Conflictology
What is Conflictology?
Conflictology is Eudaimonia Universe's framework for diagnosing different sources of organizational 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
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 organizational 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
The parties hold different things to be important. The question at issue is ought.
Incentives, roles or processes place the parties in opposition regardless of intent.
The parties read the same facts differently. The question at issue is is.
A party's standing or identity feels threatened. The question at issue is who.
From diagnosis to emergence: four stages
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 formalized 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 organizing framework for practical diagnosis.
Organizational application
- Diagnosing organizational 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 center 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 organizational conflict?
What does intervention mean in practice?
How does an engagement proceed?
Citation and related pages
Related services: Organizational Conflict ｜ Leadership and Decision-Making ｜ Related research: Human OS ｜ Philosophical background: Aufhebung and emergence
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