture, ethnic, and gender contexts. While the book is theoretically directed, it is also a down-to-earth practical book that contains ample examples, conflict dialogues, and critical incidents.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson; Ron McMillan; Al Switzler; Emily Gregory
Call Number: Access via O'Reilly
ISBN: 9781260474190
Publication Date: 2022
Provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation - especially difficult ones - leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, the book teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person.
Use Your Difference to Make a Difference by Tayo Rockson
Call Number: Access via O'Reilly
ISBN: 9781119590729
Publication Date: 2019-08-27
Provides readers with a skills-based, actionable plan that transforms differences into agents of inclusiveness, connection, and mutual understanding. This innovative and timely guide illustrates how to leverage differences to move beyond unconscious biases, manage a culturally-diverse workplace, create an environment for more tolerant schooling environments, more trusted media, communicate across borders, find and retain diverse talent, and bridge the gap between working locally and expanding globally.
Mingling with the Enemy by Jeanne Martinet
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781684035212
Publication Date: 2020-12-01
With an insightful and down-to-earth sensibility, bestselling author Jeanne Martinet offers a practical and encouraging guide to navigating conversations in our current social climate. She illustrates easy-to-learn techniques and strategies to help you: keep your mind open, know your own triggers, pick the best topics, change course to avoid disaster, be an active listener, master the ability to yield without losing, employ humor and storytelling to ease tension, go undercover when necessary, be a brilliant subject changer, and find common ground. She also provides important tips on knowing when it's time to take up the gauntlet and when it's better to make a graceful escape.
Brave Talk by Melody Stanford Martin
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781506462455
Publication Date: 2020-09-22
By learning to treat every conflict as if it's an impasse and temporarily suspend our desire to resolve differences, we make space for deeper understanding and stronger ties. Brave Talk offers hands-on skill-building in critical thinking, power sharing, and rhetoric. Combining real-life storytelling, engaging illustrations, and rigorous academic sources, this book blends humor, creativity, and interactive learning to help everyday people develop better skills for navigating conflict in order to build stronger relationships and healthier communities.
Nonviolent Communication: a Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg; Deepak Chopra (Foreword by)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781892005281
Publication Date: 2015-09-01
Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things: * Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity; * Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance; * Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all; * Means of influence: sharing "power with others" rather than using "power over others"

Reframing Campus Conflict by Jennifer Meyer Schrage (Editor); Nancy Geist Giacomini (Editor)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781642670486
Publication Date: 2020-10-21
The Spectrum Model (Schrage & Thompson, 2008) approach centers advocacy for inclusive conflict excellence by expanding traditional adjudication pathways to include dialogue, conflict coaching, mediation, restorative practices, and shuttle diplomacy for a more robust and inclusive expression of conflict and conduct practices.
Cultural Impact on Conflict Management in Higher Education by Nancy T. Watson; Lei Xie; Matthew J. Etchell
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781641133722
Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Shares information regarding conflict management and resolution in higher education from a global perspective.
Resolving Community Conflicts and Problems by Roger Lohmann (Editor); Jon Van Til (Editor)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9780231151689
Publication Date: 2011-10-18
The twenty-four essays in this collection analyze public exchanges and the nature of sustained dialogue within the context of race relations, social justice, ethnic conflicts, public-safety issues, public management, community design, and family therapy. They particularly focus on college campuses and the networks of organizations and actors that have found success there. Open discussion may seem like an idealistic if not foolhardy gesture in such milieus, yet in fact the practice proves crucial to establishing and reinforcing civic harmony.
Conflict Management and Dialogue in Higher Education by Nance T. Algert; Carla Liau-Hing Yep; Kenita S. Rogers; Christine A. Stanley
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781648023064
Publication Date: 2021-02-01
Mediation as an intervention method to use in conflict management can be productive for building leadership capacity and organizational development in higher education. Adults average five conflicts per day and people in titled leadership spend over two-thirds of their time engaged in managing conflict. This book offers conflict management strategies, models, and processes to support college and university personnel in recognizing and managing conflicts and how to build skill sets that can enhance effective communication and address issues strategically.
The Young Adult's Guide to Surviving Dorm Life by Atlantic Publishing Group
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781620232019
Publication Date: 2017-07-26
Provides college students with an idea of what to expect before ever stepping foot into their new living space. This book is full of tips and tricks ranging from sleeping patterns to unwelcome guests. This book unravels how to deal with different types of roommates, such as neat freaks and slobs. Fighting over who does the dishes may seem like biggest problem there will ever be -- and this book does cover that -- but if things get seriously bad, that's covered, too. We take a look at how to deal with roommates that are depressed, have an eating disorder, or have a substance abuse problem. This book is full of case studies garnered from hours of interviews with college students, both new and graduated.

Let's Talk About It: Turning Confrontation into Collaboration at Work by Paul L.Marciano
Call Number: Access via O'Reilly
ISBN: 9781260473391
Publication Date: 2021
Presents a powerful collection of proven communication and relationship strategies - inspired by the author's acclaimed RESPECT model of employee engagement - that will show us how to: Recognize and let go of the unconscious cognitive biases that keep us from seeing things from other people's perspectives; negotiate the minefields and goldmines of language, both verbal and nonverbal; understand that what we say to ourselves is as important as what we say to others; work with different personality types and use simple conversational techniques to resolve conflicts and improve collaborations; and conduct these difficult conversations both in person and in virtual environments.
From Conflict to Courage by Marlene Chism
Call Number: Access
ISBN: 9781523000739
Publication Date: 2022-05-03
Unresolved conflict is workplace kryptonite. Learn how to develop the mindset and skills to defuse disagreements, overcome division, and turn conflict into an opportunity for growth.
Leading a Group: A Practical and Comprehensive Handbook by Kerri Hamer
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9780994604002
Publication Date: 2016
Strategies, processes and techniques that can be applied in a wide range of situations and groups: training room; support group; board room; team leading; facilitating a work group; the community action group; committees you belong to at work or in your home life. This book gives you the knowledge to develop or refine and enhance your leadership skills.
The Minority Experience by Adrian Pei
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9780830845484
Publication Date: 2018-09-04
Organizational consultant Adrian Pei describes key challenges ethnic minorities face in majority-culture organizations. He unpacks how historical forces shape contemporary realities, and what both minority and majority cultures need to know in order to work together fruitfully. If you're a cultural minority working in a majority culture organization, or if you're a majority culture supervisor of people from other backgrounds, learn the dynamics at work. And be encouraged that you can help make things better so that all can flourish.
Turn Enemies into Allies by Judy Ringer; James Warda (Foreword by)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781632651549
Publication Date: 2019-05-01
Offers a way of working with clashing employees that is deliberate and systematic -- one that draws on the author's expertise in conflict and communication skill-building and a decades-long practice in mind-body principles from the martial art aikido.
Managing and Resolving Workplace Conflict by J. Ryan Lamare (Editor); David Lewin (Editor); Paul J. Gollan (Editor); David B. Lipsky (Editor); Ariel C. Avgar (Editor)
Call Number: Access Online
ISBN: 9781786350602
Publication Date: 2016-07-26
Contains chapters by some of the world's leading scholars of workplace dispute resolution and conflict management as well as chapters by emerging younger scholars in these fields. The chapters present original research that combines cutting-edge thinking about the theoretical dimensions of alternative dispute resolution and conflict management along with rigorous empirical analyses of real-life data.

A selection of journals related to conflict resolution. Visit the library's journals search to explore additional resources by title or by discipline.

Journal of Conflict Resolution
(3 year delay) "An interdisciplinary journal of social scientific research and theory on human conflict. The journal focuses largely on international conflict, but also explores a variety of national, intergroup and interpersonal conflicts."
Journal of the International Ombudsman Association
"A peer-reviewed online journal for scholarly articles and information relevant to the ombuds profession."
Conflict Resolution Quarterly
"An interdisciplinary social sciences journal focused on relationships between theory, research, and practice in the human conflict management, dispute resolution, and peace studies fields."
Group Decision and Negotiation
"Focuses broadly on relation and coordination in group processes by exploring the entire process or flow of activities relevant to group decision and negotiation."
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research
"Publishes articles that develop theory and report empirical research on negotiation and conflict management at multiple levels, including interpersonal, intergroup, organizational, societal, and international."
Culture and Organization
(15 month delay) "Represents the intersection of academic disciplines that have developed distinct qualitative, empirical and theoretical vocabularies to research organization, culture and related social phenomena."
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
"Publishes fundamental research in organizational behavior, organizational psychology, and human cognition, judgment, and decision-making."

Websites/Resource Libraries

Beyond Intractability
Information and resources from the Conflict Information Consortium, including articles, a free online seminar, teaching materials, and more.
Conflict Resolution Network
Organization which offers training materials, including a certificate course and free podcast, on conflict resolution skills.
Association for Conflict Resolution
A professional organization providing information and opportunities for mediators, educators, and others engaged in conflict resolution.
Ombuds Higher Education Toolkit
From the International Ombuds Association.

Self Assessments

Implicit Bias Test
Harvard's Project Implicit
Conflict Styles Assessment
United States Institute of Peace

UMSL Library Guides

MOBIUS is a consortium of academic, research, and public libraries that work together to share materials. You can request non-UMSL books (print only) and pick them up at the TJ Library front desk.

For example:

People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts
(1986) Robert Bolton

Internet Archive Help Center – How can we help you?

The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library. Create a free account to read digital scans of books and other resources.

For example:

Managing Differences: How to Build Better Relationships at Work and Home
(1996) Dana Daniel

UMSL students, staff, and faculty are eligible for cards at the St. Louis County Library regardless of your residency. Visit your closest branch with your UMSL ID to register. You may find the public library helpful for finding additional materials (e.g., self-help).

The St. Louis city and county libraries are also part of MOBIUS (see above).

Academic Video Online This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary video subscription that supports the entire range of curriculum, from anthropology to zoology. It includes a variety of video material available with curricular relevance: documentaries, interviews, feature films, performances, news programs and newsreels, and demonstrations. It contains thousands of award-winning films, including Academy®, Emmy®, and Peabody® winners as well as frequently used films for classroom instruction, newly released films and previously unavailable archival material oriented toward academic institutions.
Accounts enable users to save clips and create interactions (primarily for instructors).
Help with AVON Videos (finding, sharing, playing videos, etc.)
https://proquest.libguides.com/academicvideoonline
https://alexanderstreet.com/products/academic-video-online

TED Talks: Conflict Resolution
Leaders across a variety of fields - science, business, art, and more - share research and offer their thoughts on important topics.

Beyond Intractability: Conflict Frontiers Seminar Videos