Essay: Mediation in and for organisations.

In favour of strategic and future-oriented conflict management.

Part 2 – Functional change and practical concept

in: Perspective Mediation 4/2019

Dr Sascha Weigel

This is the second part of the article "Mediation in and for organisations", which develops the thesis that mediation as a conflict management process in organisations is an "organisational event". It does not only take place for the personal benefit of those directly involved, but also serves the commissioning organisation. If this development is successful, the mediation process is an interesting alternative to conventional conflict management processes for organisations that are exposed to the permanent pressure to innovate and change in the VUCA world (Part 1).

What is remarkable about the question of job development is that digitalisation hardly creates any jobs for unskilled, low-skilled workers, as was the case with the Industrial Revolution. It may be a certain irony of history that the industrial revolution displaced highly skilled craftsmanship by breaking down work into the smallest steps and assigning it to unskilled workers who no longer had to think and be skilled, but were expected to perform a single action hundreds of times a day, while in the digital transformation these typical routine jobs are being eliminated and assigned to a few highly skilled digitisers.

As in the past, these changes in the world of work will lead to fear-driven potential for conflict, for which management, the general team spirit or the organisational culture will be held responsible. What is significant, however, is that the directly perceptible embodiments of these fears will be concrete interaction partners, but will probably be eliminated as conflict partners. Looms can be destroyed in a rush, but what do you want to do about software if you don't even know where the plug is? If the future is "good", we will interact with AI systems as we would with humans, but if things go badly, we probably won't be able to argue with them. Alternatively, we will get used to not only talking to animals and sharing our thoughts, worries and fears with them, but also with the interacting machines (in) the future. And what will this mean for the way we deal with our emotions and rationality when algorithmically sophisticated interaction partners become our conflict partners? Or are we actually arguing with the programmers and data collectors? As indicated, it was one thing to destroy the looms in the 19th century or to scream in rage at the DOS-powered PCs in the 20th century, but it will be quite another to want to settle our "feelings of conflict" with an AI system of the 21st century: Where to put the fear, anger and rage as well as the incomprehension and disbelief of interaction partners or machines to which we are quick to attribute human traits and characteristics, but which are ultimately not human? What will still be a technical problem in the future and what will be an interacting conflict between social entities?19 Perhaps AI systems will turn out to be the "better" conflict partners or even teachers after all.

Take a look at this website, an artificial intelligence that provides psychological counselling: https://www.x2ai.com

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