What Are the Different Types of Conflict Resolution Strategies?

Conflict analysis is a decision analysis method developed in foreign countries on the basis of classic game theory and metagame theory in the formal analysis of conflict behavior.

Conflict analysis

The main feature of conflict analysis is that it can maximize the use of information. Through logical analysis of many real-life problems that are difficult to describe quantitatively, the results of conflict situations and process analysis (forecast and evaluation, pre-analysis and post-analysis) are analyzed. To help decision makers think about issues scientifically. It is one of the effective tools for analyzing multi-person decisions and solving multi-person competition problems. Abroad already

Concerning the meaning of conflict, different disciplines have different views, which can be summarized as the characteristics of the conflict phenomenon:

(1) At least two or more objective entities involved in conflict are often referred to as game players in game theory.

(2) Each conflicting entity has a set of feasible solutions that affect the interests of all other parties.

(3) The parties in the conflict have inconsistent interests.

The method of studying conflicts can be divided into two aspects according to the quantitative and qualitative differences. Many scholars in the West in the 20th century gradually directed their quantitative research to quantitative. In the field of economics, a group of famous scientists have made outstanding contributions, such as von Neumann, Morgan Steers, Debreu, Samuelson, Simon, Arrow, Buchanan, etc. Outstanding representative.

Von Neumann and Morgan Stern co-authored "Game Theory and Economic Behavior" in 1944, which formally established "Economic Game Theory" and convincingly proves that: The only realistic strategy is to use the Minmax Form Solution . Since the 1990s, especially in 1994, three "game theory" giants such as Nash

Von Neumann and Morgenstern laid the foundation of game theory. Mathematically speaking, although many game theory methods have very complicated mathematical forms, they still appear to be too simplified for practical conflict problems. In 1971, the metagame analysis technique proposed by N. Howard of the University of Waterloo, Canada broke through the traditional game theory research framework and proposed a flexible symbolic representation method that reflects the main elements of conflict. However, in the analysis of sub-games, it is assumed that each conflict participant has a mutual understanding of the ending preferences of all participants, which is extremely difficult to achieve in practice.

In the 1980s, Fraser and W. Hipel proposed a conflict analysis strategy ( Conflict Analysis ), which requires each player to rank their own priority vector according to their strength, position and requirements. The unilateral improvement of each outcome of the decision maker must be marked and recorded as UI (Unilateral Improvement). Then, a static analysis of each outcome must be performed, so that an overall balance can be obtained, and finally the most secure strategy for the parties to the conflict can be determined.

The elements of conflict analysis (also called the elements of conflict events) are the basic information needed to model and analyze the actual conflict problem, and the result of processing the original data. There are:

The general process or procedure of conflict analysis is shown in the entry figure.

(1) The understanding and description of the background of the conflict event is based on the collection and arrangement of background information about the event. Collation and proper description are the main tasks of the analyst. mainly include:

The cause (cause) of the conflict and the main development process of the incident;

the issue at issue and its focus;

Possible interests and subjects of behavior and their status and interrelationships in the incident;

Motivation, purpose and basic value judgment of the parties involved in the conflict;

Actions that parties may take independently in conflict situations.

A deep understanding and proper description of the background is the basis for a formal analysis of complex conflict issues.

(2) The conflict analysis model (modeling) is a simulation model of the relationship between conflict events or conflict analysis elements and their changes for the stability analysis of conflict situations after the initial information processing. It is generally more convenient to use tabular form.

(3) Stability analysis is the key to the "successful" resolution of the conflict, and its purpose is to obtain a stable outcome (the situation) of the conflict situation. The so-called stable situation refers to a situation (outcome) that is acceptable to all players in the game, that is, to the player i in any game, after changing its strategy, a new situation is obtained, and the utility value (winning) or preference of the new situation Are both smaller than the original situation, the original situation is said to be stable. Because in a stable state, no player in the game is willing to leave the strategy he has selected. Therefore, the stable ending is also the optimal ending (optimal solution). Stability analysis must take into account the preferences and mutual constraints of all parties involved.

(4) Result analysis and evaluation is mainly to further the logical analysis and systematic evaluation of the results of stability analysis (that is, each stable situation) in order to provide decision makers with useful reference information for decision-making.

An accurate mathematical description of how to calculate stability is called the solution concept. Foreign scholars have proposed a variety of solution concept forms, as shown in Reference 2 (Table 1).

The main features of the conflict analysis method are:

(1) can maximize the use of information, especially for many difficult

The new research directions in this field can be summarized as:

Master-slave countermeasures;

Mistake countermeasures;

Cooperation situation, that is, research on action strategy of non-strict competition conflict;

Alliance, it is necessary to study the causes and motivations of alliance formation in conflicts, as well as conflicts within alliances, etc .;

Research on non-transitive preference modeling and analysis;

Consideration of probability and risk in order to better analyze human behavior;

Explain the concept and vigorously develop the application of the solution concept to different types of conflict analysis;

Combine with other decision-making methods and technologies to better analyze and solve human cognitive problems, such as the application of artificial intelligence and other methods.

Conflict is a concept of philosophical category, which has both positive and negative effects on the development of the system. The analysis of conflict is not only a typical systems engineering proposition, but also an important proposition in economics.