LFKK10273U Advanced Conflict Management

This course content is distributed at two distinctly different levels: A) the personal level, and B) the process level:

A) The emphasis on the personal level comes from the recognition that the natural resource management professions involve an inevitable component of conflict-laden decisionmaking. Often they act in conflicted situations be it as part of political decision making, public or private management or in relation to an involved, often antagonistic general public. The course presents current theory and an analytical framework on how to constructively manage complex and conflict laden public policy and planning situations - as seen from a public planning or private organization or stakeholder perspective. The course address the following specific themes: Culture, Institutions, Power, Capacity, Incentives, Cognition and a number of social psychological factors - all of importance for process design. The course provides theory, analytical tools and skills for the students. The students project work starts with an initial context assessment by use of the analytical framework. Guided by their assessment the students get a personal experience with selected theories and tools in order to develop appropriate strategies and design culturally sensitive processes for the specific situation at hand. To supplement this hands-on experience from project work a series of lectures presents an overview over the course theory, analytical frameworks and tools. Student seminars, group-exercises, discussions, role plays and individual work provide a basis for students personal development and reflection on own skills, capabilities and potentials with regard to conflict analysis and management.

B) The second level that this course operates on addresses culturally appropriate process design. The participants in this course will come from many different countries with many different political systems. It is not possible to teach them a universal approach to conflict management that will be equally successful in all of the countries in which they may be employed. The second major focus of the course is therefore to develop in the students the awareness of political culture and the ways in which that context must inform their efforts to design processes that can integrate complex scientific issues and sensitive social values is a way that leads to innovative outcomes in natural resource decision making. The course uses concrete cases from natural resource management in Euro-American as well as developing countries contexts. Through exercises and project work the students can try various tools and approaches to conflict assessment and development of management strategies. A series of broad principles will be a focal point of the course, but the students’ core learning task will be to apply those principles in a flexible and integrative fashion to a case of their choosing.

The course design and objectives have been constructed to response to the unique challenges and learning opportunity that a broadly international student population creates. The specific content will to some degree be adapted to the expressed learning needs and particular interests of the actual group of students.