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International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution
Teachers College, Columbia University
Teachers College
Columbia University

Quick Facts

  • Managers spend 25-40% of their time dealing with workplace conflicts.


  • The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission currently employs more than 100 full-time mediators to assist with employment discrimination cases.
ICCCR

International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution

ICCCR Publications

We continue to improve our capacity to disseminate information regarding ICCCR theory, research, and methods, through training, conferences, course offerings, as well as by continually updating the ICCCR Website; involvement in the organization of and attendance at national and international conferences; and through the continued publication of scholarly and practical books, chapters and articles.

The Morton Deutsch Online Library

Please click here if you have a Columbia University UNI or click here to browse the library at the bottom of Morton Deutsch's page if you do not have a UNI

The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice
The handbookMany practitioners of conflict resolution dismiss the contributions of theorists and researchers, particularly when the research challenges their own opinions or methods. At the same time, scholars often fail to utilize the expertise of highly skilled practitioners in their development of theory, and research designs often fail to take into account what practitioners and policy makers want or need to know. In response to the growing concern in the field of conflict resolution over this “gap” between theory and practice, in 1999 the ICCCR began convening an informal seminar on conflict resolution theory and practice. The lively discussions from this seminar inspired the development and publication of The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, edited by Professors Morton Deutsch and Peter T. Coleman (Jossey-Bass, 2000). Many of the chapters of the book are organized by first presenting the theoretical ideas in the substantive areas being discussed, then drawing out the implications of these ideas for understanding conflict, and concluding with the development of these ideas for educating or training people to manage their conflicts more constructively. This book was the recipient of the Center for Professional Responsibility (CPR) 2000 Award for Excellence. The new second edition, with Eric Marcus joining the editing team and coordinated by Kathryn Crawford, was published in 2006.

Distributive Justice: A Social-Psychological Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, April 1985. Morton Deutsch
Click here to view a pdf of the book

ICCCR Research Team Publishes 2-paper Practice-to-Theory Series in Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Summer 2008
What moves people to work with each other rather than against each other when locked-into destructive, long-term conflicts? This two-part series, part of our ongoing practice-to-theory project, presents the findings from a study that explored various methods of eliciting constructive engagement from stakeholders - through interviews with 17 expert scholar-practitioners working with protracted conflicts. A grounded-theory analysis was applied to the interviews to allow new insights into constructive conflict engagement to emerge from the data. Our objective was to enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of constructive engagement in settings of protracted conflict for the purposes of developing more robust theories and practices.

American Behavioral Scientist on Intractable Conflict
Peter Coleman, Barbara Gray of Pennsylvania State University, and Linda Putnam of Texas A&M University have edited a new special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist on intractable conflict. Intractable conflicts are characterized by intransigence, longevity, complexity, and serious trauma for the disputants and often for bystanders as well. In this special issue we explore the nature of intractable conflicts, their root causes, and innovation approaches for reversing or ameliorating them.

Special Issue of Peace and Conflict
Featuring Pioneering Work of Morton Deutsch Honored
The career of Morton Deutsch, Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of ICCCR, is being honored Fall, 2008 in a special issue of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. The issue contains a biographical article on the decades of prominent work by Deutsch on conflict, cooperation, and social justice. It also includes articles by several of his former students, including Kenneth Kressel, Susan Opotow, and Peter T. Coleman.

Special issue of Social Justice Research
Features papers from a conference on interrupting oppression sponsored by the ICCCR (2006).  This series of papers provides a framework for thinking about oppression and how to overcome it. It considers the value premise underlying the use of the term “oppression.” It then discusses the nature of oppression, the forms it takes, and what keeps it in place. In its final two sections, it focuses on awakening the sense of injustice and the strategies and tactics for overcoming injustice.

Special issue of Peace & Conflict on dynamical-systems approaches to addressing conflict edited by Peter Coleman.
This special issue of Peace and Conflict will present a series of theoretical articles that approach the study of conflict and conflict resolution from the perspective of dynamical systems theory. This perspective has been employed to conceptualize and investigate complex, dynamic phenomena in many areas of science (Weisbuch, 1992; Johnson, 2001; Strogatz, 2003) from cancerous cellular mutations to catastrophic global climate shifts. It includes six papers; an introductory article which answers questions about the utility of the dynamical-systems perspective for understanding and addressing conflict, and five conceptual papers which employ the metaphors and methods of the perspective to critical issues of conflict and peace.

Peace, Conflict, and Violence: Peace Psychology for the 21st Century 
(link to free online publication)
Dr. Peter T. Coleman and Dr. Morton Deutsch wrote Chapter 19 of this book. The purpose in editing this volume is to bring together in one place international perspectives on key concepts, themes, theories, and practices that are defining peace psychology as we begin the twenty-first century. The editors share with our international colleagues a broad vision of peace psychology, covering a wide range of topics such as ethnic conflict, family violence, hate crimes, militarism, conflict management, social justice, nonviolent approaches to peace, and peace education. In addition to providing a useful resource that integrates current research and practices for scholars and practitioners, they wanted the book to be accessible enough to introduce a new generation of students, both graduate and upper-division undergraduate, to the field. When organizing the topics in the book, they have tried to capture the four main currents in peace psychology: (1) violence, (2) social inequalities, (3) peacemaking, and (4) the pursuit of social justice.

Distributive Justice
Morton Deutsch
This book is concerned with the social psychology of distributive justice.  The concept of distributive justice centers on the fairness of the distribution of the conditions and goods that affect individual well-being.  Issues of distributive justice pervade social life.  They occur not only at the societal level but also in intimate social relations.  They may arise whenever something of value is scarce and not everyone can have what he wants, or whenever something of negative value (a cost, a harm)) cannot be avoided by all.  They also may be brought into play whenever there is an exchange in a relationship.
Click here for a pdf of this book.