ABSTRACT
The researcher-practitioner interviews were conducted to discover and articulate a range of working propositions on creativity for conflict resolution. Consistent with the overall purpose of this study, the analysis of interview results focuses primarily on: (1) definitions and hallmarks of creativity and (2) its origination phase, highlighting ways in which creative resolution outcomes and/or procedures first appeared. Discussion on incipience, evolution, acceptance, and sustenance is secondary and supplementary. These four phases are explored when they help to illuminate the two primary subjects in focus. The analysis of the interviews will generate a broad range of empirical discoveries and theoretical insights across the collected episodes of creativity. The present chapter first outlines the methodology used for analyzing the sixteen episodes and then describes some of the essential findings. The next chapter will draw on these findings and build a range of working theories of conflict resolution creativity, with implications summarized to suggest an analytical framework for the in-depth case study of satyagraha in Chapter 4. Because the present chapter and the next one are guided by one coherent set of methodological considerations for the comparative case analysis, which is distinguished from the single-case analysis in Chapter 4, the discussion that follows will outline all the steps of inquiry taken for both Chapters 2 and 3 in an integrated manner. These methodological issues under consideration are: the unit of analysis, data collection, operationalization and analysis, and reliability and validity. Moreover, the present chapter will discuss three types of findings: creativity demonstrated by (1) conflict parties; (2) intermediaries; and (3) actors fulfilling both functions at the same time. Building on these empirical findings, the next chapter will discover and generate working theories of conflict resolution creativity, by utilizing such heuristic tools and typologies as the five-phase model (or the longitudinal nature of creativity), process-outcome, system-element (or levels of analysis), and paradigms. Reflecting on the quantity of data collected from the thirty-one preparatory interviews as a guide, it was determined that 15-20 in-depth interviews would be adequate to achieve the stated objectives and to build a solid basis for the
in-depth case study to follow. Sixteen interviews were actually conducted and analyzed. Because of the exploratory and complex nature of the study, the conventional logic of sampling was neither useful nor applicable to select the interviewees, but it offered an analogical basis for systematic selection. The criteria for selection included the following four considerations:
1 At least ten years of hands-on experience in resolving or otherwise coping with inter-group, socio-political conflicts, including inter-communal, intranational, international, and global ones. It was noted that years of professional experience per se would not automatically generate creative insights. Yet the preparatory interviews led to the working assumption that experienced practitioners would be more likely to have used or at least observed a rich menu of approaches, some of which might have involved creativity, either paradigm-driven or paradigm-breaking.
