Conflict management: why can the same evidence lead to opposite conclusions?
In a conflict between departments, assembling the relevant evidence seems the soundest starting point for a decision. The managerial question is more specific: how should a decision be prepared when each manager draws a conclusion from the same evidence that favours their own area of responsibility?
What the literature establishes
Linda Babcock and George Loewenstein (1997, Journal of Economic Perspectives) synthesise experimental research on self-serving biases in bargaining. In the experiments reviewed, access to shared information does not prevent parties from making different assessments of a fair outcome or a likely court decision, each favouring their own position. Disagreement therefore need not involve concealment: it can concern an interpretation that each party considers reasonable.
The other party's outcome enters the calculation
George Loewenstein, Leigh Thompson and Max H. Bazerman (1989, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show experimentally that evaluations of an allocation depend on more than one's own outcome. The other party's outcome and the relational context also influence preferences. This mechanism complements rather than duplicates the explanation: parties may differ both in what they believe is justified and in the value they attach to relative outcomes.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that any claim benefiting its author is biased. These studies neither distinguish legitimate from illegitimate claims nor establish that responsibility for a dispute is shared equally. A possible bias calls for examining the reasoning; it does not replace an assessment of contractual obligations, risks or responsibilities. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What shared evidence does not resolve
Experimental settings offer a degree of control generally unavailable in organisational conflicts: participants can receive strictly comparable information. Within a company, access to data, responsibilities and the consequences of an agreement are often asymmetric. Adding documents may therefore correct an information gap without changing the implicit rule through which each party interprets them.
A practical check in Zurich
Within SHR's conflict management programme, an exercise could address the allocation of a resource between commercial, risk and technology functions in Zurich's financial services, insurance, tech businesses or European headquarters of international groups. Before a decision is made, each party would separately record, using the same evidence, the outcome they consider fair, their criteria and the evidence that could lead them to revise their judgement. During a one-month pilot, the organisation could measure the proportion of cases in which criteria are made explicit before an allocation is proposed, then check which criteria are actually applied in the final decision. This indicator would document the traceability of the reasoning, not the absence of bias or the resolution of the conflict. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Zurich
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