Conflictology
What is Conflictology?
Conflictology is Eudaimonia Universe's framework for diagnosing different sources of organisational conflict before selecting an intervention. It classifies conflict into four types: value, structure, cognition, and existence.
Conflict is diagnosable.
Name the type before you choose the remedy.
Overview
Conflict arises when several things that are hard to reconcile — the conditions of the field, ways of seeing, competing goods, or ways of being — stand side by side, producing structural tension. We treat conflict not as a problem to be solved, but as a structural fact of the world, addressed without value judgement. Diagnosis determines the intervention.
A conflict has a type, and the type can be identified before any remedy is chosen. Choosing a remedy without naming the type is the most common reason dialogue fails. Diagnosis precedes prescription, as it does in medicine.
The organisational problem it addresses
The same conflict recurring between functions, cultural collision after an integration, executive meetings that never close. Conflict filed under "personality" always comes back: the remedies multiply because the cause was never named.
The four types
Diagnose the structure first
We diagnose the structure first — whether conditions such as power imbalance, dependency, or difficulty of exit still allow people to speak candidly. Working on the content while the field itself is broken rarely surfaces the truth.
Incentives, roles or processes place the parties in opposition regardless of intent. The question is whether the field allows candid speech at all.
Once the field holds, distinguish the content along three axes
A mismatch in how the same phenomenon appears. It dissolves once perspectives align.
A clash between two legitimate goods. It remains even after perspectives align.
A way of being that cannot move. Understanding alone doesn't resolve it; the person's standpoint has to be reconstructed.
Each axis calls for a different intervention, and using the wrong one for the words involved misses the mark. Sequence matters too: working through structure, then cognition and value, then existence, accounts for most of what makes an intervention work.
From diagnosis to emergence: four stages
Structure
Check the conditions of the field, and read what the parties value and how they see through Human OS.
Diagnose
Classify the conflict through the four types of Conflictology.
Intervene
Redesign the question, the decision process, or the roles, matched to the diagnosis.
Emergence
A higher-order answer neither side held at the outset.
Development background and method
Conflictology was formalised from a recurring field observation: the same remedy works on one conflict and fails completely on another. We located the reason in the type of the conflict rather than in the quality of the remedy, proposed the four-type classification as a hypothesis, and have continued to test and revise it through engagements and through products such as Compass and Integration Compass.
Evidence status
Conflictology is a proprietary diagnostic framework developed by Eudaimonia Universe through practice. It is currently being evaluated and is not presented as peer-reviewed, empirically validated research. It is not presented as a replacement for established fields such as conflict resolution studies or negotiation theory; it is an organising framework for practical diagnosis.
Organisational application
- Diagnosing organisational conflict: cross-functional friction, executive discord, and post-merger cultural collision are diagnosed through the four types before an intervention is designed.
- Decision design: the questions at issue in stalled meetings are structured by type, and the consent process is rebuilt.
- Leadership development: reading the type of a conflict becomes a shared leadership skill (product: Compass).
Limitations
The four types are diagnostic instruments; real conflicts usually present as overlapping types. Classification is not itself an intervention: the centre of the work lies in the design and dialogue that follow. The boundaries of applicability are still being examined.
Frequently asked
What does "conflict is diagnosable" mean?
Why does dialogue alone fail to resolve organisational conflict?
What does intervention mean in practice?
How does an engagement proceed?
Citation and related pages
Related services: Organisational Conflict ｜ Leadership and Decision-Making ｜ Related research: Human OS ｜ Philosophical background: Aufhebung and emergence
Use conflict diagnosis in your organisation
We take enquiries about diagnosing organisational conflict, designing interventions, and joint research.