A panorama of conflict mediation experiences of a selected group of administrators representing the Philippine School Overseas

Abstract

Advocating mediation as a powerful noncoercive, nonviolent, and nonbinding form of conflict intervention, school administrators and corporate managers are bound to mediate conflict before it escalates to formal litigation in court. Guided by the principle of bracketing or reductions to come up with themes through reading and rereading of texts and member-checking procedures, this phenomenological paper has surfaced triad powers of conflict mediation as exercised by 10 select school administrators of Philippine Schools Overseas in the Middle East particularly in The United Arab Emirates, The Sultanate of Oman and The State of Qatar. These include power productive compassion, power of pro-active disposition and power of progressive decision which enabled them to mediate conflict at their peak state of reflective equilibrium.  Amass of ways to resolving conflicts is placed on records but these triad powers on conflict mediation provide portal to probing that conflict mediation is both a science and an art the extent to which school leaders must exercise equilibrium between mind and heart to avoid biased decision, to strengthen working relationship, and to achieve work productivity at the work place.

Keywords: Conflict mediation, Filipino administrators, Philippine School Overseas, power of productive compassion, power of proactive disposition, power of progressive decision, Middle East