Book Critique: Academic Administrators Guide to Conflict Resolution

  
by Sandra I. Cheldelin & Ann F. Lucas

               Conflicts between individuals are inevitable; dealing with them in the workforce, however, can be challenging even for the most accomplished leaders. In the book, Academic Administrator’s Guide to Conflict Resolution, authors Cheldelin and Lucas, provide readers with a tool to help identify and manage conflicts between individuals and different departments. Although, the book is designed for administrators at the college or university level, leaders working with individuals in a K-12 setting can also utilize some of the material presented in the book. While the authors combine their expertise to present a well-researched book, it might best be considered a scholarly resource manual as opposed to something that contains easily implemented ideas.

Highly qualified authors, both Cheldelin and Lucas have extensive expertise in the field of psychology and are currently teaching at the university level. Cheldelin, a licensed psychologist, is also an expert in organizational behavior and authored several books on the subject. Lucas, a diplomat on the American Board of Psychology, has also authored many books on educational leadership. Together, they have created a book that presents a conceptual framework for understanding, examining, and analyzing interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup conflicts. They also identify skills needed to mediate conflict and present two case studies that demonstrate suggested interventions.

While the title of the book was promising, seemingly, to provide specific suggestions that would help resolve conflict, and the preface outlined chapters that appeared to contain relevant information, the book failed to deliver the anticipated outcomes. It was dry, verbose, and lacked meaningful suggestions for resolving conflict. The organization of the chapters would make it difficult for a leader to sift through the rhetoric to find the limited applicable content. Written more for the scholar then the working leader, the book contained suggestions that seemed over exaggerated and offered few recommendations that could be easily implemented at the K-12 level.

   The book, while lacking solutions for resolving conflict, did an excellent job of defining conflict. The authors also provided information that would help the leader to identify the problem or source of conflict. It also highlighted essential skills that individuals need to develop in order to resolve conflict. Ideally, the authors should have included recommendations on how a leader could go about developing these essential skills, although they failed to do that in the book. When discussing sources of internal conflict, they missed the opportunity to make this section truly relevant; instead, it was presented in a superficial, non-compelling manner.  Each chapter did contain a concise summary that could easily be used as an overview of the chapter, making almost unnecessary to read the rest of the chapter. In the cases where the authors discussed meaningful research, they failed to cite those studies in a way that would make it possible for the reader to easily explore the original source of the information.

As the reviewer of this book, I found it difficult to read, having to constantly refocus my attention on information being presented. While I appreciated the content that would help identify the sources of conflict, I was frustrated by the lack of innovative solutions for resolving conflict. Instead, the authors presented suggestions that, at best, could be considered common sense, and at worst, obvious. The case studies, while interesting and entertaining, were over exaggerated and not at all relevant to a K-12 setting. If the reader is looking for a resource tool to help them understand conflict and its potential sources, or if they are interested in identifying essential conflict-resolution skills, then this is a good reference. If however, you are looking for a tool to help you resolve conflicts, this book is not the best source. In my opinion this book would be better titled, “Academic Administrator’s Guide to Identifying Conflicts.”