Susan S. Raines, PhD, is a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. For more than twenty years she was a professor of conflict management in the Graduate School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding & Development at Kennesaw State University, in suburban Atlanta. She is the president of Collaboration Services, a consulting firm that works with public, private, and nonprofit organizations to prevent and proactively manage conflict and collaboration. She has mediated more than 17,000 cases inside and outside of the court system and served as an Alternative Dispute Resolution Reservist for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency. Through the provision of training, one-on-one performance coaching, program evaluation, culture change initiatives, strategic planning, and crisis intervention, she has assisted organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, United Nations International Organization for Migration, the Florida and Georgia Supreme Courts, the DeKalb County Multi-Door Courthouse, The Maryland Association for Conflict Resolution, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Florida Medical Association, George Physician Leadership Association, Volkswagen North America, American Association of Chemists, New York State Agricultural Mediation Program (NYSAMP), CureViolence, and many Fortune 500 corporations. She is the coauthor of Expert Mediators and more than approximately fifty peer-reviewed publications, and served as the editor-in-chief of Conflict Resolution Quarterly for twelve years.
This book is a great teaching and training resource for individuals seeking to understand and improve their conflict management skills, particularly within professional organizations. Whether you are seeking insight into your organizational conflict culture or practical conflict management approaches, this book has it all. There are excellent workplace examples and thought-provoking discussion questions throughout, which I love to use as conversation starters in my own classroom. Even if you are not using it for educational purposes, having a copy on your shelf would be beneficial for anyone working in a position that involves assisting others working through conflict.--Erica Knotts, Southern Oregon University After reviewing the proposal for the book during the Summer 2022, I adopted the Second Edition of the book for a course on conflict resolution that I taught Spring 2023. I had used a different textbook in previous sections of the course, but the Raines text was more conducive for teaching conflict resolution in organizational contexts. The book was well received by the students in the class and I intend to adopt the third edition for the course in 2024. This textbook presents basic concepts and skills necessary to prevent and proactively resolve common workplace conflicts. It's appropriate for use in an undergraduate course on conflict resolution, and would also be a great resource for future organizational leaders. There are skill-building exercises on difficult conversations, conducting performance reviews, and negotiating with employees and other managers while navigating through difficult times.--Jody A. Worley, University of Oklahoma Conflict Management and Leadership for Managers reviews central issues in preparing for and addressing myriad types of conflict that occur in organizational settings. The book covers micro, interpersonal conflicts that occur among supervisors and employees, such as giving performance feedback, as well as group-level interactions and macro-level considerations such as designing systems for organizational conflict management that protect employees and organizations from harm and promote organizational justice.--Jessica Jameson, North Carolina State University