ABSTRACT
Workers in the field of conflict resolution focus on how conflicts can be conducted well, with some mutual benefits and without resorting to highly destructive coercion, recognizing that conflicts are often waged badly. Workers in the field of collaboration focus on coordinated actions that are done cooperatively, without great reliance on unidirectional domination, recognizing they may done poorly. These two fields overlap and can complement each other. This chapter offers a framework for thinking and acting that can help foster better relations between consciously interacting parties when they are either contending or coordinating with each other. In considering how conflicts and collaborations may be better done, using the context of a broader concept, social relationships, is advisable. This chapter notes the immense complexity of large-scale relationships between self-identified collective entities and asks: what kind of conduct will tend to move a social relationship from a worse to a better one, along dimensions of coordination and of contestation? It considers the strategies parties in a highly coordinated-action relationship choose that reduce the harms that they inflict on each other and enhance the quality each derives from the relationship. It examines how various contexts affect the quality of contention and coordination in a relationship.
