The shifting role of a document in managing conflict and shaping the outcome of a small group meeting

Abstract

Small group project work often requires students to meet outside of class. It is important that these meetings be efficacious, as the resulting projects typically figure into students’ grades. The challenge is that, unlike in more formal meetings, there is typically no designated institutional authority to manage their work together. In peer meetings students have equal participatory rights; thus, formulating understandings and managing conflict can be especially delicate matters to accomplish. In this single case analysis of a small group project meeting, we examine the shifting role of a document in resolving conflict that threatens the group’s work. The analysis shows how, over the course of the meeting, a personal document created during the meeting subsequently becomes oriented to by the participants as an official formulation of their decisions and an authoritative directive to complete their tasks. This shift in orientation to the document allows a way out of the conflict and the meeting to come to a successful conclusion. In addition to providing data on conflict resolution in meetings without an official leader, the finding on the changing role of a document adds to understandings of how actions are accomplished through the construction and manipulation of objects.

The work of conflict mediation: Actors, vectors, and communicative relationality

“…One specific type of actor that the mediation literature rarely considers is the role of written texts (reports, letters, memos, etc.) in the composition of relations during mediation, even though research in fields ranging from linguistics to organization studies suggests that texts make a difference ( Latour, 1996 , 1999 ) in the ways human beings relate to each other, structure interactions, and enact social collectives (see Anderson, 2004 ; Asmuß and Svennevig, 2009 ; Brummans, 2007 , 2018 ; Brummans et al, 2020 ; Castor, 2018 ; Castor and Cooren, 2006 ; Chaput et al, 2011 ; Cooren, 2004 , 2008 , 2009 , 2015a ; Fauré et al, 2010 ; Hall and Butler, 2017 ; Jahn, 2018 ; Kameo and Whalen, 2015 ; Karlsson, 2009 ; Kuhn, 2008 , 2012 ; Meier and Carroll, 2020 ; Sergi, 2013 ; Smith, 2001 , 2005 ; Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011 ; Svinhufvud and Vehviläinen, 2013 ; Vaara et al, 2010 ; Vásquez et al, 2016 ). Written texts, for example, dictate rules of conduct, give some people authority while depriving others of it, assist people in managing tensions or making decisions, or give organizations a constitutional basis.…”