Managing in conflict: How actors distribute conflict in an industrial network

Abstract

Acknowledgements: This research is supported by the Leverhulme Trust, research grant F/00 273/N. We are grateful to Daniela Corsaro and the anonymous referees for their detailed and constructive comments and criticisms as we have developed this paper, and participants at the 28th IMP Conference in Rome for their comments. AbstractIMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experienced by actors. Through a comparative case study design, we propose and explanation of how actors manage conflict and manage in conflict given that they tend to value and maintain relationships beyond episodes of exchange. We consider conflicts in relationships from a network perspective, showing that actors experienced these while adapting to changes in their business setting, modifying their roles in that network. By identifying conflict with the organizing forms of relationship and network, we show how actors formulate conflict through pursuing and combining a number of strategies, distributing the conflict across an enlarged network.

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