Settling a conflict: is hearing both sides enough?
When a manager must settle a dispute, hearing everyone out seems an obvious requirement, yet its purpose often remains unclear. The management question is narrower: does allowing the parties to present their arguments before a ruling improve perceived fairness, even when the outcome goes against them?
What the literature establishes
Robert Folger (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally studied the opportunity to express one's views in a situation involving an inequitable allocation. His findings show that people's evaluations do not depend solely on what they receive: the opportunity to make their position heard also contributes to perceived fairness. For a manager, the outcome of a ruling and the way arguments are gathered are therefore distinct dimensions.
Having a voice is not only about influencing the decision
E. Allan Lind, Ruth Kanfer and P. Christopher Earley (1990, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) compared opportunities to speak before or after a decision with having no such opportunity. In their experimental setting, speaking after the decision still improved fairness judgments, although speaking beforehand had a more favourable effect. This finding indicates that the value of having a voice extends beyond control over the outcome: being heard also matters when influence is limited.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that simply hearing everyone out will make an unfavourable ruling acceptable. These studies do not justify treating perceived fairness, agreement with the decision and lasting conflict resolution as equivalent. A hearing alone does not remedy a discriminatory decision, a breach of the law or an unjustifiable allocation. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These experiments isolate certain effects of having a voice, but they do not reproduce the full history of a workplace dispute. They do not establish that a listening session will reduce recurring conflict in a persistently divided team. In practice, it is also important to clarify what remains negotiable: presenting a settled decision as an open consultation risks creating a misleading expectation.
A practical check in Berne
As part of SHR's conflict management programme, teams in Berne's federal administration, public health, telecommunications or precision industry could undertake a field exercise: for each ruling reviewed, record whether every party could present their arguments before the decision and received the reasons for it. Over a pilot period defined in advance, calculate the proportion of rulings meeting these conditions, then collect separate assessments of the fairness of the procedure and of the outcome. Reporting responses in aggregate, without retaining sensitive details of the disputes, makes it possible to check whether a procedure seen as fair can coexist with a contested outcome. This observation will not prove that listening has a causal effect, but it will provide a verifiable starting point for improving how disputes are settled. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Bern
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