Value Conflict: What It Is and How to Resolve It

Quoting an important PON message by Frans Evers

PON: “Some of our most heated negotiations and disputes involve value conflict over our core values, such as our personal moral standards, our religious and political beliefs, and our family’s welfare.

(…)These types of value conflict, which highlight our norms, beliefs, and identities, can be incredibly difficult to resolve. When our most deeply held beliefs and principles are at stake, we often ratchet up value conflict out of a desire to be heard, refuse to make any concession that would appear to compromise our values, or categorically refuse to negotiate. Drawing on new research, we present three strategies for negotiating value-based conflict.

1. Assess Whether the Value Is Truly Sacred

Value conflict often arises because one or more of the parties involved consider a value to be sacred and nonnegotiable. In some cases, our values truly are sacred and not open to compromise. In other situations, however, our values turn out to be “pseudo-sacred”—that is, we are willing to negotiate them under certain conditions, notes Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman.(…)

Before refusing to budge on an issue you deem sacred, try to envision an outcome that would allow you to abide by the spirit of your values even as you make concessions on the specifics. Similarly, if a counterpart insists a particular issue is sacred, you might make a proposal that honors their values while also bringing you closer to agreement. (…)

2. Offer a Concession on a Core Value

You may be able to induce cooperation from a reluctant counterpart in a value conflict by making a difficult but symbolic concession on a key principle.

In a 2007 study, Jeremy Ginges of the New School for Social Research and his team presented various proposals for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to citizens residing in the West Bank and Gaza: Jewish-Israeli settlers, Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian student supporters of Hamas. (…) When asked whether they would accept the peace deal if accompanied by a significant concession from the opposing side on one of its sacred values, all three groups became willing to negotiate. The Israeli settlers agreed to make concessions if Hamas accepted Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinian refugees grew more flexible if Israelis would relinquish their claim to the West Bank. And the Palestinian students became ready to bargain if the Israelis were willing to officially apologize for Palestinian suffering in the conflict (…).

3. Affirm the Other Side’s Positive Qualities

In a value conflict, thinking about qualities you appreciate in your counterpart, such as trustworthiness or deep convictions, can help parties create value, researchers Fieke Harinck of Leiden University in the Netherlands and Daniel Druckman of George Mason University found in their research.

This result dovetails with findings from University of California at Los Angeles professor Corinne Bendersky showing that negotiators can soften their counterpart’s firm stance on a seemingly sacred value by making statements that affirm the counterpart’s status, such as “I have a lot of respect for people like you who stand by their principles.” It seems an opponent’s affirmation of our status buffers us against the identity threat we’d suffer if we compromised on a core issue and makes us more open to value creation in the process. (End of quote)

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Option 2 above, referring to 2007 academic research, has no relation with the basis principles of the mutual gains approach, since it applauds exchanging concessions on positions of the parties. It does not show that the change of attitude of the negotiators about talking to each other, would help the process of finding an agreement. I would not recommend that route.

Many years of experience as a negotiator and a policy-mediator have provided me with a fourth strategy and that is:

4. Try to find and create new common values that parties were not aware of

In my time as CEO of Natuurmonumenten there was a huge political conflict about the possibility to drill for oil and gas in the Waddenzee. This part of the North Sea is the shallow area between the Dutch, German and Danish islands and the mainland of these countries. These countries have had protection plans for a long time, and they are firmly in place now. But in the years the mentioned conflict took place, there was no strong legislation to refuse a permit from the national government. The company (NAM, a joint venture Shell/Exon) stated that possible damages should be small. The then top civil servant of the Ministry of Environment said in the discussions that the Waddenzee was of such high value that small damages might ruin the total value. He compared the sea with an antique vasethat after being only little damaged by a fall, would probably lose more than half of its value. I picked that up in a letter to the editor of the national paper NRC, stating that this clearly showed that some things were not negotiable; so was drilling for oil and gas in the Waddenzee. In another paper, the Volkskrant, a former minister and well-known public person accused me of arrogance, stating that everything was negotiable. We were both wrong of course.

But after discussion with NAM we agreed that any activity of NAM should not do any damage to the Waddenzee, its natural functions for so many species etc. Once we had this agreement, the negotiations shifted from yes-no, to how? And technicalpossibilities and costs.

A very good example of this approach is the principle of sustainable development, developed by the Brundtland Committee in its report to the general assembly of the United Nations (1987). It was a brilliant answer for the parties that were fighting for years over the principle of economic growth and the need to protect the natural environment. What a pity that in all-day practice sustainability in fact has replaced the basic idea behind the Brundtland report. But still: agreement between parties about what should be sustainable development in this case, this country or even this world can only be reached by consensus focused negotiations like MGA. 

Question:                                         

What if Israel and Hamas and its allies would accept that there may be found but not discussed shared values and would look for overarching principles that the sides can agree on, even if they disagree on less crucial principles? So even in the present tense situation it might be possible to agree on such principleslike: neither of our populations should suffer, a stable non-war situation is in the interest of all people and that once in negotiation, negotiators of all parties should be protected by all parties?