No abstract

Conflicts occurring in or as a result of membership in organizations can be classified into three major categories: intrapersonal, intragroup, and intergroup. Conflicts in each category result from various personal-cultural and organizational structure factors. These factors may be identified through appropriate diagnosis and their effects on and implications for each of the three levels of conflicts established. Such a diagnosis is a prerequisite for the appropriate development and implementation of intervention strategies. The management of organizational conflicts involves diagnosis and intervention to maintain a moderate amount of conflict and help the organizational members learn various styles for effective handling of different conflict situations.

No abstract

The author discusses methods used in other social sciences and in marketing in terms of two key criteria defining “good research.” It is argued that the simultaneous research desiderata of data integrity and high currency or generalizability often place conflicting operational demands on researchers. Thus, tradeoffs must be made in employing any method to investigate a research problem. As a consequence of these inevitable tradeoffs, a broader rather than narrower method set becomes appropriate for marketing investigations. Case research is explored as one useful alternative research method for marketers. The nature of case research in contrast to case teaching or prescientific case culling is discussed, the appropriateness of case-based versus more conventional deductive methods is considered by researcher objective and type of problem investigated, and a four-stage case research process is described. General guidelines and caveats for the conduct of marketing case research are given. The author concludes that case research may be viewed as a metaphor for the general utility of the varied inductive research methods in expanding our perspectives on marketing research problems.

This article reports a first step toward developing some quantifiable dimensions of the industrial buying task group, called the buying center. Group composition and interaction processes were examined for purchases of capital equipment and industrial services in 31 firms. Data were analyzed to test the soundness of a communications network perspective on the buying center and the managerial implications of such a perspective. Equipment and service purchase measures differed reliably across several indices suggested by our theoretical orientation. Organizational structure and purchase situation attributes correlated in generally expected directions with the dimensions of the buying group.