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In the future, librarians need to prepare users to navigate a profoundly different informational landscape. Addressing issues of information overload and informed selection of both search tools and results, the purpose of this paper is to cast the collaborative relationship between librarian and student in the mode of an outfitter: a guide preparing a client for a journey. Within this context, the authors emerging role involves guiding students through the task at hand using critical thinking skills to access a wider range of publications to meet a broader range of needs.

Metaphors created by Raymond and Friedman reflect the current state of information, the relationship users have with these sources, and the role librarians play in a disintermediated environment. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond portrays a decentralized environment as a bazaar. In The World is Flat 3.0, Friedman describes how technology flattens organizations through empowering end users. The informational landscape in the twenty-first century is decentralized, and more powerful search tools provide unparalleled access to these sources. Users, however, continue to experience problems finding their information. A librarian/outfitter can prepare users to effectively track information in the new environment.

In the twenty-first century, a broader range of sources are available, and search engines are turning to dashboards to prioritize the growing list of results. Users need to adapt to the new environment through viewing the search as an activity rather than a destination. Librarians can help this process through sharing their expertise in uncovering likely places relevant information may be found, in evaluating sources, and locating information in a larger context. Through developing the meta-skill of information management, librarians guide users through the process of finding information for personal, professional, and academic needs.

The author’s goal is what it has always been: empowering end users to successfully access needed information in a disintermediated environment. Today librarians need to emphasize a fundamentally different set of skills in the interactions they have with students and faculty. People can use dashboards and satisficing to find sources they need, but librarian/outfitters can introduce a broader range of sources and tools suitable for completing specific tasks. This paper illustrates the different skills needed to effectively find information for personal, professional, and academic tasks.

This paper provides a new context for the process used for locating and validating information in an increasingly broad and diffuse informational landscape. Librarians become advisors in navigating a more complex informational landscape that is used to meet a broader range of informational needs. While focusing on navigating the broader range of resources through decoding dashboards and satisficing techniques, the author can assist users in overcoming information overload and advocate a broader sense of satisficing through using more sophisticated critical thinking skills.

This paper proposes that those who study diversity conflict recognize the distinction between first‐order diversity conflict and second‐order diversity conflict. The former refers to discrimination, while the latter refers to disputes over remedies designed to eliminate discrimination. First‐order disputes affect subordinant group members most strongly in the organization, are morally unambiguous for most, and are organized around set organizational and societal procedures. Second‐order disputes involve dominant as well as subordinant group members (so that more people are affected), are more morally ambiguous, and lack set procedures for dealing with them. As a result, second‐order disputes tend to remain hidden, despite being wide‐spread, resulting in autistic hostility. The presence of second‐order conflict may undermine efforts to resolve first‐order disputes, and lead to escalation of conflict between people from different identity groups. Recognizing this distinction is critical for understanding the dynamics of diversity conflicts.

Misunderstanding, or misconstrual, is a major exacerbating factor in conflict escalation and an impediment to negotiation and resolution. Laboratory work has identified characteristic errors of construal which partisans make in assessing the views of their opponents. This paper examined whether these same phenomena could be observed in a traditional real‐world conflict, that between trade unions and management. In two studies, union representatives and managers reacted first (in Study 1) to an actual contract negotiation that the two sides were involved with, and then to a hypothetical unjust act. Results revealed that the two sides indeed display many characteristic errors of construal. Specifically, union representatives underestimated management concern for harmful acts against workers, or management's sincere wish to negotiate in good faith within financial constraints, and were generally highly suspicious of management motives and intentions toward workers. Managers saw union representatives as unreasonable, and greatly overestimated union militancy and unwillingness to accept extenuating circumstances. Negotiations will be greatly improved if such misconstruals can be exposed and debunked prior to, or during negotiations.

Current research on justice has found that perceptions of injustice are reduced when harm‐doers provide an explanation or “account” of their actions. We question whether these findings generalize to everyone in organizations. In particular, we predict that responses to unjust acts and social accounts about them will differ for those in organizations who have less power and for those who are “in‐group” to the victim. We test this prediction by replicating Bies and Shapiro's study of causal accounts, using union subjects as well as managerial subjects, and constructing a scenario in which the victim is a worker and another in which the victim is a manager. As expected, union subjects were more angry about unjust acts than were managers. Counter to our expectations, all subjects perceived an act to be more unjust when the victim was a worker than when the victim was a manager. As in previous studies, an account reduced feelings of injustice, except in one situation: among those of lower power (union reps) who evaluated acts that hurt members of their own group (i.e., a worker), an account did not reduce their sense of injustice for the victim, even though it did reduce blame at the harm‐doer.

Conflict styles are typically seen as a response to particular situations. By contrast, we argue that individual conflict styles may shape an employee's social environment, affecting the level of ongoing conflict and thus his or her experience of stress. Using data from a hospital‐affiliated clinical department, we find that those who use a more integrative style experience lower levels of task conflict, reducing relationship conflict, which reduces stress. Those who use a more dominating or avoiding style experience higher levels of task conflict, increasing relationship conflict and stress. We conclude that an employee's work environment is, in part, of his or her own making.

This article contains two brief cases about health‐care disputes, designed for executive education audiences who work in health care. One case is a dispute between a doctor and a hospital administrator over authority to control nursing assignments. The other case is about doctors competing for access to operating room space. These cases are used to discuss underlying causes of the disputes and participants' strategies for managing these disputes. The teaching note focuses on using the power, rights, and interests model from Ury, Brett, and Goldberg (1988) as a way to organize the discussion.

This article examines the impact of role ambiguity and trust on the transformation of task conflict into relationship conflict. Building on the work of Simons and Peterson (2000) we argue that the work environment—in the form of role ambiguity—provides information with which individuals assess the motivations underlying task conflict. We hypothesize that under high role ambiguity, individuals are less likely to attribute an ulterior motive to those engaging in task conflict because they see the conflict as stemming from the needs of the work itself. In a sample of 141 managerial, professional and administrative employees we find strong support for this hypothesis as well as the additional hypothesis that this effect is stronger under conditions of high trust.

This study investigates the impact of conflict style as a coping strategy in response to role conflict. Recent research has begun to examine workplace uncertainty as a mediator in the role stress process. Using this overall framework, we developed and tested hypotheses regarding the effect of conflict style activeness on the link between role conflict and uncertainty. Results supported the mediating role of uncertainty in the role stress process, thus replicating previous research. Additionally, the results showed that exhibiting a more active approach to conflict management decreased the negative impact of role conflict on uncertainty. These findings suggest that individuals may be able to reduce the negative individual impact of role conflict in their environment by adopting positive behavioral styles while avoiding negative ones.

This study used a scenario design to examine whether there are different reactions among whites based on how a diversity program is justified by an organization. A reactive justification (affirmative action) was proposed to result in greater backlash than a competitive advantage justification (diversity management). In addition, this study examined the effects of personal and group outcomes on backlash and explored two individual difference variables, gender and orientation toward other ethnic groups, as potential moderators of the proposed relationships. Backlash was operationalized in four ways: an affect‐based measure (negative emotions), two cognitive‐based measures (attitude toward the diversity program, perceptions of unfairness of promotion procedures), and a behavioral‐intentions‐based measure (organizational commitment). Results indicated that the diversity management justification was associated with more favorable support of the diversity initiative, and that unfavorable personal and group outcomes adversely affected backlash reactions. There was no empirical support for the influence of the moderator variables on the proposed relationships, however, a main effect for gender was found. Implications of the study's findings and future research directions are discussed.

This special issue of the International Journal of Conflict Management is devoted to teaching materials for classes on negotiation and dispute resolution. We decided to devote an issue to teaching materials for two reasons. On the supply side, there are very few outlets for good teaching materials. Except for those connected to major case publishing outlets such as the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard or the Dispute Resolution Center (DRC) at Kellogg, most people who develop new cases and simulations have no way to let the wider scholarly community know about their materials. On the demand side, there is always a need for innovation and change in teaching. Indeed, it is probably safe to assume that people would not be developing new materials if they found exactly what they needed in established sources. While PON, the DRC, and the major books on negotiation (e.g., Lewicki, Saunders, Minton, & Barry, 2003; Thompson, 2000; Currall, Geddes, Schmidt, & Hockner, 1993; Murnighan, 1993) are all extremely good, these sources can not meet everyone's teaching needs. This special issue includes seven papers that offer new ideas for cases and exercises. We hope that these will enliven and enrich your classroom experiences.