What are the enduring effects of community‐based conflict resolution processes? According to the research reported here, lessons participants learn in conflict resolution processes disseminate to their communities; secondly, such dissemination can be measured by content analysis of participants’ constituent organization newsletters. The authors illustrate their findings with a case study of the New Community Meeting conflict resolution model (NCM), implemented 1997–98 in an Oregon community to address business‐environmental conflict over growth and sustainable development. Content analysis of business and environmental newsletters over 21 months, including before and after NCM, shows increasing positive and decreasing negative references to former adversaries over the period, together with advocacy for collaboration. The authors frame this study using social exchange theory, and conclude that this theoretical paradigm fits conflict resolution and consensus‐building processes well.

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© 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
2002
Plenum Publishing Corporation
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