Condo Media - January 2012 - 40

COMMUNICATION

by Linc Cummings, Joe Riviere, CMCA, AMS, PCAM, CPM, by Courtney L. Feldscher and Sasha Russo, CMCA, AMS, PCAM

In-House Fighting
Conflict and the Condominium
ive years ago, my husband and I moved into a high-rise condominium in the Greater Boston area. The day after moving in, we woke up to discover a note had been slid under our door. It was not a welcome note—far from it. It was a letter written by a member of our community, outlining why we must vote for him in the upcoming election. It was less a campaign letter delineating his qualifications than an impassioned plea for the attention of the community. That morning, I didn’t think too much about it, mostly because we were renters and could not vote in the election. I thought more about it the next morning, and even more about it the morning after that. And a whole lot more about it the morning after that. By the end of our first month in the community, we had received more than 20 letters from different members, vehemently imploring other homeowners to save the community. Of course, the message of survival was a constructive reading of the text. Taken literally, the letters were apprehensive, angry, bitter and combative. Fingers were pointed, blame was placed and threats were levied. The consistency in the tone and content of the letters, along with their sheer number, suggested a shared sentiment. The people writing these letters weren’t outliers or fanatics, they were regular homeowners, spurred to action by the perceived unjust and untenable actions on the part of their governing board. Clearly this community was in conflict. In the interest of full disclosure, my community was undergoing a massive renovation due to a failure of previous generations of boards and homeowners to reinvest in the capital infrastructure. The heightened emotions of the homeowners were directly proportional to the frequency of the staggering special assessments levied against them. The situation I observed, while perhaps exceptional, provided the impetus for my research. As an academic, I wanted to know more: How common is conflict in community associations? What are the experiences of conflict in community associations? What conditions are more and less likely to engender or escalate conflict? What follows is the first in a two-part series of articles describing my endeavor to understand the role of community associations in social life. This month’s article will define and contextualize the role of conflict in organizations like community associations. Next month’s column will report the preliminary findings of my survey on conflict in Greater Boston-area community associations and suggest strategies for conflict management. Deciphering the role of conflict in community associations is particularly difficult because community associations experience the gamut of conflict from the ordinary (e.g., disagreements between community members regarding noise levels) to the extraordinary (e.g., litigation between community members regarding allegations of fraud). Discerning the nature of the disagreement and developing an appreciation for how it escalates into conflict is the first step in understanding conflict.

What Makes a Disagreement a Conflict?
Threats are embedded in conflicts, so when disagreements harbor even the hint of a threat, the situation often intensifies. Conflicts occur when people perceive that, as a consequence of a disagreement, there is a danger posed to their needs, interests, concerns or values. The threatening nature of the situation heightens the emotions of the people involved. Consequently, what might have been a minor disagreement becomes a major conflict. For example, in community associations there may be disagreement between board and community members regarding complete access to association documentation. Board members may feel threatened by having to reveal their positions on controversial decisions, while community members may feel threatened by not being privy to information about how and why decisions are made. Identifying the people involved in the disagreement is another critical step in understanding conflict. There are often disparities between organizational members about who the begetter of conflict is and who is involved in con-

What is Conflict?
Conflict occurs between two or more people who disagree on an issue that threatens their respective needs, interests, concerns or values. It is manifested in social-behavioral interactions marked by tension, frustration, annoyance, interference and rivalry. Conflicts, particularly in organizations like community associations, tend to be highly complicated and understanding their emergence and effect often depends on an analysis of the disagreement, the threat, the people and the overall context.

CONDO MEDIA • JANUARY 2012

Condo Media - January 2012

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