een two or more parties over some issue, objective, or behavior. A conflict, thus, is a dispute. Violence is an outgrowth of conflict when peaceful dispute mechanisms fail.
             When family members, co-workers, friends, strangers, ethnic and racial groups, and even entire nations perceive that they are being denied something that they feel they should have (regardless of the validity of their justification for such a perception), the typical response is to identify the party responsible for such denial. When such identification is established, the essence of a conflict situation, the issue and the parties has been defined. Conflict may be the result of genuine inequities among parties, or conflict may stem from cultural differences that shape perceptions. Conflict need not necessarily be detrimental to the parties involved. Effective and peaceable dispute resolution may introduce greater equity into society and bring the parties involved in a conflict closer together; conflict is detrimental, however, when violent behavior is the outcome.
             The profiles of persons who perpetrate acts of work-related violence always characterize such persons as "loners" (Schut 125). Definitively, loners often experience difficulty both in establishing and maintaining worthwhile personal and group relationships. The integration of individuals into their society stems from the forces that place them within the social system and govern their participation and patterned associations with others. Social values, group memberships, and social roles are conceived as the axes providing the ties that structure social interaction, place the person in society, and order relations with others (Bertrand 22). In effect, actors are integrated into society through the beliefs they hold, the positions they occupy, and the groups to which they belong. Maintaining social patterns, however, is often difficult (Bertrand 23). While great individual variatio...