Drama theorist posted an explanation of Tug of War diagrams recently. They show the forces at work in an interaction in a vivid way. And the new software does it for you instead of you having to do it by hand.
Here's how the software deals with the example drama theorist used. The case concerned
..two companies, A & B. The issues are: should B make a bid for A's shares? If B won't do so, A says it will recommend its shareholders to accept a bid from another company, a rival to B. Here's the options board.
.A says that if B bids, it will accept the bid & not recommend B's rival. But B thinks A may be asking it to bid solely in order to force the rival to bid higher. So A has a cooperation dilemma -- it must try to persuade A it can be trusted. B's position is that A shouldn't sell out, but should carry on under its present ownership; but B thinks A won't accept this, but will recommend a sale to its rival, hence B has a trust dilemma. For this reason B also has a positioning dilemma -- it actually prefers A's position to its own, but is holding out so as to get a better deal from A. Finally, B has persuasion & rejection dilemmas because it prefers A's position to the threatened future (under which B won't bid & A recominteractionmends B's rival), while B prefers the threatened future to A's position.
Here's the Tug of War generated by the software. Notice how the fact that all horizontal arrows point to A's position indicates that A is winning the Tug of War. However, the upward arrow from A's position indicates it's not quite stable.
