Folger, Working Through Conflict

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Joseph P. Folger, Marshall Scott Poole and Randall K. Stutman, Working Through Conflict: Strategies for Relationships, Groups, and Organizations, 6th Edition. Allyn & Bacon, 2008.

Referenced in: Church Conflict Education, Standard Textbooks

From the Publisher

Covering the whole range of conflict settings—interpersonal, group, and organizational – Working Through Conflict provides an introduction to conflict management that is firmly grounded in current theory and research. Encompassing a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives, the text includes an abundance of real life case studies that illustrate concepts and help students learn how to apply theory. The Fifth Edition of this engaging and comprehensive text has been thoroughly revised to be even more accessible to students.

Features of the Sixth Edition:

  1. A new chapter, “Managing Conflict,” presents an integrated model of conflict and offers you techniques for conflict management.
  2. Several new case studies addressing leadership, family, and neighborhood conflict make the material even more engaging and relevant.
  3. “Tactics,” covered solely in one chapter in the fifth edition, are blended throughout the text of the sixth edition, providing a more integrated discussion of the topic.
  4. Integrated discussions of emotion and social cognition and conflict, cover the most recent research on the factors that create and help manage conflict.

About the Authors

Joseph P. Folger is a Professor of Communication at Temple University in Philadelphia. He received a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Wisconsin and served on the faculty of the University of Michigan prior to his appointment at Temple. He is a former chair of the communication department and the former Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the School of Communications and Theater. He conducts research and teaches in the area of conflict management, mediation, group process and decision-making.

Marshall Scott Poole is David and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar, Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and Director of I-CHASS: The Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois. He is also a CCSS Fellow in the Organization Science Program at Vrije University in Amsterdam, Netherlands. His research interests include group and organizational communication, information and communication technologies, collaboration, organizational change and innovation, and theory construction. One of Scott’s current research projects is the Virtual Worlds Exploratorium Project, a multi-university collaboration which investigates communication and behavior in massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Specific research within this project includes studies of team effectiveness, mentoring and learning and trust in MMOGs. Another of Scott’s current research projects focuses on coordination of multi-team systems in emergency response organizations and on how communication and information technologies promote or inhibit effective response.

Randall Stutman is widely recognized as an authority in leadership communication theory and design. He has worked as an executive leadership coach for Ameritech, Deutsche Bank, General Electric, Kemper Insurance, Lehman Brothers, McDonald’s, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Con Edison, and Wyeth, among others. As a former Professor of Communication at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, he conducted research and taught courses on conflict management, leadership theory, interpersonal influence, and organizational behavior.


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