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Articles-20251209.zipConflict culture conflict management.pdf
Conflict Culture and Conflict Management in Consumption Communities Katharina C. Husemann Royal Holloway, University of London
Florian Ladstaetter University of Innsbruck
Marius K. Luedicke Cass Business School, City University London
ABSTRACT
This study explores conflict culture as a distinct and influential element of a consumption community’s broader culture, and explores how communities initiate, perform, manage, and resolve intracommunity conflicts. A four-year interpretive study of the Premium Cola consumption community reveals two sets of formal and informal elements of conflict culture; explains how community members perform routine, and manage transgressive conflicts; shows how members garner positive and negative practical, identity, and relationship value from these two types of conflict; and documents how a community’s conflict culture develops through inventing new conflict behaviors to resolve transgressive conflicts. The study thus contributes new theoretical insights to the literature on social conflict in online consumption communities, discusses managerial implications, and initiates a discussion about conflict culture. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Consumption communities emerge from consumers nurturing a shared passion for specific brands, prod- ucts, activities, or ideas collectively (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013; Mathwick, Wiertz, & de Ruyter, 2008; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexan- der, 1995). Consumers have built communities for cen- turies, but the emergence of online communication technologies, consumer–company co-creation projects, and relational marketing activities has rendered con- sumption communities substantially more interesting for consumers and in consequence more relevant for marketers (Prügl & Schreier, 2006; Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Von Hippel, 2005).
Consumption communities exist in different spheres, scopes, and intensities. Subcultures of con- sumption, for example, emerge as distinct, self-selected subgroups of society that form on the basis of shared commitments to activities such as motorcycling or running (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Brand communities, in turn, emerge as structured sets of social relations among admirers of one specific brand (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). Consumer tribes result when con- sumers temporarily flock together in casual, isolated
encounters around activities such as joint roller skating (Cova & Cova, 2001). Consumption commu- nities such as the Jeep brandfests, for example, draw their appeal primarily from physical togetherness (McAlexander & Schouten, 1998), whereas communi- ties for collective problem solving (Mathwick, Wiertz, & de Ruyter, 2008), for example, thrive entirely on online communication.
Consumers join consumption communities to per- form shared rituals and traditions (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), to enjoy a sense of community with like-minded others (Kozinets, 2001), to express their creativity (Gebauer, Füller, & Pezzei, 2012), to give voice to ideological criticism (Luedicke, Thompson, & Giesler, 2010), and to garner identity value by distinguishing themselves from other consumers (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013). In their consumption com- munities, consumers also perform a variety of roles such as mentors, heroic role models, or talent scouts (Fournier & Lee, 2009) and engage in a range of value creation practices, such as documenting, customizing, and evangelizing (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009). Performing these roles and practices gives rise to a shared sense of “Gemeinschaft” (Tönnies, 1957 [1887]),
Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 32(3): 265–284 (March 2015) View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20779
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“community ethos” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 421), “linking value” (Cova, 1997, p. 297), “bonding together” (Kozinets, 2002a, p. 832), and of the particular type of social obligation known as “social capital” (Mathwick, Wiertz, & de Ruyter, 2008, p. 832).
The majority of consumption community researchers thus focuses on exploring how community consumers and marketers produce feelings of kinship, together- ness, and harmony. More recently, however, a small, but growing group of consumer researchers has begun to explore how, when, and why consumption communi- ties become sites of boiling tensions and overt social conflict. As the perpetuation, success, and “continu- ity” (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013, p. 1011) of their communities is of utmost importance for con- sumers as well as marketers, these studies contribute important knowledge of how conflict affects consump- tion communities.
This emerging literature already offers fascinating insights into conflict sources (Hemetsberger, 2006; Kozinets, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), con- flict resolution practices (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013), and outcomes of consumption community conflicts (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). Yet, none of the existing studies explores the possibility and consequences of communities developing a distinct and dynamic conflict culture, that is, a specific set of values, roles, artifacts, and behaviors that community members draw on when performing, managing, and harnessing value from intracommunity conflicts (Swidler, 1986).
To address this gap in theoretical knowledge, the authors conducted a four-year interpretive study in the context of the Premium Cola online consumption community (see www.premium-cola.de). The study reveals formal and informal elements of the Premium community’s conflict culture, explains how members perform routine conflicts, use conflict management techniques to end transgressive conflicts, and harness positive and negative values from conflicts. The study also reveals how the community’s conflict culture de- velops over time. Through these findings, this research advances the literature on the dynamics of social conflict in online consumption communities, develops the concept of conflict culture as a distinct element within a broader community culture, and offers prac- tical insights for conflict cultivation and community management.
The paper is organized as follows. First, it outlines the relevant literature on social conflict in consump- tion communities and highlights prevalent gaps in theoretical knowledge. Second, it reviews sociological conflict theories that inform the empirical analysis of conflict culture. Third, it describes the research context—the Premium Cola community—before it, fourth, presents key empirical findings on Premium’s conflict culture. The paper concludes with discussing theoretical and managerial implications of this study for consumption community and conflict research and practice.
SOCIAL CONFLICT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES
Consumer researchers have studied social conflicts in two kinds of communities that this study conceptually distinguishes as “communities in a broad sense” and “communities in a narrow sense.” Communities in a broad sense emerge where consumers build loosely knit, weak, or entirely imagined social ties based on their shared commitment to a product class, brand, activity, or consumption ideology (Anderson, 2006; Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013, p. 1012; Granovetter, 1973; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Members of these communities predominantly feel connected because their individual identity projects rely on similar brands, material, and symbolic resources (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013), rather than on actual social relationships. The broad and largely anonymous community of “people who snowboard,” the community of 44 million American runners (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013), or the community of contributors to virtual problem-solving communities (Mathwick, Wiertz, & de Ruyter, 2008) can be considered such communities in a broad sense.
In online spheres, communities in a broad sense of- ten emerge in the periphery of communities in a narrow sense. Communities in a narrow sense emerge from individuals fostering closely knit, enduring social re- lationships that are more akin to what Tönnies calls “Gemeinschaft” (Tönnies, 1957 [1887]). In these com- munities, members pursue a shared mission over an ex- tended period of time, take responsibility for their joint projects, make key decisions collectively, and solve im- portant problems together. Examples of communities in a narrow sense are the close communities of people who identify themselves as “snowboarders” (vs. “peo- ple who snowboard”) and meet regularly at a particu- lar mountain site to snowboard together, or the com- munity of outlaw bikers that meets in a specific city, or the core community of members of online garden- ing or cooking communities that fosters close and en- during relationships with each other (de Valck, 2007; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). In these more closely knit social settings, consumers perform community by continuously building, maintaining, and actualizing ac- tual social relations rather than consuming imagined community membership based on the consumption of similar resources.
Conflict in Consumption Communities in a Broad Sense
Consumer and organization research on communities in a broad sense provides valuable insights into three sources of community conflict, one conflict management practice, and several types of conflict outcomes. A first notable source of conflict is disagreement about a com- munity’s symbolic meaning and status in a broader
266 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
social context. Brand community members, for exam- ple, fight with members of oppositional brand commu- nities about the social and cultural meanings of their brands, about legitimate consumer ideologies (Ewing, Wagstaff, & Powell, 2013; Hickman & Ward, 2007; Luedicke, 2006; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), and par- ticularly about the related question of whether these brands and their consumption practices are righteous or ridiculous (Kozinets, 2001; Luedicke, Thompson, & Giesler, 2010). A disagreement between core and pe- ripheral community members about how to genuinely consume focal community objects or services is a second known source of conflict (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013; Kozinets, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Members of the North American long-distance running community, for example, often rely on the same market resources, but pursue different identity goals. Conflicts emerge among these heterogeneous runners, for example, when faster runners feel disturbed in their practice by slower runners who block their rac- ing routes (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013).
A third influential source of conflict in consumption communities in a broad sense is a competitive mind-set. While members of co-creation communities, for exam- ple, work together to co-create encyclopedia entries or commercial designs (Gebauer, Füller, & Pezzei, 2012; Humphreys & Grayson, 2008), they also compete for recognition, argue over the validity of certain infor- mation, and sometimes try to undermine each other’s reputation.
Thus far, the study of Chalmers Thomas, Price, and Schau (2013) is the only one to explicitly address the question of how consumers manage conflicts that have the potential to harm the community and jeopardize its continuity. These authors find that members of the American long-distance running community rely on “frame alignment practices” (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013, p. 1010) to resolve conflicts between loosely connected participants that share key commu- nity resources. Such practices include, for example, defining different starting times or separating routes for slow and fast runners.
Conflicts in communities in a broad sense are known to produce various important outcomes. For exam- ple, social conflicts are known to foster individual and collective identity projects (Luedicke, Thompson, & Giesler, 2010; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), fasci- nate and attract new community members, and ener- gize the community’s creative process (Gebauer, Füller, & Pezzei, 2012; Humphreys & Grayson, 2008; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995). Prior consumer research also explains that, and why, conflict is an important element in the continuation of communities in a broad sense.
However, in these communities, social relations are likely to be more accidental than deliberate (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013); more temporary than enduring (Gebauer, Füller, & Pezzei, 2012); and more grounded in competitive than community mind-sets (Humphreys & Grayson, 2008). It seems that because these communities in a broad sense are less interested
in nurturing, protecting, and developing lasting per- sonal relationships and pursuing communal projects, conflicts tend to affect these communities positively. In communities in a narrow sense, however, conflicts can also yield detrimental effects.
Conflict in Consumption Communities in a Narrow Sense
At present, de Valck’s (2007) study of an online community of food enthusiasts, and Hemetsberger’s (2006) work on a free/open-source software develop- ment community are the only two consumer research projects to directly address conflicts in more closely knit consumption communities. Both authors study communities in which members foster intense and enduring personal relationships, interact on a regular basis, and contribute to a shared community goal.
In her food community study, de Valck (2007) finds three prevalent sources of conflict: Members contest each other’s expertise; they fight about the legitimacy of certain behaviors, practices, and norms within the com- munity; and they fight about diverging views on specific food consumption issues. Hemetsberger’s (2006, p. 499) F/OSS open-source community study, in turn, finds that members predominantly, and continuously, fight on a more abstract level over the question of whether “ide- alist” or “pragmatist” values should define the commu- nity’s mission and which values should prevail when making important decisions.
These studies paint a more ambiguous picture of conflict outcomes for communities in a narrow sense, than studies on consumption communities in a broad sense. de Valck (2007), for instance, points out that intracommunity conflicts contribute to shaping partic- ipants’ individual profiles relative to other community members, and to developing a collective identity. Yet, she also notes without further specification that “too much” conflict can destabilize the community and po- tentially undermine its spirit (p. 272). To manage es- calating conflicts, food enthusiasts, for example, share stories about their culinary practices such as “first cook- ing experiences” (p. 269). This particular conflict man- agement practice directs members’ attention back to celebrating their similarities and shared purpose and thus prevents community conflicts from turning sour.
Hemetsberger (2006) similarly argues that in the more closely knit corners of software co-creation com- munities, conflicts tend to energize and revive commu- nity life. In these settings, conflicts tend to produce an “oppositional energy” (p. 496) that fuels commu- nity discourse and reflection, which is an essential part of what makes online co-creation appealing. However, Hemetsberger’s work also points at negative side effects of social conflict in close-knitted communities. She ar- gues that “extremely controversial issues” need some form of relief to prevent the community from “paraly- sis” (Hemetsberger, 2006, p. 499). One way of manag- ing conflicts over such extremely controversial issues
CONFLICT CULTURE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES 267 Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
is “cultivating a sense of humor” (Hemetsberger, 2006, p. 499).
In summary, community practices such as bringing members’ attention back to similarities rather than dif- ferences (de Valck, 2007), or cultivating a sense of hu- mor (Hemetsberger, 2006) are highly indicative of a more systematic way in which consumption communi- ties in a narrow sense perform and manage social con- flicts. In fact, these findings suggest that online con- sumption communities may not accidentally fight in these particular ways, but perform conflicts based on a specific set of values, roles, artifacts, and practices. That is, online consumption communities may develop a conflict culture that shapes the ways in which intra- community conflicts unfold.
Because prior marketing and consumer researchers have not yet directly studied conflict culture, or traced the development of conflict culture over time, the existing literature leaves five important questions unanswered: (1) Do (online) consumption communities perpetuate a conflict culture as part of their broader community culture? (2) What is such a conflict culture made of? (3) How do consumption communities perform and manage social conflicts? (4) Which outcomes do social conflicts produce for these communities? (5) And how does community conflict culture change over time?
To be able to address these questions requires to first gain a comprehensive theoretical understanding of what social conflict is, and how social conflicts can impact social relations more generally. The primary source of such knowledge is the sociological literature on social conflict.
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF SOCIAL CONFLICT
In sociological research, conflict is commonly conceptu- alized as an interaction relationship of individuals and groups with incompatible goals (Kriesberg, 2007), or simply as an “encounter of differences” (Levy & Zalt- man, 1975, p. 67). In popular culture, social conflicts have a reputation for being destructive and disinte- grating, whereas academia recognizes social conflicts also as a mechanism for relationship rejuvenation and development (Coser, 1956, 1957; Dubiel, 1998; Hirschman, 1994; Simmel, 1964). Sociologists, in par- ticular, consider conflicts a source of socially progres- sive and socially integrative outcomes for society and its subgroups (Bonacker & Imbusch, 2010). Sociological theory of socially progressive conflict outcomes argues that social conflict is an impetus for—not a consequence of—broader social changes (Bonacker & Imbusch, 2010; Marx & Engels, 2009 [1848]), and that conflict prevents a society from stagnation and loss of creativity (Coser, 1957, p. 197). Sociological theory of socially integrative conflict outcomes, in turn, proclaims that conflicts have a capacity for “achieving some kind of unity” among conflict parties (Simmel, 1964, p. 13). According to this
line of thinking, conflicts within groups strengthen sol- idarity, group cohesion, and group identity by forcing conflict parties—despite incompatible goals and hostile feelings—to reflect on each other’s viewpoints and their shared boundaries; by passing both parties through crisis and struggle; and by clearing a tense atmosphere from anger (Coser, 1956; Hirschman, 1994; Simmel, 1964). Between groups, conflicts are particularly influential for strengthening group identity, raising group boundaries, preventing group members from leaving the group, producing a consciousness of kind, and mobilizing energies (Coser, 1956; Kriesberg, 2007).
One of the most important puzzles for conflict soci- ologists is the question of what makes a conflict pro- ductive versus destructive. Sociologists tend to argue that conflict outcomes depend most notably on the con- flict parties’ ability to tame, refine, and thus “cultivate” their conflict behaviors (Coser, 1956; Dubiel, 1998, p. 210; Sarcinelli, 1990). Thus far, researchers have high- lighted seven practices that characterize such refined, cultivated conflicts: Conflict parties (1) embrace plu- rality and heterogeneity, and invite conflict as part of their group culture; (2) perform conflicts visibly, trans- parently, and democratically; (3) develop and comply to a minimum set of consensual values and rules for enact- ing their conflicts; (4) remind and force others to adhere to this consensus; (5) practice self-restraint, step back from opinions, and respect opponents; (6) tame emerg- ing aggressions by changing the mode of argumenta- tion (e.g., from using coercion to using humor) or redi- recting aggressions away from the original target (e.g., from internal to external targets); and (7) focus on ne- gotiating the terms upon which both parties can agree, rather than on defeating the opponent (Coser, 1956; Du- biel, 1998; Kriesberg, 2007; Laureys & Simons, 2010; Sarcinelli, 1990). Such conflict practices can be imag- ined as routinized behaviors that emerge as a nexus of particular doings, images, competences, meanings, and objects, that is, as “Praktik” rather than “Praxis” (Reckwitz, 2005, p. 253).
Sociological research on conflict culture tends to ad- vance a normative conceptualization of conflict culture. This study, in contrast, conceptualizes conflict culture descriptively. Such a descriptive lens allows for empiri- cally exploring, rather than normatively assessing, the specific styles, roles, and behaviors that constitute a particular community’s conflict culture. Based on Swi- dler’s (1986) early conceptualizations of culture, the au- thors imagine a community’s conflict culture as a tool- box stocked with relevant skills, habits, and styles for performing community conflicts in constructive ways.
Consumer research on social conflicts confirms many of the sociological insights on social conflict. For exam- ple, consumer research emphasizes that conflicts fos- ter community identity and vitality (de Valck, 2007; Hemetsberger, 2006; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), that conflicts contribute to com- munity boundary maintenance (Ewing, Wagstaff, & Powell, 2013; Kozinets, 2001; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), or that communities use humor for taming aggressions
268 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
(Hemetsberger, 2006). However, consumer researchers have yet to explore if such behaviors are manifesta- tions of a more systematic conflict culture, what such a conflict culture would be constituted of, how commu- nity members perform and harness social conflicts, and how consumption community conflict culture changes over time. From a managerial perspective, it is also of interest to explore which role conventional, hierarchi- cal conflict management behaviors (Amason, Thomp- son, Hochwarter, & Harrison, 1995; Rahim, 2002) play for consumption communities.
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS
The empirical approach for addressing these questions involved the observation and analysis of the German activist consumption community Premium Cola. The Premium Cola community—or Premium—emerged in 1999 when a group of frustrated cola fans attempted to bring back their beloved “Afri Cola” drink. The reason for the nascent community’s agitation was not so much that the German Mineralbrunnen AG had bought the Afri Cola brand, but that the new owner had changed the Cola’s recipe to please a more conventional con- sumer taste (e.g., more sugar, less caffeine).
After two years of unsuccessful lobbying, the group came to realize that their resistance would not prove successful or elicit a change in recipe. Overwhelmed with frustration by the new owner’s disregard for their calls, group members decided to “do their own thing” (emic term). In this respect, members obtained the orig- inal Afri Cola recipe from a former Afri Cola bottler and launched the “community brand” called Premium Cola (Füller, Luedicke, & Jawecki, 2008). From day 1, it became imperative for the community to evolve and develop a more ethical business model and organiza- tion than those of the Mineralbrunnen AG, which they had initially protested. Community members began to run their own operations as a democratic community. This meant that everyone—for example, consumers, bottlers, distributors, or barkeepers—could take part in the Premium Cola collective and be included in its or- ganization and decision making. For its first two years, Premium Cola existed as a local community in Ham- burg, Germany. After two years, Premium’s sales had spread past the borders of Hamburg reaching shops and bars throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. As a result, the widely dispersed community members were no longer able to meet face-to-face on a regular basis. Since community members wanted to maintain the transparency of their internal communications and allow members to participate in the community’s de- cisions, the community moved its communications to a mailing list. Since 2003, the mailing list has been the primary platform for conversations between com- munity members (in February 2014, “the list” (emic terms) contained about 16,000 e-mails). In 2009, the community decided to develop and market a beer under the Premium brand, which was followed by a Premium
coffee in 2011. Members pursued these product line ex- tensions as a means for demonstrating that they were able to successfully market other products—not just a Cola—while still adhering to the ethical standards defined by their operating system. In 2012, Premium Cola sold more than one million units of Premium cola, beer, and coffee throughout bars and selected shops in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Legally, Premium Cola is a nonprofit association. Organizationally, the community is run by three paid staffers, about 60 proactive voluntary contributors, and about 120 community “lurkers” mainly from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. The community outsources its cola, beer, and coffee production as well as parts of its distribution to external companies that are carefully tested for their adherence to the community’s ethical standards. Community members perform organizational tasks, make strategic decisions, discuss communication issues, and personally sell Premium products to local scene bars and clubs. The community makes all strategic decisions collectively, but three paid staffers perform most routine tasks.
As a result of their consumer enthusiasm for a par- ticular soft drink, their anticorporate mission, and their production activities, the Premium Cola community os- cillates between logics of consumption and production. Akin to free and open-source communities (Hemets- berger, 2006), the burning man organization (Chen & O’Mahony, 2008; Kozinets, 2002a), the community supported agriculture system (Thompson & Coskuner- Balli, 2007), and online peer-to-peer problem-solving communities (Mathwick, Wiertz, & de Ruyter, 2008), which also consume and produce their own core prod- ucts and services collectively, Premium Cola faces a range of internal tensions that result from their par- ticular hybrid position. As in the other consumption communities, Premium members consume their own products, ideologies, and lifestyles, but are also respon- sible for making decisions, interacting with external partners, and allocating routine tasks collectively. This particular combination of structural and ideological features renders the Premium community an ideal con- text for studying conflict culture in online consumption communities.
The second author began his data collection on the Premium Cola community in 2009, performing a netno- graphic investigation of the community’s Web site and various other on- and offline sources referring to the Premium Cola brand (Kozinets, 2002b). He then im- mersed himself in the community, closely following Premium’s mailing list and engaging in personal con- versations with community members. He conducted 15 phenomenological interviews with members of the community, attended three Premium Cola conventions (October 2010, May 2011, and June 2012), and par- ticipated in four “core team meetings” (emic term) via Skype conferencing in June and July 2012. This first research phase provided the authors with extensive knowledge of the community’s history, ideology, and organizational background.
CONFLICT CULTURE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES 269 Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
A first round of data analysis, categorization, and interpretation revealed that social conflict was an es- sential part of Premium’s larger community culture. The first and second authors therefore embarked on a second round of netnographic data collection to directly search for, identify, and extract community conflicts. The fact that the Premium Cola community predom- inantly communicates through its mailing list facili- tated this endeavor. This process produced a data set of 18 discussions. The authors then studied these discus- sions more thoroughly and excluded four discussions that did not explicitly include conflict behaviors. The final data set consists of 14 discussion threads contain- ing 1006 e-mails (see Table 1). As selection criteria, the authors only considered conflicts that had at least five participants and comprised at least six messages. In a final step of analysis, the authors conducted an inter- pretive content analysis with inductive and deductive categorization. This allowed the authors to structure the data set with regard to formal and informal con- flict elements, patterns, as well as outcomes (Mayring, 2002). The results of these analyses are provided below.
FINDINGS
The empirical analysis of social conflicts in the Pre- mium Cola community yields a range of important in- sights into the conflict culture of a community in a nar- row sense. To best reveal these findings, the paper first documents the key formal and informal elements of Premium’s conflict culture. Then, two different types of conflict patterns are conceptualized and illustrated. And lastly, it is shown how these two types of conflict produce positive and negative practical, identity, and relationship value to the Premium Cola community and its conflict culture.
Formal and Informal Elements of Premium’s Conflict Culture
Premium’s conflict culture is part of a broader cultural “toolkit’ of habits, skills, and styles” (Swidler, 1986, p. 273) that members use when performing community. Some elements of Premium’s conflict culture are formal and explicit, whereas others can be rather informal and hidden between the lines of the community’s everyday communications. Corresponding to their different de- grees of formalization, the authors conceptualize the community’s mailing list as well as its operating sys- tem as formal elements of Premium’s conflict culture, and the community’s conflict-specific roles and behav- iors as informal elements.
The List. The community-managed mailing list, re- ferred to in emic terms as “the list,” is the medium by which the community performs most of its social con- flicts. This text-based, asynchronous form of commu- nication enables members to stay updated on ongoing
conflicts as well as contribute ideas and opinions at any time. The list not only allows all community members to participate in the same conflict, but share opinions on multiple topics in parallel. The data indicate that con- flicts in the list can last up to several months, engage dozens of community members, and produce hundreds of messages (see Table 1).
Using this particular medium has four important implications for the Premium community’s conflict be- haviors. First, unlike human memory, the list stores each and every posting accurately. Therefore, members are able to go back to older conflicts and remind them- selves of how they had resolved or undeliberately led to the escalation of similar conflicts in the past. This behavior aids members’ collective learning and devel- opment of conflict culture. Second, because the list is a quasi-public space, members feel obliged to exercise a higher-than-usual degree of self-control, reflexivity, and responsibility when posting their opinions (Berry, 2006). Third, communication in such online media oc- curs without physical encounters between community members. In fact, most Premium community members only know each other through writing. The absence of physical encounters, body language, and audible tone of voice deprives Premium’s discussions of multiple com- munication elements that prevent and subdue conflicts in unmediated communications (Hinds & Bailey, 2003). As a result, Premium members tend to perform their conflicts in a more precise, factual voice and show a higher sensibility for potential misunderstandings, am- biguities, irony, and humorous statements than one would expect in typical offline encounters (Berry, 2006). However, fourth, the list not only fosters more con- structive conflict practices but, at times, also provides a stage for indiscretion, defamation, and abuse (Berry, 2006; Hinds & Bailey, 2003). Wandering off in such abu- sive territories prolongs conflicts that would not have emerged, or had long been settled, in offline contexts. The mailing list thus constitutes a key formal element of Premium’s conflict culture by both limiting and ex- tending the ways in which members can initiate, per- form, and manage social conflicts.
The Operating System. Throughout its 14 years of community continuity, the Premium community has collectively developed an elaborate notion of how businesses should be run, and which values should govern the economy behavior. Premium members condense, conserve, and promote these shared under- standings in a written text called “Das Betriebssystem” (operating system). This operating system is publicly available on Premium’s Web site (www.premium- cola.de/betriebssystem, in German language only).
As a formal collection of the community’s beliefs, val- ues, and legitimized business practices, the operating system serves as a constitution for the community and as its repository for legitimized conflict behaviors. The operating system, for example, formalizes the idea that “all people involved shall be able to have an equal say on all matters of the organization – including the end
270 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
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a bi
g bu
si n
es s
pr ic
e ga
la .M
em be
rs di
sa gr
ee if
th ey
sh ou
ld ac
ce pt
th e
of fe
r.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
P u
bl ic
pr es
en ta
ti on
of P
re m
iu m
,w h
ic h
le ad
s to
a bi
g in
cr ea
se in
po pu
la ri
ty an
d in
co n
se qu
en ce
m ar
ke t
sh ar
e.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: S
el f
im ag
e ch
an ge
— fr
om in
tr ov
er te
d pr
ot es
t br
an d
to ex
tr av
er te
d ac
ti vi
st fo
r m
or al
bu si
n es
s.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
3 M
ay 20
06 A
dv er
ti si
n g
an d
C om
m u
n ic
at io
n 21
T h
e co
m m
u n
it y
de ba
te s
ab ou
t an
of fe
r fr
om an
ad ve
rt is
in g
ag en
cy to
de si
gn a
ca m
pa ig
n fo
r P
re m
iu m
an d
pa rt
ic ip
at e
in an
ad ve
rt is
in g
co m
pe ti
ti on
.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: A
dv er
ti si
n g
is n
ot co
m pa
ti bl
e w
it h
P re
m iu
m ’s
va lu
es .
N ew
di st
in ct
io n
be tw
ee n
“p u
sh ”
an d
“p u
ll ”
co m
m u
n ic
at io
n .T
h e
la tt
er de
sc ri
be s
th e
pr oc
es s
in w
h ic
h pe
op le
ac ti
ve ly
se ar
ch fo
r in
fo rm
at io
n (i
.e .,
lo ok
at th
e h
om ep
ag e)
.M em
be rs
ag re
e th
at th
is ki
n d
of co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
is co
m pa
ti bl
e w
it h
P re
m iu
m ’s
va lu
es .
R ou
ti n
iz ed
4 F
eb ru
ar y
to A
u gu
st 20
07 S
al es
an d
S co
pe 12
9 M
em be
rs di
sc u
ss a
po ss
ib le
m ov
e fr
om se
ll in
g it
s so
ft dr
in k
on ly
in h
an d-
se le
ct ed
ba rs
an d
cl u
bs of
th e
in di
e m
u si
c sc
en e
to se
ll in
g al
so at
re ta
il st
or es
.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
P re
m iu
m m
ov es
in to
sp ec
ia l,
h an
dp ic
ke d
re ta
il st
or es
.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: D
iv er
si fi
ca ti
on —
fr om
sa le
s on
ly at
h an
dp ic
ke d
ba rs
an d
cl u
bs to
se ll
in g
al so
at sp
ec ia
l “c
or re
ct ”
re ta
il st
or es
.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
5 Ju
ly to
N ov
em be
r 20
07 A
pr il
to N
ov em
be r
20 08
P ro
du ct
L in
e E
xt en
si on
19 8
P ro
s an
d co
n s
of pr
od u
ci n
g an
d m
ar ke
ti n
g be
er u
n de
r th
e P
re m
iu m
br an
d. P
ra ct
ic al
va lu
e: P
re m
iu m
st ar
ts to
pr od
u ce
be er
.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: S
el f-
u n
de rs
ta n
di n
g ch
an ge
s— P
re m
iu m
as a
“s pe
ci al
w ay
of do
in g
bu si
n es
s” (f
ol lo
w in
g it
s op
er at
in g
sy st
em )
an d
le ss
as a
co la
pr od
u ce
r.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
(C on
ti n
u ed
)
CONFLICT CULTURE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES 271 Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
T ab
le 1.
C on
ti n
u ed
.
N u
m be
r D
at e
G en
er al
S u
bj ec
t N
u m
be r
of M
es sa
ge s
C on
te n
t M
ai n
O u
tc om
es C
h ar
ac te
r
6 F
eb ru
ar y
to A
pr il
20 08
S ex
is m
63 T
h e
co m
m u
n it
y ge
ts cr
it ic
iz ed
by co
m m
u n
it y
ou ts
id er
s fo
r pr
in ti
n g
a se
xi st
ar t
pi ec
e on
th e
ba ck
si de
of it
s bo
tt le
la be
l. T
h e
en su
in g
di sc
u ss
io n
re vo
lv es
ar ou
n d
th e
qu es
ti on
if th
e cr
it iq
u e
is to
be ta
ke n
se ri
ou s
an d
if th
e co
m m
u n
it y
sh ou
ld re
ac t
to it
.
N eg
at iv
e re
la ti
on sh
ip va
lu e:
T h
re e
m em
be rs
le av
e th
e co
m m
u n
it y
be ca
u se
th ey
ar e
an n
oy ed
.
T ra
n sg
re ss
iv e
7 N
ov em
be r
20 08
B u
si n
es s
vs .
P ro
te st
L og
ic 27
P re
m iu
m m
em be
rs di
sc u
ss ab
ou t
w h
et h
er th
ey sh
ou ld
gr ow
th ei
r bu
si n
es s
op er
at io
n s,
st ar
t h
ir in
g pe
op le
,a n
d co
m m
u n
ic at
e m
or e
ag gr
es si
ve ly
.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: M
em be
rs ar
ti cu
la te
ve ry
cl ea
rl y
th e
do w
n -s
id es
of th
ei r
si tu
at io
n in
-b et
w ee
n bu
si n
es s
an d
pr ot
es t.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
8 S
ep te
m be
r to
D ec
em be
r 20
08
A dv
er ti
si n
g an
d C
om m
u n
ic at
io n
11 5
A ba
r st
ar ts
to de
si gn
an d
di sp
la y
it s
ow n
ad ve
rt is
in g
po st
er s
fo r
P re
m iu
m pr
od u
ct s.
T h
e co
m m
u n
it y
fi rs
t de
ba te
s if
a ba
r sh
ou ld
be al
lo w
ed to
do th
is .L
at er
on th
e di
sc u
ss io
n re
vo lv
es ar
ou n
d P
re m
iu m
’s in
fo rm
at io
n an
d co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
po li
cy in
ge n
er al
.T h
er e
is bi
g di
sa gr
ee m
en t
w it
h in
th e
co m
m u
n it
y ab
ou t
it s
co m
m u
n ic
at io
n po
li cy
.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
N or
m de
ve lo
pm en
t— pr
em iu
m do
es n
ot al
lo w
in di
vi du
al ba
rs an
d cl
u bs
to pr
od u
ce it
s ow
n co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
m at
er ia
l.
(N eg
at iv
e) id
en ti
ty va
lu e:
M em
be rs
st ru
gg le
w it
h gr
ey ar
ea s
in th
ei r
“p u
sh vs
.p u
ll co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
” di
st in
ct io
n .
N eg
at iv
e re
la ti
on sh
ip va
lu e:
M em
be rs
vo ic
e fr
u st
ra ti
on be
ca u
se of
en dl
es s
di sc
u ss
io n
s ab
ou t
th e
co m
m u
n ic
at io
n to
pi c.
T ra
n sg
re ss
iv e
9 Ju
n e
to Ju
ly 20
10 S
ex is
m 89
A n
in di
vi du
al m
em be
r po
st s
a se
xi st
st at
em en
t in
th e
li st
.O th
er m
em be
rs at
ta ck
h im
.S oo
n h
e le
av es
th e
co m
m u
n it
y. A
ft er
w ar
ds m
em be
rs de
ba te
ab ou
t w
h et
h er
P re
m iu
m ’s
co re
is de
fi n
ed by
it s
pr od
u ct
or it
s po
li ti
ca lc
or re
ct n
es s.
N eg
at iv
e re
la ti
on sh
ip va
lu e:
A gi
ta to
r le
av es
th e
co m
m u
n it
y. M
em be
rs vo
ic e
fr u
st ra
ti on
ab ou
t re
cu rr
in g
di sc
u ss
io n
.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: In
te n
se re
fl ec
ti on
of an
d se
n si
ti sa
ti on
fo r
to n
e of
di sc
u ss
io n
, co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
po li
cy ,a
n d
po li
ti ca
l co
rr ec
tn es
s.
T ra
n sg
re ss
iv e
10 Ju
n e
20 10
; M
ar ch
20 11
P ro
du ct
L in
e E
xt en
si on
28 O
n e
co m
m u
n it
y m
em be
r pr
op os
es to
se ll
P re
m iu
m C
ol a
n ot
on ly
in 0.
33 L
bo tt
le s
bu t
al so
in 1
L bo
tt le
s. H
e ar
gu es
th at
th is
w ou
ld in
cr ea
se sa
le s
an d
th er
ef or
e al
so sp
re ad
P re
m iu
m ’s
id eo
lo gy
.O th
er m
em be
rs ar
gu e
th at
P re
m iu
m sh
ou ld
st ay
tr u
e to
it se
lf an
d n
ot or
ie n
t it
s ac
ti on
s to
m ar
ke t
de m
an ds
.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
P re
m iu
m ex
te n
ds it
s pr
od u
ct li
n e
an d
al so
pr od
u ce
s a
1 L
bo tt
le .
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: M
ov e
to w
ar d
m ar
ke t
or ie
n ta
ti on
.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
11 S
ep te
m be
r 20
10 C
om pa
ri so
n an
d S
u cc
es s
13 M
em be
rs di
sc u
ss ab
ou t
a po
ss ib
le co
m pa
ri so
n w
it h
co m
pe ti
to r
F ri
tz C
ol a.
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: R
efl ec
ti on
pr oc
es s
ab ou
t su
cc es
s- cr
it er
ia .
R ou
ti n
iz ed
(C on
ti n
u ed
)
272 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
T ab
le 1.
C on
ti n
u ed
.
N u
m be
r D
at e
G en
er al
S u
bj ec
t N
u m
be r
of M
es sa
ge s
C on
te n
t M
ai n
O u
tc om
es C
h ar
ac te
r
12 O
ct ob
er 20
10 A
dv er
ti si
n g
an d
C om
m u
n ic
at io
n 48
A di
st ri
bu to
r of
fe rs
P re
m iu
m to
u se
it s
m in
iv an
s as
an ad
ve rt
is in
g su
rf ac
e. T
h e
of fe
r re
st ar
ts th
e ol
d ad
ve rt
is in
g vs
. co
m m
u n
ic at
io n
di sc
u ss
io n
.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
D ec
is io
n to
pr om
ot e
th e
op er
at in
g sy
st em
m or
e ag
gr es
si ve
ly .
R ou
ti n
iz ed
13 F
eb ru
ar y
20 11
C om
pe ti
to r
F ri
tz C
ol a
27 F
ri tz
C ol
a tr
ie s
to ag
gr es
si ve
ly pu
sh P
re m
iu m
ou t
of th
e pr
od u
ct li
n e
in so
m e
ba rs
an d
sh op
s. T
h e
co m
m u
n it
y st
ru gg
le s
ab ou
t w
h et
h er
it sh
ou ld
m ak
e th
is pu
bl ic
on it
s bl
og or
n ot
.
P ra
ct ic
al va
lu e:
D ec
is io
n n
ot to
pu sh
ba ck
ag gr
es si
ve ly
,b u
t to
ta lk
di re
ct ly
to F
ri tz
C ol
a ex
ec u
ti ve
s.
R ou
ti n
iz ed
14 M
ar ch
to S
ep te
m be
r 20
12
T ra
n sp
ar en
cy vs
. P
ro te
ct io
n 10
0+ T
w o
co m
m u
n it
y m
em be
r in
te n
d to
cr ea
te a
n ew
pr od
u ct
fo r
P re
m iu
m .I
n co
n si
st en
ci es
ap pe
ar an
d th
e di
sc u
ss io
n re
vo lv
es ab
ou t
re po
rt in
g ob
li ga
ti on
s, tr
an sp
ar en
cy is
su es
, an
d in
di vi
du al
pr ot
ec ti
on ag
ai n
st ac
cu sa
ti on
s.
N eg
at iv
e re
la ti
on sh
ip va
lu e:
E xc
lu si
on of
tw o
co m
m u
n it
y m
em be
rs .
Id en
ti ty
va lu
e: R
efl ec
ti on
pr oc
es s—
tr an
sp ar
en cy
vs .i
n di
vi du
al pr
ot ec
ti on
di le
m m
a.
T ra
n sg
re ss
iv e customers, because they are also involved” (02. Modul
“Kollektiv”). When community members argue about issues of internal organization, power relations, de- marcation from mainstream market actors, or political correctness, for example, they cite passages from the operating system in order to defend their positions. Community members most often refer back to the op- erating system when trying to resolve conflicts, partic- ularly conflicts imperative to the very nature and mis- sion of the Premium Cola community. Such practices of engaging with and extending the operating system are a key part of Premium’s conflict culture.
Conflict-Specific Roles. Community members typi- cally develop and perform a wide range of informal roles, which play an important part of community cul- ture (Fournier & Lee, 2009; Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009). At Premium, two informal—that is, unarticu- lated, yet visibly enacted—roles turned out to be an important part of the community’s conflict culture.
The first role is that of the conflict moderator. Typically, community members initiate, perform, and resolve their conflicts collectively, guided by the princi- ple of equality. The community member who adopts the role of the conflict moderator, however, accepts a partic- ular responsibility for conflict behavior in the commu- nity. The conflict moderator more often and more sys- tematically nurtures and manages conflicts compared to other members. In the empirical data, community member Ulrich has performed this role as conflict mod- erator since the onset of the list. Ulrich is the commu- nity’s founder, its “central organizer” (emic term), and the legal owner of the Premium brand. As the primary interface between external partners and the commu- nity, Ulrich is most often the first to see new market opportunities and arising threats. As conflict moder- ator, Ulrich does not ignore potentially controversial topics or respond to them directly. Instead, he most of- ten “throws” these topics as questions out “into the list” (emic terms) inviting members to contribute their views and ideas to the issue at hand. As the conflict modera- tor he also works proactively to ensure that conflicts do not get out of hand or terminate before the community has arrived at a well-reflected collective decision (even if this is not his preferred decision). In this role, Ulrich frequently synthesizes incompatible views to foster approximation, or asks critical questions to elicit con- troversy among community members. Through these behaviors, Ulrich nurtures and cultivates the commu- nity’s conflict behaviors as a member among equals, rather than trying to end conflicts from a superior power position. However, at times, the conflict modera- tor uses his technological possibilities and authority as the respected founder of the collective to intervene in conflicts that transgress the boundaries of legitimate conflict behavior. In these rare cases— for example, two of 14 in the data set—the conflict moderator engages in decidedly authoritative structural and processual interventions to terminate conflicts that threaten com- munity continuity. In one particular example, Ulrich
CONFLICT CULTURE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES 273 Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
manages (rather than nurtures) a conflict when he single-handedly excludes an obstinate troublemaker from the list. Such deliberately managerial interven- tions of a conflict moderator happen rarely as well as reluctantly at Premium. This is due to the fact that hierarchical interventions fundamentally contra- dict Premium’s self-understanding as a democratic community of equals.
The following data excerpt illustrates Ulrich’s un- ease after forcing a conflict to an end by using his au- thority position to exclude a rogue member from the list. Despite his reluctance, Ulrich intervenes structurally to end a controversy that lasted for months, had con- sumed extensive community resources, and thus had threatened to damage community relationships and continuity.
Ulrich (August 12, 2012): Hello, yesterday I logged Hendrik out of the list, that feels very very (not to say very) strange. However, it also feels right [ . . . ] For many of us it was very annoying to follow this discussion. Sorry from my side for that. However, un- fortunately that was necessary in order to not foster a collective by the grace of Ulrich, but to have a conflict culture under a collective watch [ . . . ] and now? Con- cerning myself: finally getting work done with less negative thoughts and more energy. Discussing here [in the list] fact-bound and calm again. The entire thing blocked so many resources [ . . . ].
As the authors show below, this atypical act of au- thoritative conflict management by the conflict moder- ator not only resolves a transgressive conflict, but also contributes to advancing the community’s conflict cul- ture by introducing a new formal element to the oper- ating system.
The second conflict-specific role in the Premium com- munity is the lead agitator. Although the role of the conflict moderator has thus far only been adopted by Ul- rich, the lead agitator role has been performed by differ- ent community members over time. Community mem- ber Carlos adopted this role from about 2004 to 2011 and member Hendrik from 2011 until 2013. The lead agitator takes on the important task of challenging, unsettling, provoking, and pushing the community in order to arrive at better and more collectively supported decisions. Members performing the role of the lead ag- itator typically push against the community becoming too commercial, market-oriented, or “mainstream” and to think again before readily accepting changes that have a potential to affect the community and its brand. In this capacity, the lead agitator is a representative of less-outspoken community members, as well as the first person to address and argue with. Despite efforts to formulate criticisms in ways that do not attack other members personally, and to not become overly annoy- ing, destructive, or hypocritical, lead agitators some- times become collectively disdained as destructive trou- blemakers rather than recognized as important agents in a community. In the Premium case, the two members
who have performed the role of the lead agitator in the past have eventually left the community after having fallen from grace and finding themselves unwilling to cope with the community’s accusations any longer.
Routinized Conflict Behaviors. When analyzing the Premium community’s conflicts, the authors found that the community’s conflict culture involved a limited set of routinized and recurring conflict behaviors. Mem- bers use behaviors such as inviting conflict, showing respect for otherness, or releasing aggressions to ar- gue different topics, but use them in similar ways. Many of these behaviors are known from normative conflict sociology as conflict cultivation practices, that is, routinized behaviors that conflict parties use to per- form conflicts in civilized and productive, rather than destructive, ways (Coser, 1956; Dubiel, 1998; Laureys & Simons, 2010). Through inventing, selecting, aban- doning, enacting, or improving such routinized conflict behaviors, Premium community members are able to produce value rather than destroy value through un- controlled or abusive conduct. As will be shown below, engaging in such productive conflict behaviors not only creates practical, identity, and relationship value, but also contributes to developing trust in the community member’s ability to argue productively, and to respect the mutually agreed upon borders of legitimate con- duct. To illustrate this point, the study outlines Pre- mium’s three most prevalent types of routinized conflict behavior below, for example, inviting conflict, showing respect for otherness, and releasing aggression.
Inviting Conflict. It is commonly assumed that (con- sumption) communities tend to avoid rather than in- vite conflict. However, this analysis reveals that Pre- mium members proactively embrace certain types of conflict as part of their routine community activities. By “throwing a topic into the list” (emic term), for ex- ample, members deliberately initiate discussions about decisions that will have important implications for the community’s market behaviors, branding position, and overall moral integrity provided in their operating sys- tem. As these discussions turn into encounters of dif- ferences (Levy & Zaltman, 1975), community members invite more alternative viewpoints and pose critical questions to prevent the conflict from ending before a satisfactory consensus is found. For example, dur- ing a conflict involving Premium’s decision for accept- ing or rejecting an agency’s offer for free advertising (conflict no. 3 in Table 1), conflict moderator Ulrich proactively invites conflict by encouraging community members to share their oppositional views. Such behav- iors also serve to steer conflicts into directions that the e-mail author considers important, as well as, away from topics that he or she considers irrelevant.
Ulrich (May 5, 2006): But do we really want that, is it too big for us, or does it all depend on if it fits the Premium (anti) ad?
274 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Conflict moderators, lead agitators, and ordinary community members engage in such conflict invita- tions to elicit critical reflections about important topics. This is done until the community agrees that the sit- uation has sufficiently been assessed from all relevant perspectives and an informed decision can be made. Such behaviors of inviting and encouraging of conflicts serve as important parts of Premium’s informal conflict culture.
Showing Respect for Otherness. A second key set of conflict behaviors at Premium can be summarized as showing respect for otherness (Dubiel 1998; Laureys and Simons 2010; Sarcinelli 1990). Showing respect for otherness is part of the community’s minimal values and rule consensus and a routinized behavior that Pre- mium members rely on when performing conflicts (Du- biel, 1998; Laureys & Simons, 2010; Sarcinelli, 1990). In the list, members often and proactively express re- spect for alternative viewpoints even if this may re- quire additional rhetorical and emotional effort or run counter to their factual differences. Members know— sometimes from firsthand experience at Premium— that disrespecting diverging viewpoints can cause de- structive tensions. One specific recurring rhetorical pattern to avoid such outcomes is to emphasize an ami- cable relationship before attending to topic-specific dis- agreements. Valentin, for example, writes as part of conflict no. 2 (in Table 1):
Valentin (March 3, 2005): My dear Roman, I’m looking forward to seeing you in April, but what re- ally interests me right now is why you’re investing such a great amount of energy in preventing us from going to this presentation? Does it violate the Pre- mium philosophy in your opinion? In fact, I don’t really get it.
Distinguishing between factual disagreements and personal relationships allows members to make pro- ductive use of individuality and otherness and, thus, resolve even highly emotional conflicts without fric- tional losses. Another way in which Premium members acknowledge otherness is by practicing self-restraint (Dubiel, 1998). Practicing self-restraint within the Pre- mium community includes, for instance, that convicted offenders are expected to hold back on their own viewpoints in order to avoid obstructing community progress.
Releasing Aggression. Despite all cultivation efforts, community conflicts sometimes evoke anger and ag- gression. To protect the community from the detrimen- tal effects of such feelings, members release their ag- gressions in two ways. Through humor, members re- lax the conflict parties emotionally and physically (see also Hemetsberger, 2006). And by redirecting negative emotions from internal to external targets, community members are able to act out aggressions without jeopar- dizing in-group identity or relationships (Coser, 1956).
In summary, the key elements of Premium’s conflict culture include: using the list, working with the oper-
ating system, adopting conflict roles, and engaging in routinized conflict behaviors. The analysis reveals that Premium community members combine these formal and informal elements in unique ways for any given conflict situation.
Next, the authors show that, and how, members perform conflicts in two distinct patterns–that is “rou- tinized” and “transgressive” conflicts.
Routinized Conflicts
The first and most frequent conflict pattern in the Pre- mium community is what the authors call routinized conflicts. Routinized conflicts are conflicts that the com- munity performs in controlled, habitual ways. At Pre- mium, members engage in such routinized conflicts over a wide range of topics, including their relationships to competitors, the moral legitimacy of advertising, the expansion into new markets, and various aspects of po- litical correctness or personal sensibility (see Table 1). When performing routinized conflicts, members skill- fully mix and match elements from their formal and informal conflict cultural repertoire to collectively find and legitimize answers to controversial issues. Mem- bers automatically or deliberately engage in conflict behaviors, such as inviting conflict, citing the operat- ing system, or emphasizing amicable relationships, to ensure that their conflicts stay within the realms of routinized, controlled, and thus engaged behavior.
Performing Routinized Conflicts. The following data excerpts illustrate how such routinized encounters of difference tend to unfold in the Premium community. This particular conflict occurred in 2005 after the com- munity had received an invitation for a talk to be given at a prominent German business gala ( conflict no. 2 in Table 1). The messages below include turning points in the conflict, which lasted two months and contained 92 individual messages.
Ulrich (February 22, 2005): [ . . . ] Either they have misinterpreted our ideology as a simple marketing concept, or they want to use us as a counterpoint. If we understand Premium not only as pushing cola- crates around but also as a statement about busi- ness policy, this [gala event] would be a platform to present our ideas. The so-called “big shots” would lis- ten and hopefully (partly) understand. On the other side, we may not want to give them more insights into our way of thinking, so they cannot ensnare us more professionally in the future? Hmm. . . . What do you think? Do it? I would be up for showing up in skater gear among all these suits and explain to them very analytically why we wish that the rest of the world had values similar to ours.
Roman (February 23, 2005): We should go there all together and splatter around with water guns filled with pig’s blood [ . . . ] they are all idiots.
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Reinhard (February 24, 2005): Guys guys!! . . . Pig’s blood, what’s going on? This could be quite ridiculous in this context.
Valentin (March 1, 2005): With this presentation we get the chance to present Premium. And there is no “too small.” After all, Premium is not about how big or how far or how profitable we are. I really see no reasons for not going there – except maybe fear. And fear does not count. Without the necessary courage Premium wouldn’t even exist!
Roman (March 2, 2005): It’s of no use to go there. Why should we care if two or three of these guys at the gala get it?
Carlos (March 2, 2005): Hey Roman. At the begin- ning of the 90s the moog opened in Barcelona (first club in Spain for sophisticated electronic music) in a small alley next to the Ramblas [ . . . ] Today the alley is full of clubs. I’m thinking of something else in the context of this business gala. Just let 2–3 people un- derstand that there is another way of doing business. Just let us transmit the basic message. We want more firms to join us. The more the better, only then can an alternative economy develop. Like the small alley in Barcelona. If more firms are successful in an ethical way the message will be easier to pass on. That’s why I’m in favor of it.
Valentin (March 3, 2005): My dear Roman, I’m looking forward to seeing you in April, but what really interests me right now is why you’re invest- ing such a great amount of energy in preventing us from going to this presentation? Does it violate the Premium-philosophy in your opinion? In fact, I don’t really get it.
Roman (March 3, 2005): Hi Valentin. I’m also look- ing forward to see you in April. Concerning the pre- sentation topic I’m so enraged because I think that you guys are wasting your precious energy. You over- estimate the whole thing. That gets on my nerves. But I will not block what has already been decided. That’s why I will stand down from now on.
In his role as the community’s formal contact person and its informal conflict moderator, Ulrich initiates this conversation. He offers two potential responses to the opportunity: to use the gala for making a political state- ment and thus disseminating Premium’s ideology, or to avoid the meeting for not falling prey to corporations taking unethical advantage of their ideas. At the end of his initial e-mail, he offers a potential solution, but also invites discussion.
With Roman’s posting, the discussion turns into a conflict about whether Premium should stay true to its identity of a protest brand (e.g., “splatter pig’s blood”) or start a conversation with corporate agents to teach them the Premium way of doing business. Roman ag-
gressively advocates the protest positioning, whereas Carlos and Valentin try to convince him otherwise. Their exchange is replete with evidence of routinized conflict behaviors. Roman uses redirection of aggres- sions to discredit the community’s enemies and a re- spectful tone toward community members. In the last posting, Roman responds to Valentin’s e-mail (cited in the Routinized Conflict Behaviors section above) by em- phasizing amicable relationships and separating fac- tual and relationship levels. The last posting shows how Roman exercises self-restraint to not run against deci- sions that have already been made. The encounter il- lustrates how these members negotiate diverging view- points in a comfortable and engaging mode of routinized conflict. Ten of 14 conflicts that emerged in the Pre- mium mailing list, from its initiation until today, unfold as such routinized conflicts.
Harnessing Routinized Conflicts. This research re- veals that Premium members tend to garner practical, identity, and relationship values from these routinized conflicts.
Practical Value. As a democratic community and proactive market participant, Premium depends on its ability to respond intelligently and collectively to emerging market challenges. The community is forced to revisit its existing practices, assumptions, and moral positions to make appropriate decisions, for exam- ple, about presenting Premium’s ideas at a business event (see above), offering larger bottle sizes, expanding across Europe, or producing a Premium beer. Through performing routinized conflicts, community members openly and critically, yet nevertheless in a controlled way, reflect on the pros and cons of their community brand’s market status, update their perceptions about the business environment, and decide which new busi- ness practices are worth pursuing. Because members’ positions and goals are often incompatible, performing conflicts forces participants to envision alternative so- lutions for emerging problems, challenge these solu- tions, and refine them until the community eventually arrives at an agreement. Through the pursuit of rou- tinized conflict, community members are able to decide and collectively legitimize new market practices, create new products, as well as engage with new audiences; practices that might not have been possible in the ab- sence of conflict (see Table 1).
Identity Value. Since the Premium community is on a moral mission, its factual decisions are always firmly connected to the community’s core identity. Even osten- sibly simple practical decisions, such as offering or not offering larger cola bottles, affect how the community understands itself and its role in the broader competi- tive scheme. The above conflict regarding the invitation to a business gala illustrates how Premium members not only argue about branding practicalities, but also about their community identity. In this instance, mem- bers suggest, for example, that they may consider un- derstanding “Premium as a business policy statement” (rather than a cola maker) or advance the notion that
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“Premium is not about how big or how profitable” the brand is. These ideas have far-reaching consequences for Premium’s identity as well as its market practices. Through the business gala conflict, for example, the community transformed its identity from a community cola maker to a political movement that proactively cri- tiques conventional businesses and shows, by its own good example, how business should be done. Because routinized conflicts force members to intensively reflect upon, negotiate, and articulate in written text the com- munity’s key purpose and moral values, these conflicts help to shape and rework the community’s social iden- tity.
Relationship Value. At Premium, routinized con- flicts also produce relationship value. Despite the fact that member fights can get quite passionate at times, these conflicts predominantly pursue and contribute to a collectively agreed moral mission. Moreover, us- ing behaviors such as “emphasizing amicable relation- ships” strengthens members’ relationships and mani- fests their ideal that relationships are always more im- portant than topical disagreements. These observations illustrate the Premium community’s ability to express relational sympathies while at the same time fight pas- sionately about specific subjects, which is indicative of strong social ties (Coser, 1956; Dubiel, 1998; Lau- reys & Simons, 2010; Sarcinelli, 1990; Simmel, 1964). Premium’s intracommunity conflicts not only actualize relationships between members, but also strengthen relationships between individual members with the Premium brand because in phases of social conflict, members intensively engage with Premium’s ideolog- ical foundations and its resulting brand image.
In summary, the analysis shows that members engage in a broad repertoire of formal and infor- mal conflict culture elements to perform routinized intracommunity conflicts. Because these conflicts re- main bounded by the norms of Premium’s conflict cul- ture, they tend to produce positive practical outcomes, energize social relationships, and foster community identity.
Transgressive Conflicts
However, not all conflicts are equal. The analysis also surfaces a second type of conflict that the authors con- ceptualize as “transgressive conflict.” In contrast to rou- tinized conflicts, parties involved in transgressive con- flicts tend to break with cultural norms, stepping over boundaries set by the community’s legitimized conflict culture. In such transgressive conflict phases, the com- munity enters an ambiguous, almost liminal (Turner, 1973), state in which members can no longer rely on their existing conflict practices to resolve a conflict at hand. In such states of disorientation, members tend to negate or contest many features of routinized conflict behavior (Thomassen, 2009; Turner, 1973). In trans- gressive conflicts, members often articulate and chal- lenge Premium’s deepest held values, but also invent
new conflict behaviors that eventually enrich the com- munity’s conflict culture (Thomassen, 2009).
The analysis shows that 4 of 14 conflicts begin as normal routinized conflicts, however, eventually turn into transgressive conflicts once members begin to cross-multiple borders of routinized conflict behavior. At Premium, transgressive conflicts propel members into unprecedented emotional heights and evoke highly abusive interactions. These interactions revolve around inacceptable norm violations by other mem- bers, community brand contaminations, and relational issues. When routinized conflicts turn transgressive, the substantial problem that initiated the conflict tends to take a back seat and emotions take over. In such situations, existing conflict cultivation behaviors no longer suffice to subdue the conflict. Instead, the community becomes overly passionate and temporarily unable to end the conflict. In times of such conflict es- calation, the use of the electronic mailing list no longer mitigates, but rather instigates further aggression, abuse, and frustration. This is due to the fact that posted materials cannot be removed once on the list. In this instance, abusive content becomes used over and over again spurring the conflict even further.
Performing Transgressive Conflicts. To illustrate these insights, the next section traces the trajectory of a particular transgressive conflict that emerged in 2010 in the wake of some sexist comments of community member Nico (conflict no. 9 in Table 1). The data ex- cerpts illustrate how multiple members cross-multiple conflict culture boundaries, how members eventually regain control over their conflict behaviors, and how a transgressive conflict results in the invention of new formal and informal conflict cultural elements.
The conflict begins just like most conflicts in the Premium mailing list, as a routinized conflict. Com- munity members quite enthusiastically exchange their diverging views about the idea of employing Clarissa as an intern. Since Premium has never hired a paid intern before, the decision is considered important for the community. Ulrich supports the idea of employing Clarissa—who is a trained food analyst—and offers to pay her salary from his personal budget. Other commu- nity members, however, are worried that the practice of hiring interns would move the community too close to conventional businesses or even associate Premium community with images of ruthless exploitation that internships tend to evoke in Germany. The following data excerpts illustrate how such a conflict progresses through three phases; (1) boundary crossing, (2) conflict escalation, and (3) conflict resolution and the extension of conflict culture.
Phase One: Crossing Boundaries. The following data show how community member Nico violates several key norms of the community’s conflict culture and how Per tries to use the routinized conflict practice of peer-to- peer policing to regain control over Nico’s rhetorical out- burst. Nico’s second contribution to this conflict serves
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as a starting point. He refers to criticism that he has received for his earlier e-mail.
Nico (June 12, 2010): Hi guys, if Ulrich wants to have a [female] intern and if he even pays her with his own money; if his girlfriend doesn’t mind shar- ing their bed with the intern, and that the intern will probably be the next Premium-girl [Note: Nico makes reference to a an imaginary Premium pin-up calen- dar here]: please let him do whatever he wants, for God’s sake. Not your money, not your problem, not your girl :-) Yes, I’m sexist again – go complain about it!
Carlos (June 14, 2010): If Ulrich can do with his money what he wants, I can also do what I want. I can produce and pay for a flyer that say’s, Fuck Premium! It’s about that we as a collective should decide together and not just one individual person. Just because someone thinks he’s right, doesn’t mean he can start doing things on his own. From my point of view Ulrich sacrifices himself more than enough for Premium Cola. He shouldn’t have to give the few bucks that he gets to the intern.
Nico (June 14, 2010): Hi, the comparison is not appropriate Carlos. What Ulrich wants to teach an intern, where, and how is his own business. Hiring an intern doesn’t have any external implications for us and therefore it’s not our right to voice our opinion on it. Do you also want to tell him with whom he can share his overnight train cabin? Go, get yourself your own intern.
Per (June 22, 2010): Hi, I have received complaints from readers that some posts about the potential in- tern are unacceptable. I would like to ask you to keep your countenance in the future, and to discuss about Premium’s next pin-up boy in private.
The data illustrate how practical, cultural, and iden- tity themes overlap in these members’ conflict about the internship issue. Nico uses the intern issue to ar- gue for individual freedom as a staple notion of Pre- mium’s identity, whereas Carlos insists that collective decision making is the more important element of Pre- mium’s identity. These two members also argue simul- taneously about practical issues such as work efforts and reimbursements. Per’s post is the first to address the sexist comment and to introduce the notion of po- litical correctness into the conflict, which also plays an important part in Premium’s identity and conflict culture.
In his subsequent posts, Nico continues to use sug- gestive language and—despite explicit support for Ul- rich’s work—continues to frame the intern as Ulrich’s seducer, potential affair, and the community’s object of desire. Such behavior overtly violates the rule of show- ing respect for otherness. Although Nico seems to use irony and humor, which are known as aggression re-
lease behaviors, other members perceive his comments as deliberately provocative and inappropriate. At this point, however, the conflict has not yet turned into a full-fledged transgressive conflict. Insular border cross- ings such as Nico’s occur frequently in the community’s routinized conflicts, but members have no difficulties in guiding the offender back into the boundaries of legiti- mate conduct.
Phase Two: Conflict Escalation. The next excerpt shows how and why this conflict eventually turns into a transgressive conflict. Nico’s ostensible awareness of, and provocative insistence on, making sexist commen- taries (“Yes, I’m sexist again – go complain about it!”) raises the tension. When he then refuses to respond to Per’s border-policing attempts, he escalates the conflict into a realm where known routinized conflict behaviors fail to subdue the conflict. With Nico’s next comment, the conflict subject changes from hiring versus not hir- ing Clarissa to accepting versus punishing political in- correctness. As this change occurs, multiple community members adopt a disrespectful tone and violate multi- ple norms.
Nico (June 24, 2010): [ . . . ] Well, great. My com- ments have agitated a few Swiss, vegan Emma- readers [Note: Emma is a first-wave feminist mag- azine]. Maybe we need a sign that warns readers of our freedom of expression; or a committee that cen- sors such posts; or someone just kicks such stubborn people like me out of the list [ . . . ].
Ulrich (June 24, 2010): Hi, [ . . . ] I want to note that I find this discussion very embarrassing. Clarissa [the potential intern] probably reads these mails. How do we look in her eyes now? Is she still will- ing to do the internship at Premium? What will she tell her friends about us? [ . . . ].
Nico (June 25, 2010): [ . . . ] I may be allowed to address my opponents as a “group of vegan Swiss women” because it was unprejudiced and I have done it only because I don’t like addressing an anonymous audience.
Carlos (June 25, 2010): [Nico is] Resistant to advice.
Nico (June 25, 2010): Kisses for you, my ardent Latino [Carlos]. Now I’m racist AND sexist.
At this point in the conflict, Nico initiates the pro- cess of conflict escalation when he ignores his fellows’ attempts at putting him in his place. He provokes other community members further by not taking their com- plaints about his sexist comments seriously and by further insulting female Premium members. Later on, Nico proclaims that he did not intend to harm anyone. He receives some support by others, including Ulrich, but insists on his freedom of speech. Criticism contin- ues, more parties get involved, and Nico is asked to
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apologize, which he refuses. Anger and mutual accu- sations still dominate the discussion and overshadow respect of otherness:
Felix (July 6, 2010): It seems like as long as one performs well at Premium in terms of business, one is allowed to be a moralistic asshole.
Ulrich (July 6, 2010): Hi, let us please start kick- ing out distributors [Note: like Felix] who denounce others in their absence and call them “assholes.”
In this transgressive conflict phase, other commu- nity members begin to also transgress conflict cultural boundaries. Felix, for example, accuses Nico of being a “moralistic asshole” and accuses the Premium commu- nity of hypocrisy, retaining unethical members merely for financial reasons. Ulrich also responds unusually aggressively on this occasion, suggesting the expulsion of members like Felix from the list. Until this point, no community member has yet suggested a viable road for resolving this conflict. Eventually, Nico decides to leave the list and, thus, the Premium community.
Phase Three: Conflict Resolution and the Extension of Conflict Culture. While members continue to struggle with finding an acceptable way of ending this transgres- sive conflict, Ulrich draws attention to the disillusioned atmosphere in the list, to the practical losses that will be suffered from the exit of Nico, and to the necessity of dealing better with individual differences. In the follow- ing data excerpt, Ulrich provides a diagnosis of positive and negative conflict outcomes formulated in ways that suggest he is trying to end this conflict:
Ulrich (June 28, 2010): Hi, this topic has expectedly boiled over with rage [ . . . ]. [But] New boundaries were drawn regarding intolerance against young, fe- male people, and people who are sensitive against subtle discrimination [ . . . ]. With all respect for Nico’s work, his views did not reach consensus. Thus, Nico is withdrawing from the list. All in all, a good result, because this shows that the list can do with- out general terms and conditions, and without anti- discrimination-guidelines [ . . . ] Among all conflict parties, including myself, [the controversial topic] now ranks higher on the sensitivity-agenda. [ . . . ] [and we] can continue to trust in our own ability to sort out conflicts. [ . . . ] Prohibitions do not solve the problem; change must occur in people’s minds. In the current case this has certainly happened.
In this excerpt, Ulrich analyzes the conflict and ed- ucates Premium members about the lessons that (he thinks) the community has learned by going through the unpleasant experience of fighting this particular conflict. Yet, Ulrich’s post not only wraps up and grad- ually brings the conflict to an end, but it also introduces several new elements to Premium’s conflict culture. For example, Ulrich invents the notion of a proverbial “sensitivity-agenda” as a new vehicle for sensitizing members to the emergence and avoidance of topics such
as sexist language. This agenda is not yet formalized in written word, but presented by Ulrich as an imagi- nary list of topics that community members should keep in mind when performing future conflicts. Ulrich also states that the conflict has produced new boundaries regarding intolerance, which should help community members better spot moral transgressions in the fu- ture. By going through a period of transgressive conflict, the community thus develops a new informal conflict behavior that the authors call “raising awareness for conflict potential.” This behavior extends the repertoire of informal conflict behaviors that the Premium com- munity has at its disposal. However, the data also re- veal that transgressive conflicts not only produce infor- mal conflict behaviors, but also formal conflict cultural novelties. This is illustrated in another transgressive conflict (e.g., conflict no. 14 in Table 1) when Premium member Hendrik is accused of stealing money from the community (e.g., by claiming extra hours and faking ex- penses for his Premium sales activity in southern Ger- many). Toward the end of this conflict, Ulrich proposes to exercise an “emergency exclusion” of this member.
Ulrich (August 8, 2012): I was often asked where the border is? [It is] Deliberately compromising Pre- mium. Breaking into the till, claiming to work on a job for months without being able to deliver any de- tails about the results. That beats everything. This is where the border is. Where should it be instead? What else should happen before kicking someone out? [ . . . ] I will formulate a respective module [of the operating system] more precisely.
The emergency exclusion of a member who had massively violated community norms had been a module—that is, a topical section—of the commu- nity’s operating system before this particular conflict. However, Ulrich uses the conflict about Hendrik’s fraud as an opportunity to not only exercise, but also further specify and formalize this new conflict resolution behavior into written form. Similar to the new informal elements shown above, this new formal conflict cultural element emerges from a transgressive conflict that forces community members to find new or refined ways to resolve their disagreements.
As the analysis reveals, Ulrich performs his role of the conflict moderator initially in the usual mode of nurturing a routinized conflict. He monitors the con- flict, provides feedback on its trajectory, and suggests new ways of moving forward. He performs this func- tion from the position of one member among equals and carefully avoids violating the norms of collective, democratic decision making. As the conflict turns trans- gressive, however, Ulrich turns to using conventional conflict management behaviors. In line with Amason’s et al. (1995, p. 29) finding that the leader of a group of- ten holds the “responsibility for managing conflict,” Ul- rich uses his elevated position as the central organizer of the community and legal owner of the list to manage the conflict course using hierarchical intervention. In
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this atypically managerial mode of conflict moderation, Ulrich proactively and powerfully intervenes to prevent the community, which is lost in emotional uproar and escalating transgressions, from accumulating further damage. Such managerial behavior is rare at Premium as it contradicts the community’s norms of equality and democracy. The example above illustrates that in trans- gressive conflicts, conflict moderation is less about nur- turing productive conflicts and more about resolving harmful conflicts as soon as possible, even with non- democratic means. However, an authoritarian conflict management practice such as Ulrich excluding a mem- ber from the list is used only once in the data set. After a first “emergency” act (emic term), the community tends to collectively discuss and then formalizes such a be- havior as a new, legitimized element of their conflict culture.
Harnessing Transgressive Conflicts. The analysis reveals that transgressive conflicts not only have the ability to create, but also to destroy practical, identity, and relationship values within the community.
Practical Value. The analysis reveals that Premium members use routinized conflicts as a powerful tool to adjust community practices to changing market environments. Transgressive conflicts, in contrast, rarely produce practical outcomes and sometimes even jeopardize the community’s progress in a way that Hemetsberger (2006, p. 499) describes as “paralysis.” The mechanism by which such paralysis occurs is that transgressive conflicts first direct attention away from important practical matters toward identity and relationship matters, and then contaminate these conflicts with unpleasant emotions and escalating accusations. For example, the conflict about hiring versus not hiring Clarissa as an intern moved from a conflict about the practical matter of hiring an intern to a conflict about sexist language in the community. The conflict had thus led to the loss of a community member (Nico), to frustrations among other members, and to Clarissa eventually not being hired as an intern.
Identity Value. During phases of transgressive con- flict, engagement with other members and with the Premium identity can become quite intense. As with routinized conflicts, transgressive conflicts also produce identity value through addressing, negotiating, and ex- panding the community’s ideological norms and values. For example, the transgressive conflict about sexism and discrimination in the list bolstered the notion that Premium does not want to be seen as a community of rugged, sexist men, but as a community that accom- modates and pays respect to a broad range of cultural sensibilities.
However, transgressive conflicts can also produce negative identity value for the community, for example, by intimidating individuals and producing feelings of embarrassment for being a member of the community. These feelings can hurt individual as well as collective identities. In the transgressive conflict about sexism and discrimination, for example, community members
proclaim that they feel embarrassed when reading how members insult the prospective intern (individual iden- tity) and worry about reputational damages done to the Premium brand (collective identity).
Relationship Value. Lastly, the analysis shows that transgressive conflicts, as opposed to routinized con- flicts, can produce higher emotionality and, in their aftermath, stronger relationships among the remain- ing community members. After community members have struggled collectively through a phase of desta- bilization, they believe their relationships with fellow community members are stronger and better than be- fore (Coser, 1956; Simmel, 1964). However, such emo- tional intensity also results in ending valued relation- ships with members who reveal undesirable character traits in transgressive situations, or end because mem- bers realize that they fundamentally disagree with the collective. Both Nico and Hendrik, for example, were highly active and appreciated Premium members be- fore the transgressive conflicts described above. These members deliberately (Nico) and undeliberately (Hen- drik) cut their ties with Premium in the wake of the sex- ism and fraud conflicts, respectively. The social process that eventually induces members to leave the commu- nity proceeds as follows: first a member is placed under proverbial community fire, then the member increas- ing experiences social isolation in the community, and eventually the member capitulates to the type of peer pressure that Premium members call “list pressure.” List pressure emerges particularly from proverbial tri- als in which members collectively name and shame one specific member. These transgressive behaviors con- tribute to members losing trust in the community’s shared ethos and fellow member protection.
Overall, transgressive conflicts tend to discourage members more than encourage enthusiasm and par- ticipation. In particular, toward the end of their life cycle, transgressive conflicts tend to dominate the list and absorb its members’ energies to such an extent that it eventually causes “collective exhaustion” (emic terms). Other members zoom out of the discussion and (temporarily) leave the list. The following excerpt il- lustrates this dynamic. Ulrich signals empathy with members that went through a transgressive conflict to- gether and then announces that he would like to bring those members back that were left frustrated along the way.
Ulrich (August 12, 2012): For many of us it was very annoying to follow this discussion. Sorry from my side for that [ . . . ] I will now try to bring back those people that got lost on the way.
DISCUSSION
This four-year study conducted in the context of the Premium Cola consumption community explores the concept, focal elements, social dynamics, and value outcomes of a consumption community’s conflict
280 HUSEMANN, LADSTAETTER, AND LUEDICKE Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
culture. The interpretive findings garnered from this research contribute the following four theoretical insights to the existing literature on consumption communities and social conflict.
First, the study shows that social conflicts in consumption communities are not always accurately understood as aberrations from a community’s usual practices (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013; Kozinets, 2001; Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Schouten & McAlexander, 1995), but are more likely a vital, acquired, nurtured, and proactively developed part of a community’s broader culture (de Valck 2007; Hemetsberger, 2006). The study documents that in a community in a narrow sense, community members proactively draw on and enhance a proverbial toolkit of formal (i.e., mailing list, operating system) and informal (i.e., conflict roles and practices) conflict culture elements to initiate, prevent, tame, resolve, manage, and harness social conflicts for the benefit of the community (see Figure 1, Culture as Toolkit).
Second, the study reveals that consumption com- munity conflicts unfold in routinized and transgres- sive ways. Ten of 14 conflicts that were studied in this paper were identified as routinized conflicts, in which members drew on established conflict cultural el- ements to negotiate controversial standpoints. Four of these conflicts were classified as transgressive conflicts, placing the community into a state in which members were unable to resolve escalating tensions with exist- ing cultural means (see Figure 1, Conflict Patterns). The analysis shows that a community stabilizes its con- flict culture through routinized conflicts, but advances it through transgressive conflicts, where members are forced to extend their repertoire of conflict cultural ele- ments (see Figure 1, Transgressive Conflict challenges and extends Conflict Culture). These findings suggest that conflict behaviors such as using humor (Hemets- berger, 2006) or directing members’ attention on shared experiences (de Valk, 2007) are not preconfigured, uni- versal, or even static properties of all consumption communities. Instead the authors propose that these conflict behaviors are part of a larger set of acquired, tested, and collectively refined elements of community conflict culture.
Third, the research provides novel answers to the question of whether conflicts harm or benefit a consumption community’s social relations and its conti- nuity. The findings show (and confirm) that routinized conflicts tend to result in productive and democrati- cally legitimized decisions, contribute to strengthening individual and collective identities, and foster social relations among members who contribute to the collective mission (see de Valck, 2007; Hemetsberger, 2006). Transgressive conflicts, in turn, tend to leave practical problems unresolved, members offended and frustrated, and the community temporarily in a state of despair. The present empirical account provides a sense of the conditions under which social conflicts can be harmful for a consumption community. Even though transgressive conflicts can help a community to ad-
vance its conflict culture and strengthen internal rela- tionships (Coser, 1956), such conflicts also often result in the loss of highly regarded members, as well as sub- due members’ enthusiasm for the community’s cause.
Fourth, this research shows empirically how con- flict culture exists and emerges in communities in a narrow sense (i.e., communities in which mem- bers perform enduring relationships and where mem- bership is earned). These findings suggest, however, that communities in a broad sense (i.e., communi- ties in which members largely imagine their con- nections to others and where membership is self- determined) are less likely to develop such system- atic ways of performing conflicts. It seems that be- cause members of the American running community, for example, get into fights about situational resource access and practical privileges rather than about their social relations and shared mission (Chalmers Thomas, Price, & Schau, 2013), these communities encounter fewer reasons, or opportunities, to develop a conflict culture.
In turn, these findings illustrate that consumption community research can benefit from empirically ana- lyzing practices that consumers engage in, in a given realm (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009), rather than assuming ex ante that the practices that they observe are governed by community interests and relationships. This study shows that consumers who decidedly coordi- nate as a community tend to invite, perform, and har- ness social conflict more often and more systematically compared to consumers that join a community of 40 million North American runners who predominantly coordinate as a Gesellschaft (Tönnies, 1957 [1887]) or even as a market.
The theoretical findings garnered from this research have four practical implications for marketers working with consumption communities, and particularly with communities like Premium Cola that try to drive social change by example.
First, the study suggests that an analysis of the ex- tent to which a community performs, cultivates, and harnesses social conflicts can be used as diagnostic tool to assess the strength of the community’s social ties. The more advanced a community’s conflict culture, the more likely members are engaged with the community’s cause and the people who pursue it. Committed commu- nity members spend more time with other members, share more of their creative ideas, and engage more with particular practices and social causes. Such behav- iors are, in turn, desirable for managers interested in connecting communities with their brands. Diagnosing an absence of conflict culture, in contrast, is indicative of a weaker community commitment and a lack of an inspiring community mission.
Second, the study shows that conflicts in consump- tion communities like Premium are not managed in a similar fashion as hierarchical organizations. In these communities, conflicts are subtly and collectively nur- tured by all members and particularly by the person who adopts the role of the conflict moderator. In this
CONFLICT CULTURE AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN CONSUMPTION COMMUNITIES 281 Psychology and Marketing DOI: 10.1002/mar
Figure 1. Conflict culture toolkit, conflict patterns, and conflict outcomes.
context, conventional conflict management and hierar- chical interventional practices are to be treated with particular care. This is due to the fact that conven- tional managerial interventions such as an emergency exclusion run counter to the community’s core values of inclusiveness and consensual decision making. Man- agers interacting with consumption communities in a narrow sense are therefore advised to use their superior power position only in situations in which the commu- nity runs into transgressive conflicts, and finds itself unable to resolve a conflict other than with hierarchi- cal intervention. In all other cases, managers may blend into the community, contribute their voice in routinized conflicts, and act as conflict moderators at most.
Third, the study shows that routinized conflicts tend to be beneficial for the community. Managers may therefore encourage and nurture such conflicts rather than suspending them. Transgressive conflicts, in contrast, can severely harm the community and its progress. Diagnostic behaviors for such transgressive escalations include situations in which members violate more and more norms of routinized conflict behavior or begin to put list pressure (emic term) on one individ- ual member. Experiences of individual members being named and shamed by the community shatter other members’ trust in the community members’ morals, their conflict culture, and the competence of the con- flict moderator. Managers should therefore try to lead conflict parties that are crossing the boundaries of rou- tinized conflict behavior back to the initial subject mat- ter. Where conflicts escalate, nevertheless, managers should intervene, but afterwards bring members back by emphasizing that the intervention was an exception from the shared rule, and by summarizing what the community has learned from this conflict.
Lastly, the study highlights the benefits of formal- izing a community’s conflict culture in a living and breathing text, like the Premium’s operating system. Such a key document allows the community to shape and summarize its collective purpose as well as its col- lectively legitimized conflict behaviors. The operating system appears to be more influential and useful than conventional code of conduct or netiquette documents, because the operating system derives conflict behaviors from the community’s particular culture and purpose, rather than from universal conventions of respectful communication. Installing, referring to, and continu- ously developing such a community constitution seems
to help community members to stay focused on their col- lective mission, and to resolve social conflicts in more productive ways.
LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
The insights gained from the Premium Cola case are inevitably idiosyncratic, but potentially illuminating for understanding the conflict cultures of consump- tion communities with similar structural features and moral ambitions. Premium Cola is a particular empiri- cal case because the community formed as an offline, lo- cal protest group and switched to online communication only two years later. The present research therefore does not provide insights into the origins of Premium’s conflict culture, but explains on how the community’s conflict culture developed in the online sphere. More research will be needed to explore how conflict culture emerges in native online consumption communities and how physical encounters among community members affect a community’s conflict culture. Premium is also a particular case, because its members have success- fully pursued their collective mission for more than 10 years without falling prey to internal conflicts or ex- ternal challenges. This remarkable success might, in part, be due to the community’s strong, well-behaved conflict culture, but also to its members’ unabated pas- sion for consuming Premium Cola and building an eth- ical business. Further research will have to clarify how and whether conflict culture emerges in consumption communities with different moral ambitions, structural conditions, national backgrounds, and topical foci. Such research might shed more light on the particular con- ditions under which consumption communities develop productive conflict cultures rather than burning them- selves up in internal flame wars.
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handling conflict at work.pdf
Handling conflict at work The role of fit between subordinates’ need for closure and supervisors’ power tactics
Jocelyn J. Bélanger Department of Psychology, University of Maryland,
College Park, Maryland, USA
Antonio Pierro and Barbara Barbieri Psychology Department, University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Nicola A. De Carlo and Alessandra Falco Psychology Department, University of Padua, Padova, Italy, and
Arie W. Kruglanski Psychology Department, University of Maryland, College Park,
Maryland, USA
Abstract Purpose – This research aims to explore the notion of fit between subordinates’ need for cognitive closure and supervisors’ power tactics on organizational conflict management. Design/methodology/approach – Two-hundred and ninety employees drawn from six different Italian organizations were recruited for the purpose of this study. Findings – Results indicated that high-need-for-closure subordinates utilized more constructive (solution-oriented) conflict management strategies when their supervisors relied on harsh power tactics, whereas low-need-for-closure subordinates were more inclined to use solution-oriented conflict management strategies when their supervisors relied on soft power tactics. Additionally, results indicated that, overall, supervisors’ use of harsh power tactics increased subordinates reliance on maladapted (control-oriented) conflict management strategies, but even more so for subordinates with low need for cognitive closure. Originality/value – This study highlights the importance of supervisor–subordinate fit to understand conflict management in organizational setting.
Keywords Power, Conflict management, Need for cognitive closure
Paper type Research paper
It is not conflict of opinions that has made history so violent, but conflict of belief in opinions, that is to say conflict of convictions.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Getting along with colleagues at work is not easy. Organizational conflict arises from tension between co-workers because of real or perceived differences (De Dreu, Harinck, and Van Vianen, 1999; Wall and Callister, 1995) and constitutes an inevitable part of organizational culture (Putnam, 1988), consuming up to 20 per cent of managers’ time (Thomas, 1992). At work, conflict usually revolves around relationships (e.g. personal taste, interpersonal style) or task issues (e.g. distribution of resources, procedures and policies; Amason and Schweiger, 1997; Cosier and Rose, 1977; Guetzkow and Gyr, 1954;
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1044-4068.htm
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Received 30 September 2013 Revised 20 December 2013
8 April 2014 Accepted 9 April 2014
International Journal of Conflict Management
Vol. 26 No. 1, 2015 pp. 25-43
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1044-4068
DOI 10.1108/IJCMA-09-2013-0083
Jehn, 1997; Kabanoff, 1991), and results from De Dreu and Weingart’s (2003) meta-analysis suggest that “both are equally disruptive” (p. 746) with regard to organisational effectiveness.
Given its ramifications for organizations, conflict management has received much attention from a number of scholars and practitioneers (Gelfand et al., 2012; Jehn and Bendersky, 2003; Rahim and Bonoma, 1979, Thomas and Kilmann, 1974). Indeed, several taxonomies have been developed to capture the plurality of behaviors workers use to deal with conflict. One of the first classifications on the topic was provided by Deutsch (1949) and was articulated around a cooperation– competition dichotomy. Other models differentiated conflict management styles in terms of concern for production and people (Blake and Mouton, 1964) or concern for self and for others (Rahim and Bonoma, 1979), whereas Putnam and Wilson (1982) distinguished between non-confrontation, control and solution-oriented strategies. Despite these different models, one criticism raised against this extensive body of knowledge is that much of the research on conflict management has focused on the consequences of using a given conflict management style on organizational outcomes without investigating why individuals select a given approach and what predisposes them to do so (for a discussion, see Nicotera et al., 1995; Thomas and Kilmann, 1974; Rahim, 1983). Putnam and Poole (1987) have also reckoned that research has skirted how interpersonal interactions at work shape workers’ conflict management styles and concluded that more work needs to be done to understand how these interactions produce shifts in conflict management styles (Nicotera, 1994).
In the present research, we address this issue by combining two separate approaches to social influence. One approach distinguishes between qualitatively distinct power tactics (French and Raven, 1959; Raven and Kruglanski, 1970) that supervisors may use to influence their employees. The second approach concerns employees’ epistemic motivation and how likely they are of being affected by different influence attempts. The motivation of present interest is the need for cognitive closure (NfCC) (Kruglanski, 2004) whose role in forging socially shared realities has received considerable attention in recent years (for a review, see Kruglanski et al., 2006). Together, these approaches suggest that workers’ conflict management style is interactive and depends on the “fit” between employees and their supervisors.
In the following pages, we first briefly review several basic concepts of social power theory. We then carry out a similar review for the NfCC. Drawing on these notions, we then formulate our specific hypotheses and describe how we empirically scrutinized them.
Social power In the past decades, supervisors’ and subordinates’ relations have been given significant attention through a burgeoning literature on social power (Abdalla, 1987; Hinkin and Schriesheim, 1990; Schwarzwald et al., 2001; Yukl and Falbe, 1991). Social power has been defined as the ability to affect other’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors (Raven, 2001, 2004). An influential framework for understanding social power is the interpersonal power interaction model (IPIM; Raven et al., 1998; Raven, 2008). The IPIM taxonomy contains 11 power tactics that leaders utilize to persuade their subordinates, namely, expert, informational and referent power; legitimacy of dependence; reciprocity, position and equity; and, lastly, personal vs impersonal coercion and reward. These are described in turn:
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• Expert power is based on people’s belief that one is knowledgeable in a given domain. Rather than reflecting genuine erudition, it is the perception of expertise that provides one with power. For instance, because doctors are generally perceived as experts in their field, a doctor’s diagnosis would be able to influence his or her patient’s behavior and attitude even if the diagnosis is in fact inaccurate.
• Informational power, in contrast to Expert power, relates to the ability of utilizing information to provide logical arguments to persuade others. As Koslowsky and Schwarzwald (2001) have aptly noted, expert and informational power bases reflect the classical distinction between central and peripheral routes of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), respectively.
• Referent power is based on the ability of being liked, respected and admired by others. For example, referent power is gained when subordinates identify and consider their supervisor as a role model because of their personal admiration for that person.
• Legitimacy of dependence is derived from the social responsibility norm which commands compliance to requests being made from someone in need of assistance.
• Reciprocity power is based on the social norm of reciprocating with others (tit-for-tat).
• Legitimacy of position is power gained from being in a higher position in the social hierarchy (either formal or informal).
• Legitimacy based on the equity norm is another form of power, which compels one to obey someone in an organization who suffered a lot, worked hard or has been harmed in some ways.
Finally, the IPIM model includes four other types of power, namely, coercion and reward that are either personal or impersonal. Personal coercion and reward are at play when subordinates believe that compliance will result in being personally liked or disliked by the person in power (e.g. supervisor). On the other hand, impersonal coercion and reward refers to threats of punishment or promises of reward based on compliance (e.g. promotions or demotions).
While the 11 power tactics described by the IPIM have been useful to investigate the notion of power in organizational setting, research has evinced that these power strategies can be clustered into harsh and soft power tactics (Raven et al., 1998; van Knippenberg et al., 1999) depending on the amount of autonomy they afford subordinates in choosing to comply or not (Pierro et al., 2004).
Soft power tactics provide greater freedom of choice because they are not associated with enforceable rules that dictate the dispensation of rewards and punishments (Raven et al., 1998). In relation to this aspect, the soft power category includes power tactics such as expert, referent, informational power and legitimacy of dependence. In contrast, harsh power tactics pressure compliance with enforceable rules (or norms), coupled with either positive or negative consequences (Pierro et al., 2012; Raven et al., 1998). Consequently, power tactics such as personal and impersonal coercion and reward, legitimacy of position, equity and reciprocity have been classified in the harsh power tactics category.
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The IPIM specifies several factors that influence power figures’ selection of power tactics and subordinates’ likelihood of compliance to them. These include situational factors such as social norms, aspects of the work setting, organizational culture and organizational position (for a review, see Koslowsky and Schwarzwald, 2001; Schwarzwald et al., 2004), as well as personality-level factors such as self-esteem, need for power, desire for control and self-presentation style (for a review see Raven, 2004; Pierro et al., 2008). Implicit in the power relations dynamics addressed in the IPIM is the notion of “fit” between the type of power strategy selected by supervisors and the personality and motivational characteristics of employees. For instance, in commenting on the choice of power tactics, Raven (2001, p. 223) stated explicitly that “[…] the agent will be guided by […] an assessment of the target of influence”.
The notion of “fit” implicit in the IPIM is part and parcel of the general person– environment approach (French et al., 1982; Caplan and Harrison, 1993) often adopted in the organizational literature (for a recent meta-analytic review, see Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). Its general logic is that the efficacy of psychological processes or the likelihood of psychologically desirable outcomes depends on the degree of correspondence between the psychological situation in which an individual is embedded and his/her capabilities, values or motivational orientations. In line with this theoretical framework, the present research explores the effect of fit between supervisors’ power tactics and subordinates’ NfCC on subordinates’ conflict management styles. Before articulating our specific hypotheses in this regard, we introduce the construct of need for closure (NFC) and discuss its relevance to the topic of social power.
Need for cognitive closure The NFC is defined as a “desire for a firm answer to a question, any firm answer as compared to confusion and/or ambiguity” (Kruglanski, 2004, p. 6). It is an epistemic motivation which affects how individuals process information and render judgments (Kruglanski, 1989, 2004; Kruglanski et al., 2006)[1]. Specifically, people with a strong NFC tend to “seize” on information, permitting a judgment on a topic of interest (as long as information is perceived as subjectively valid), and to “freeze” upon such judgment, becoming relatively “closed minded” to further relevant information (Kruglanski and Webster, 1996). Consequently, under a strong NfCC, individuals tend to make strong judgmental commitments and become relatively unshaken in their views. In contrast, individuals with a strong need to avoid closure are leery of judgmental commitments: they feel more comfortable keeping their options open and eschew binding views or definite opinions.
An individual’s standing on the NFC continuum is determined by the perceived benefits and costs of possessing versus lacking closure. Such costs and benefits can be made salient by several contextual features (for example, time pressure, boredom, noise, fatigue; see for reviews, Kruglanski, 2004). Besides its various situational determinants, the NFC may also vary stably across individuals. A scale, which has been translated into several languages, was developed to tap peoples’ dispositional NFC (Webster and Kruglanski, 1994), enabling cross-cultural investigations of various NFC effects (for reviews, see Kruglanski, 2004; Richter and Kruglanski, 2003; Mannetti et al., 2002). Results obtained with the Need-for-Closure Scale have typically replicated those obtained with various situational inductions of this motivation, providing convergent evidence for the construct validity of NFC.
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Prior research has shown that NFC affects a variety of intrapersonal, interpersonal and group phenomena (see Kruglanski, 2004 for a review). Because it fosters a desire for firm knowledge (Kruglanski and Webster, 1996), the NFC induces a quest for consensus and of shared reality among group members (Kruglanski et al., 2006). Accordingly, it was found that groups composed of dispositionally high-(vs low)need-for-closure members both exerted and experienced greater uniformity pressures (De Grada et al., 1999), reported stronger desire to agree with other group members (Kruglanski et al., 1993) and exhibited a tendency to reject opinion deviates (Kruglanski and Webster, 1991). Furthermore, high-(vs low)need-for-closure individuals exhibited attraction to groups as function of the degree to which their membership was perceived as homogeneous, hence promising the affordance of a coherent social reality (Kruglanski et al., 2002).
Consistent with these findings, NFC is correlated with political conservatism (Jost et al., 2003) and preserving group norms across varying generations of membership (Livi et al., 2007). In organizational contexts, supervisors with a high (vs low) NfCC tend to exhibit a preference for harsh (vs soft) power tactics because they promote the formation of consensus and thus cognitive closure (Pierro et al., 2012). In summary, considerable evidence supports the notion that a heightened NfCC promotes the rapid formation of shared social realities (reflecting “seizing”) and the tendency to preserve such realities across varying conditions (“freezing”).
Conflict management style with the supervisor Over the years, different taxonomies of conflict management styles have been developed, usually distinguishing between two to five different styles (Rahim and Magner, 1995). The present research was conducted using Putnam and Wilson’s (1982) taxonomy which distinguishes between three conflict management strategies, namely, non-confrontation strategies, control strategies and solution-oriented strategies. Non-confrontation strategies are considered maladaptive because they usually involve avoiding disagreements, downplaying controversies or approaching conflict indirectly; they are a combination of what Blake and Mouton (1964) would call “avoidant” and “smoothing” styles, representing movement away from opposition. Control strategies, also considered maladaptive, involve managing conflict by arguing persistently for one’s positions and using non-verbal messages to emphasize one’s demands. This style is often referred to as “dominating”, “competing”, “contending”, “win-lose” or “zero-sum”, representing movement against the opposition. Solution-oriented strategies are a combination of what has been referred to as “compromising”, “collaborating” or “integrating”, representing movement toward the opposition, and thus conceived as adapted conflict-management strategies.
The present research According to the interpersonal power interaction model, soft power tactics provide subordinates with greater autonomy, and are less controlling than harsh power tactics (Raven et al., 1998). In other words, because soft power tactics (vs harsh power tactics) provide choice and opportunities for initiative, they encourage deliberations and delay the formation of consensus (Pierro et al., 2012). It follows that low-(vs high)need-for-closure subordinates should prefer soft power tactics because they eschew firm decisions and prefer to entertain different options. Conversely, high-(vs
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low)-need-for-closure subordinates should prefer harsh power tactics because their aversion for uncertainty should make them more comfortable in a work setting where the supervisor’s word is law and his/her directives are unquestioned (Pierro et al., 2012). Consequently, when there is a fit between subordinates’ NFC and supervisors’ power tactics (soft or harsh), supervisor–surbordinates’ interactions should be more harmonious which could be observable in terms of more adaptive conflict management strategies. Conversely, misfit between a supervisor’ power tactics and his/her subordinates NfCC should lead to less harmonious interpersonal interactions and thus foster less adaptive conflict management strategies. Specifically, the present research examined the following hypotheses:
H1. Fit between subordinates’ need for cognitive closure and supervisors’ power tactics promotes subordinates’ use of solution-oriented strategies.
H2. Fit between subordinates’ need for cognitive closure and supervisors’ power tactics reduces subordinates’ use of control strategies.
Additionally, given that confrontation reflects the absence of consensus and clear guidance, we hypothesized that:
H3. Subordinates’ need for cognitive closure is positively related to the use of non-confrontational strategies.
Finally, because harsh power tactics reduce deliberation and accelerate the formation of consensus (Pierro et al., 2012), we hypothesized that:
H4. Subordinates experiencing harsh power tactics from their supervisors are more inclined to use non-confrontational conflict management strategies.
Method Participants Two-hundred and ninety employees (174 men and 116 women) drawn from six Italian organizations (a textile industry [51], a building trade [48], a public hospital [52], a computer firm [23], a service company [77] and a social cooperative [39]) participated in the study on a voluntary basis. Their mean age was 38.85 years (SD � 10.04). There were no gender or age effect; therefore, they are not discussed further.
Procedure Employees filled out the Need-for-Cognitive-Closure Scale followed by a measure of Power Tactics and a measure of conflict management styles that they use in relations with their supervisors. The questionnaire packet included an introductory letter in which the purpose of the study was explained. Employees were told that the study would examine the relations between supervisors and workers in work conflict situations and that their responses would be kept confidential.
Need for cognitive closure. Participants responded to the Italian version of the Revised Need for Closure Scale (Rev. NfCS, Pierro and Kruglanski, 2005). This scale constitutes a brief 14-item self-report instrument designed to assess stable individual differences in the NfCC (e.g. “Any solution to a problem is better than remaining in a state of uncertainty”). Participants responded to these items on 6-point Likert scales ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 6 (Strongly agree). A composite NFC score was computed by averaging all responses. Previous studies (Pierro and Kruglanski, 2005)
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have demonstrated that the revised version of NfCS has a nomological validity (the disattenuated correlations between Rev. NfCS and old NfCS in the USA and Italian samples are 0.92 and 0.93, respectively) and satisfactory reliability (� � 0.80 in the USA sample, and � � 0.79 in the Italian sample). In the present sample, reliability of the Rev. NfCS was satisfactory as well (� � 0.75).
Supervisors’ use of power tactics as perceived by subordinates. To examine supervisors’ use of power tactics as perceived by their subordinates, we asked employees to respond to the Italian version (Pierro et al., 2012) of the Interpersonal Power Inventory (IPI) (Raven et al., 1998) Worker’s Format, developed by Schwarzwald et al. (2004). The IPI involves the following scenario:
Often supervisors ask subordinates to do their job somewhat differently. Sometimes subordinates resist doing so or do not follow the supervisor’s directions exactly. Other times, they will do exactly as their supervisor requests. We are interested in examining what behaviors supervisors use for gaining compliance.
Then participants were presented with 33 statements (e.g. “My supervisor reminds me that he/she could help me receive special benefits if I comply”), representing the 11 tactics delineated in the IPIM (three items for each tactic). Eleven representative items are presented in the Appendix (one for each power tactic). Respondents were then asked to indicate, for each statement, how often his/her supervisor uses this tactic at work. Responses on the Likert scale ranged from 1 (Very rarely) to 7 (Very often).
In line with prior research, we classified the 11 power tactics into harsh (impersonal and personal reward and coercion, legitimacy of position, equity and reciprocity) and soft (information, expertise, reference and legitimacy of dependence) power tactics categories. Internal consistency scores for harsh (� � 90) and soft (� � 0.77) power tactics were satisfactory.
Conflict management style with the supervisor. To measure conflict management strategies, participants responded to the Italian version (Pierro, 2004) of the Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument developed by Putnam and Wilson (1982; Wilson and Waltman, 1988). This instrument contains 30 items designed to measure three conflict management strategies used by subordinates with their supervisor:
(1) non-confrontation strategies (12 items, e.g. “I shy away from topics that are sources of disputes”; “I reduce disagreements by making them seem insignificant”);
(2) control strategies (7 items, e.g. “I assert my opinion forcefully”; “I argue insistently for my stance”); and
(3) solution-oriented strategies (11 items, e.g. “I try to use my supervisor’s ideas to generate solutions to problems”; “I offer trade-offs to reach solutions to a disagreement”).
Participants were asked to think of disagreements they have encountered with their immediate supervisor and indicate how frequently they engaged in each of the described conflict management strategies. Participants responded on a 7-point scale, ranging from 1 (Never) to 7 (Always). Reliability for non-confrontation (� � 0.83), control (� � 0.76) and solution-oriented (� � 0.72) strategies were satisfactory.
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Results Convergent and discriminant validity of the measures To assess the convergent and discriminant validity of IPI, Conflict Management Styles and Need for Closure measures we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with six (correlated) latent factors (harsh and soft power tactics, non-confrontation strategies, control strategies, solution-oriented strategies, and NFC). The observed variables contained in the CFA model were represented by the 11 power tactics (seven harsh and four soft power tactics) and, specifying the model as partial disaggregation model (Bagozzi and Heatherton, 1994) and using the split-half procedure, by two aggregates of items for each of the remaining constructs (i.e. non-confrontation strategies, control strategies, solution-oriented strategies and NFC). To further proving discriminant validity of the constructs, we compared the estimated six-factor model with three alternative models: one with five latent factors (one latent factor – Power – underlying the 11 power tactics, non-confrontation strategies, control strategies, solution-oriented strategies and NFC); one with four latent factors (harsh and soft power tactics, one latent factor underlying Conflict management styles and Need for closure); one with one latent factor (assuming a “general factor” underlying all the observed variables). CFA results show that the six-factor model (�2(137, N � 290) � 557.16, p � 0.00; CFI � 0.89; RMSEA � 0.10; SRMR � 0.08) fits the data better compared to the five-factor model (�2 (142, N � 290) � 617.89, p � 0.00; CFI � 0.87; RMSEA � 0.12; SRMR � 0.08), the four-factor model (�2(146, N � 290) � 924.01, p � 0.00; CFI � 0.79; RMSEA � 0.14; SRMR � 0.12) and, finally, the one-factor model (�2(152, N � 290) � 1,344.89, p � 0.00; CFI � 0.68; RMSEA � 0.17; SRMR � 0.13). The increase in fit of the six-factor over the five-factor model (�c2(5) � 60.73, p � 0.001), the four-factor model (�c2(9) � 366.85, p � 0.001) and the one-factor model (�c2 (15) � 787.73, p � 0.001) were all significant, thus supporting the distinction between the six constructs. In addition, these results demonstrate that the probability of common method variance occurring is minimized (i.e. inflating the relationship between constructs) (Iverson and Maguire, 2000; Podsakoff and Organ, 1986; Podsakoff et al., 2003). This is affirmed by the better fit of the competing models as they increased in complexity (Iverson, 1996; Korsgaard and Roberson, 1995, McFarland and Sweeney, 1992). Finally, the factor loading values of the six-factor model were all significant and above 0.53, thus demonstrating convergent validity for the constructs with multiple indicators (Bagozzi, 1994).
Main analyses A within-subjects ANOVA, with power tactics as repeated measure, yielded a significant effect (F(1, 289) � 303.64; p � 0.001). Results indicated that participants generally described their supervisors as more inclined to use soft (M � 3.46, SD � 0.98) than harsh power tactics (M � 2.55, SD � 0.99). These results replicate prior research (Raven et al., 1998; Pierro et al., 2004, 2012). A separate within-subjects ANOVA, with conflict management strategies as repeated measure, indicated that our participants generally preferred solution-oriented strategies (M � 4.15, SD � 0.71) over both control (M � 3.76, SD � 1.02) and non-confrontation strategies (M � 3.61, SD � 0.85; F(2, 578) � 31.91; p � 0.001). A summary of the descriptive statistics and zero-order correlations between the variables are given in Table I.
As can be seen in the table, we obtained a positive correlation between supervisors’ use of harsh and soft power tactics (r � 0.59; p � 0.001). This relatively high correlation is likely
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given that both variables are power tactics (Pierro et al., 2012). The three conflict management strategies were intercorrelated (non-confrontation and control r � �0.18, p � 0.005; non-confrontation and solution r � 0.19, p � 0.005; control and solution r � 0.33, p � 0.001). Moreover, NfCC was positively correlated with harsh (r � 0.25; p � 0.001) and soft (r � 0.16; p � 0.01) power tactics and with non-confrontation conflict management styles (r � 0.29; p � 0.001). Harsh tactics were positively related to employees’ non-confrontation (r � 0.28; p � 0.001) and control (r � 0.15; p � 0.05) conflict management styles, whereas soft tactics were positively related to employees’ non-confrontation (r� 0.23; p � 0.001) and solution (r � 0.20; p � 0.001) conflict management styles.
The next analysis examined the predicted “fit” effect consisting of the interaction between subordinates’ NFC and supervisors’ power tactics on subordinates’ conflict management styles. These predictions were tested with three separate multiple regression analyses using the product variable approach suggested by Baron and Kenny, 1986).
In each of the three multiple regression analyses, we entered NFC (A), harsh (B) and soft (C) power tactics and the interactions between NFC and these power tactics (i.e. A � B, A � C). Following Aiken and West (1991), predictor variables (i.e. NFC and power tactics) were grand mean centered (i.e. by subtracting the mean from each score). The interaction terms were based on these centered scores. For each conflict strategy, we also entered the two alternative conflict management strategies as control variables. Results of these analyses are summarized in Table II.
Table I. Descriptive statistics
and correlations between variables
M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
NFC 3.59 0.68 (0.75) Harsh tactics 2.55 0.99 0.25*** (0.90) Soft tactics 3.46 0.98 0.16** 0.59*** (0.77) Non-confrontation 3.61 0.85 0.29*** 0.28*** 0.23*** (0.83) Control 3.76 1.02 0.06 0.15* �0.03 �0.18** (0.76) Solution 4.15 0.71 0.01 0.09 0.20*** 0.19** 0.33*** (0.72)
Notes: *p � 0.05; **p � 0.01; ***p � 0.001; Cronbach’s alphas in bracket
Table II. Results summary of moderated multiple regression analyses
Criteria predictors Non-confrontation Control Solution
Beta Beta Beta
NFC 0.26*** 0.10 �0.08 Harsh tactics 0.24*** 0.35*** �0.23*** Soft tactics �0.02 �0.26*** 0.29*** NFC � Harsh 0.01 �0.13* 0.24*** NFC � Soft 0.03 0.10 �0.22***
Control variables Non-confrontation – �0.32*** 0.27*** Control �0.32*** – 0.43*** Solution 0.28*** 0.44*** –
Notes: *p � 0.05; ***p � 0.001
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For non-confrontation strategies (controlling for control and solution-oriented strategies), results indicated a significant effect of subordinates’ NFC (� � 0.26; p � 0.001) and supervisor’s harsh power tactics (� � 0.24; p � 0.001).
For control strategies (controlling for non-confrontation and solution-oriented strategies), we found a positive effect of harsh tactics (� � 0.35; p � 0.001) and a negative effect of soft tactics (� � �0.26; p � 0.001). Of greater importance, the interaction between NFC and harsh tactics was significant (� � �0.13, p � 0.05). To further analyze the interaction effect, we conducted simple slopes analyses (Aiken and West, 1991). Results indicated that the relation between harsh tactics and control strategies was positive when the NFC was low (1 SD below the mean), � � 0.34, p � 0.01. This relation, even though significant, was much less pronounced when the NFC was high (1 SD above the mean), � � 0.19, p � 0.05. The findings are displayed in Figure 1.
Finally, for solution-oriented strategies (controlling for non-confrontation and control and strategies), we found a negative effect of harsh tactics (� � �0.23; p � 0.001) and a positive effect of soft tactics (� � 0.29; p � 0.001). The interaction between NFC and harsh tactics was significant for solution strategies (� � 0.24, p � 0.001) and the interaction between NFC and soft tactics was significant for solution strategies (� � �0.22, p � 0.001).
Regarding the former interaction effect (NFC � harsh tactics), results of simple slopes analysis demonstrated that the relation between harsh tactics and solution strategies was positive when NFC was high (1 SD above the mean), � � 0.18, p � 0.05; however, this relation became negative when NFC was low (1 SD below the mean), � � �0.35, p � 0.01. The findings are illustrated in Figure 2.
Regarding the latter interaction effect (NFC � soft tactics), simple slopes analysis indicated that the relation between soft tactics and solution strategies was positive when NFC was low (1 SD below the mean) (� � 0.46, p � 0.001) and became non-significant when NFC was high (1 SD above the mean) (� � 0.01, p � 0.93). These findings are illustrated in Figure 3.
Discussion The present results demonstrate the influence of subordinates’ NfCC and supervisors’ power tactics on subordinates’ conflict management styles at work. Results indicated that these two factors were both positively related to the use of non-confrontation
Figure 1. Subordinates’ use of control strategies as a function of their NfCC and their supervisors’ tendency to use harsh power tactics
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strategies, thus supporting H3 and H4. Given that confrontation reflects the absence of consensus and clear guidance, these results are consistent with our theoretical framework which proposes that NFC is a motivation related to abhorring uncertainty (Kruglanski, 2004), whereas harsh power tactics reduce deliberation and accelerate the formation of consensus (Pierro et al., 2012).
Results also supported the notion that subordinates’ conflict management style is influenced by the fit between their NFC and their supervisors’ use of power tactics. Specifically, the study found that in situations of conflict with their supervisors, high-NFC subordinates tend to prefer more constructive (solution-oriented) conflict management strategies when their supervisors use harsh power tactics, and refrain from using (i.e. control) conflict management strategies when their supervisors use soft power tactics. In contrast, low-NFC subordinates were more inclined to use solution-oriented conflict management strategies when their supervisors rely on soft power tactics and less so when their supervisors rely on the harsh power tactics. They were also more inclined to rely on control conflict management strategies when facing harsh power tactics from their supervisors. Overall, these results supported H1 and H2.
Figure 2. Subordinates’ use of
solution strategies as a function of their
NfCC and their supervisors’
tendency to use harsh power tactics
Figure 3. Subordinates’ use of
solution strategies as a function of their
NfCC and their supervisors’
tendency to use soft power tactics
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Limitations Some limitations of this research should be acknowledged. For example, the reliance on correlational data prevents us from making causal inferences. Indeed, because work is such an important part of people’s lives, one could reasonably argue that supervisors’ power tactics may eventually shape subordinates’ NfCC. One way of testing for this possibility would be to examine the influence of power tactics on subordinates’ NFC using a longitudinal design. Alternatively, subordinates’ NfCC could be experimentally manipulated to increase the internal validity of the present findings. For instance, individuals’ conflict management styles could be observed after their NfCC has been augmented (e.g. via time pressure) and after experiencing soft or harsh power tactics from an authority figure.
Additionally, given that our data were obtained only from the perspective of subordinates, the present research is not impervious to the potential problem of common method variance. However, given the complex interactions described earlier, it is unlikely that our results can be explained by systematic measurement error. Nonetheless, to avoid this methodological shortcoming, future research could directly survey supervisors and their use of power tactics.
Implications Despite these methodological limitations, this research addresses an important gap in the present conflict management literature (for a discussion see Nicotera et al., 1995) by investigating the interpersonal dynamics that influence workers’ conflict management style. Although prior research has emphasized the consequences attached to using different conflict management strategies, the present research makes a contribution by highlighting personal and environmental factors that predispose employees to select them. Consequently, the present research offers several implications for management and interesting avenues for human resources. One of them involves the pairing of supervisors and subordinates based on supervisors’ power tactics and subordinates’ NFC. Indeed, work groups could be created in the optic of fostering adaptive conflict management strategies. For instance, a supervisor with the habit of using soft power tactics could be paired with subordinates with low NfCC, a situation which could promote solution-oriented conflict management strategies. Over time, a situation such as this one could be favorable to a positive work climate; a pivotal determinant of organizational success (Ostroff et al., 2003). In contrast, pairing supervisors that favor harsh power tactics with subordinates with low NfCC may create a toxic environment characterized by an organizational culture of conflict detrimental to organizational effectiveness.
Moreover, given that mounting evidence supports the idea that people’s NfCC can fluctuate across situations (e.g. in noisy environments, stress and fatigue; for a review see Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski et al., 1993; Webster, 1993), the current findings also prescribe that supervisors undertake a flexible and vigilant approach with their subordinates. Specifically, supervisors should:
• recognize the instances (i.e. with the help of appropriate training) that affect their subordinates’ NFC; and
• adjust their power tactics to create a situation of fit with their subordinates.
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Overall then, this analysis suggests a managerial approach that makes decision based on the interdependence between supervisors and subordinates.
Future research This work also opens the gate for many avenues of potentially fruitful future research.
One such research pertains to the traditional distinction between relationship and task-related conflicts (Amason, 1996; De Dreu and Van de Vliert, 1997; Jehn, 1995; Simons and Peterson, 2000). Although prior research has shown that relationship- and task-related conflicts are equivalently detrimental to organizational performance, evidence also points to the possibility that both can have distinct consequences on organizational outcomes (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). For instance, relationship conflicts usually create greater team member dissatisfaction than task-related conflicts (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). Future research could examine whether the qualitative nature of subordinate–supervisor conflicts influences subordinates’ selection of conflict management strategies. Indeed, it could be that, despite a situation of subordinate–supervisor fit, relationship- conflicts are too ego-threatening and laborious to deal with and thus foster maladapted conflict management strategies, whereas task-related conflicts are more dispassionate and thus facilitate conflict resolution. These boundary conditions could be mediated by the energetic demands of conflicts, an idea that could be tested by measuring employees’ vitality or the extent to which they are ego-depleted (Baumeister et al., 2007; Muraven and Baumeister, 2000). If it is true that relationship-conflicts are more taxing than task-related ones, then the energy at the individual’s disposal could affect the type of conflict management strategies selected (for a discussion see Kruglanski et al., 2012). This appears likely, given that solution-oriented strategies relying on recognizing and incorporating innovatively multiple points of view are conceivably more energy demanding than controlling strategies centered on imposing one’s personal opinion.
Finally, one fundamental question raised by the following research concerns the mechanism at play between supervisor–subordinates’ fit and conflict management strategies. Effort in finding the underlying mechanism(s) could provide important insights for person– environment fit theory. Several possible mechanisms could be investigated including:
• greater positive and lesser negative affect; • greater interpersonal bond, trust and perception of similarity; • effectiveness of communication processes (encoding, transmission of information);
and • receptiveness to feedback (less ego-defensiveness).
These could be profitably probed in future research.
Conclusion Organizational conflict is a common phenomenon that needs to be dealt with swiftly to minimize its detrimental consequences on organizational climate and performance. The current research demonstrates the importance of fit between supervisors and subordinates to create conditions conducive to a more harmonious work environment.
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Specifically, research described here supports the idea that when supervisors’ power tactics fit with their subordinates’ NfCC, subordinates are more likely to use constructive conflict management strategies, whereas a mismatch between these dimensions exacerbates the use of maladapted strategies.
Note 1. The NFC is a distinct construct from the desire for control. The former refers to an epistemic
motivation involved in the formation of judgments (subjective knowledge), whereas the latter pertains to the striving for social dominance.
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Appendix. Interpersonal power inventory
“Harsh” strategies Reward/impersonal power: “My supervisor reminds me that he/she can help me to get a promotion”. Reward/personal power: “My supervisor reminds me that I would receive his/her approval if I comply”. Coercive/impersonal power: “My supervisor reminds me that he/she can make it more difficult for me to get a promotion”. Coercive/personal power: “My supervisor reminds me that I would receive his/her disapproval if I do not comply”. Legitimate/position power: “My supervisor reminds me that, as a subordinate, I have an obligation to do as he/she says”. Legitimate/equity: “My supervisor reminds me that I have made some mistakes and therefore I owed one to him/her”. Legitimate/reciprocity: “My supervisor reminds me that, for past considerations I received, I should feel obliged to comply”.
“Soft” strategies Legitimate/dependence: “My supervisor reminds me that he/she needs assistance and cooperation from those working with him/her”. Referent power: “My supervisor reminds me that because we belong to the same group, I should acquiesce to his/her requests”.
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Expert power: “My supervisor reminds me that he/she probably knows the best way to do the job”. Informational power: “My supervisor reminds me that there are good reasons to change my approach to the job”. Note: The IPI had three items for each power strategy. Listed above is one representative item for each. A copy of the complete instrument, in English or Italian, may be obtained from the authors.
Corresponding author Jocelyn J. Bélanger can be contacted at: [email protected]
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website: www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm Or contact us for further details: [email protected]
43
Handling conflict at
work
Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
- Handling conflict at work
- Social power
- Need for cognitive closure
- Conflict management style with the supervisor
- The present research
- Method
- Participants
- Procedure
- Need for cognitive closure
- Supervisors’ use of power tactics as perceived by subordinates
- Conflict management style with the supervisor
- Results
- Convergent and discriminant validity of the measures
- Main analyses
- Discussion
- Limitations
- Implications
- Future research
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendix
- Interpersonal power inventory
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Perspective—A New Look at Conflict Management in Work Groups Andrew M. Carton, Basima A. Tewfik
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A New Look at Conflict Management in Work Groups
Andrew M. Carton, Basima A. Tewfik Management Department, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
{[email protected], [email protected]}
Members of work groups are highly interdependent and often share incompatible values, objectives, and opinions. As a result, conflict frequently arises. Given the profound impact of conflict on group effectiveness, scholars have
sought to identify strategies that can mitigate its downsides and leverage its upsides. Yet research on conflict management strategies has accumulated inconsistent results. In this Perspectives piece, we argue that these inconsistent findings can be resolved if scholars take a more expansive view of the consequences of conflict management strategies: whereas existing research considers how individual strategies influence a single group conflict type (relational, status, process, or task), we consider the impact of individual strategies on all four conflict types. After building a typology by organizing strategies according to the conflict type that each is best equipped to manage, we argue that the strategies most appropriate for managing one type of conflict may systematically backfire by escalating other conflict types. For example, the adoption of a superordinate identity is likely to resolve relational conflict, yet exacerbate status conflict. In addition to uncovering these instances of “negative spillovers,” we shed light on the rarer phenomena of “positive spillovers,” which occur when conflict management strategies resolve conflict types they were not originally designed to influence. By highlighting how individual conflict management strategies influence multiple conflict types—often in contrasting ways—this Perspectives article reconciles conflicting findings and redirects the literature by providing scholars with new recommendations on how to study conflict management in work groups.
Keywords : conflict management; diversity; group conflict; group processes and performance; process conflict; relational conflict; status conflict; task conflict; work teams
History : Published online in Articles in Advance October 4, 2016.
Introduction Members of work groups are highly interdependent, operate within tightly coupled social systems, and fre- quently have incompatible aims. As such, conflict often arises. Work group members conflict in their relation- ships, their claims to status, their beliefs about how responsibilities should be allocated, and their approaches to solving problems (Weingart et al. 2015). Given that conflict has a profound impact on team functioning (Jehn 1995), there is widespread interest in how it can be managed effectively. Indeed, efforts to bind seem- ingly intractable schisms stretch back to the beginning of research on conflict (Walton and Dutton 1969). In the modern era, conferences and books have been aimed exclusively at understanding how to manage conflict, and some individuals devote their entire careers to neutral- izing conflict (Kressel and Dean 1989). Perhaps more
indicative of its importance is that conflict management represents a core obligation even for those who do not specialize in it. To illustrate, Mintzberg (1971) observed that 30% of the responsibilities of managers involve resolving conflict. As a consequence of its timeless and essential role, conflict management constitutes a signif- icant area of study in research on work groups (Behfar et al. 2008, Greer et al. 2008).
In spite of—or perhaps partly because of—their preva- lence, theories on conflict management rarely overlap. Myriad paradigms exist, yet few linkages between them have been developed (Behfar et al. 2008, Blake and Mouton 1981, Greer et al. 2008, Kressel and Dean 1989, Thomas and Kilmann 1974, Tinsley 2001). Con- sequently, the status quo is a body of literature that is heavily populated, yet inadequately integrated. This would not be problematic were it the case that disparate
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theories reinforced each other, or, at a minimum, did not contradict one another. But this is not the reality— particularly for research on conflict management strate- gies, which are circumscribed behaviors or interventions enacted to resolve group conflict. Superordinate goals have been effective bridging devices in some instances (Sherif 1958) but not in others (Deschamps and Brown 1983). Increased contact between combative members has been helpful in some instances (Gaertner et al. 1994) but not in others (Hewstone and Brown 1986). Boundary spanning has worked well in some cases (Tushman and Scanlan 1981) but not in others (Fleming and Wagues- pack 2007). Indeed, nearly a dozen conflict management strategies have accumulated equivocal results (Brewer 2007, Dovidio et al. 2007, Fiol et al. 2009).
To help explain these inconsistencies, we reassess the way researchers have examined the impact of conflict management strategies on the four distinct group con- flict types (relational, status, process, and task). Whereas existing research typically considers the effect of indi- vidual conflict management strategies on a single con- flict type, we take a more expansive view by considering the impact of individual strategies on multiple conflict types—an important advance given that different conflict types co-occur much more often than they do not (de Wit et al. 2012). After building a typology by organizing three dozen conflict management strategies according to the conflict type they are best equipped to resolve, we intro- duce a theoretical framework that helps identify a num- ber of occasions when the strategies that most effectively manage one type of conflict may systematically backfire by escalating a different form of conflict. As one exam- ple of this type of “negative spillover,” a strategy to allow different members to share decision-making responsibil- ities may decrease status conflict by boosting a sense of fairness, yet increase process conflict by muddying the group’s hierarchy and causing more members to quar- rel over who should perform what role. To substantiate our arguments, we chronicle a series of studies that have yielded findings that are inconsistent or run counter to the expected effects of a variety of strategies, explaining how our identification of negative spillovers can help resolve these conundrums. In addition to considering how a con- flict management strategy can unexpectedly hinder forms of conflict it is not designed to influence, we examine the flipside of the coin: instances of “positive spillovers,” which occur when a conflict management strategy unex- pectedly benefits a form of conflict it was not designed to manage. In sum, considering the impact of conflict man- agement strategies on multiple forms of conflict uncovers a variety of spillovers that represent both critical bound- ary conditions and untapped opportunities.
Existing theories do not provide a clear frame- work for understanding how individual conflict manage- ment strategies influence nontargeted forms of conflict.
Much research on conflict management examines gen- eral orientations (e.g., collaboration versus competition) rather than specific strategies (e.g., superordinate goals). Accordingly, these theories do not provide a platform for understanding the consequences of specific strategies (Pruitt and Rubin 1986, Thomas and Kilmann 1974). As noted above, some research has investigated the use of individual strategies (Richter et al. 2006, Ronay et al. 2012) and even multiple strategies at the same time (Behfar et al. 2008), thereby considerably advancing the- ory on conflict management. However, this research has examined the effect of each strategy on either a single type of conflict or a general indicator of conflict that does not differentiate between distinct conflict types. In a departure from the existing literature, the central argu- ment of our Perspectives piece is that the effectiveness of conflict management can be better understood by consid- ering how individual strategies can each impact multiple forms of conflict—often in contrasting ways. In the dis- cussion we highlight additional ways that our theory redi- rects the literature on conflict management. The upshot of our integrative effort is a framework that provides schol- ars from various backgrounds a more holistic sense of the consequences of conflict management.
A Typology of Conflict Management Strategies Given that the objective of conflict management strategies is to set conflict to an optimal level for group effective- ness, the strategies that serve as the focal point of an analysis of unintended effects should be those that ini- tially set their targeted form of conflict to the most optimal level. According to Doty and Glick (1994), typologies are useful devices for identifying these types of “ideal” strategies. To understand how strategies can trigger opti- mal amounts of each conflict type, we needed to take two steps, both of which are consistent with Doty and Glick’s (1994) guidelines for typology construction: (1) identify how many conflict types there are as well as the optimal amount of each, and then (2) identify how strategies can set each conflict type to its optimal amount.1 In statisti- cal terms, the first step relates to determining the optimal amount of each dependent variable (each form of con- flict), while the second step relates to identifying how the predictor (each strategy) sets each dependent variable to that amount. After conducting these two steps, we fol- lowed Doty and Glick’s (1994) recommendation to take a third step: identifying specific examples of the ideal form of each strategy. These three steps are represented in Table 1, columns A–C.
Process of Typology Construction
Developing Categories: Determining the Optimal Amount of Each Conflict Type. Scholars have converged on the notion that there are four types of conflict.
Carton and Tewfik: A New Look at Conflict Management in Work Groups Organization Science 27(5), pp. 1125–1141, © 2016 INFORMS 1127
Table 1 Typology of Conflict Management Strategies
A B C
Examples that most closely represent ideal Conflict type How differences are addressed conflict management strategies
Relational Reducing differences • Adopting a superordinate identity (Gaertner et al. 1989) • Adopting a relational identity (Hogg et al. 2012)
Tolerating differences • Pro-diversity valuation (Homan et al. 2007) • Intergroup contact (Gaertner et al. 1994)
Status Reducing differences • Negotiation (Pruitt and Carnevale 1993) • Adopting egalitarian norms (Pereira et al. 2009)
Tolerating differences • Legitimizing status differences (Anderson et al. 2012) • Affirming the status of other members (Bendersky 2014)
Process Reducing differences • Rotating responsibilities (Behfar et al. 2008) • Job sharing (Sherwyn and Sturman 2002)
Tolerating differences • Subordination (Weick and Roberts 1993) • Sportsmanship (Organ 1988)
Task Establishing a moderate • Boundary spanning (Tushman and Scanlan 1981) amount of differences • Gatekeeping (Friedman and Podolny 1992)
Tolerating differences to a • Minority dissent (Peterson and Nemeth 1996) moderate extent • Devil’s advocacy (Cosier and Rose 1977)
Notes. Of the 36 examples of strategies uncovered in our literature review, the examples in this table most closely corresponded to the ideal characteristics of each of the categories and subcategories of strategies. See the online appendix for a detailed description of how we determined the two best examples for each subcategory. Although the two examples shown for each subcategory may highlight slightly different aspects of the subcategory’s ideal type, together they triangulate on the essential properties of their correspondent subcategory. Of the 36 examples of strategies, the number assigned to each subcategory was as follows: reducing relational differences, seven; tolerating relational differences, six; reducing status differences, five; tolerating status differences, five; reducing process differences, three; tolerating process differences, three; establishing a moderate amount of task differences, four; tolerating task differences to a moderate extent, three.
Relational conflict ties to incompatibility in identity, ide- ology, values, and interpersonal style (Jehn 1995). Status conflict pertains to attempts to undermine the hierarchical position of others or establish hierarchical differentiation (Bendersky and Hays 2012).2 Process conflict involves disagreement in how roles and responsibilities should be assigned (Behfar et al. 2011, Jehn 1997). Finally, task conflict relates to “disagreements among group members about the content and outcomes of the task being per- formed” (de Wit et al. 2012, p. 360). Relational, status, and process conflict are generally detrimental for work group performance (Bendersky and Hays 2012, de Wit et al. 2012). In contrast, several lines of evidence point to the likelihood that moderate amounts of task conflict improve performance when the other forms of conflict are dormant. A number of studies have found a curvilinear effect between task conflict and performance, such that teams perform best with moderate amounts (Jehn 1995, De Dreu 2006, Farh et al. 2010). Reinforcing these find- ings, a meta-analysis by de Wit et al. (2012, p. 370) found that task conflict is positively related to team performance until it reaches high levels, at which point it is negatively related to performance. This evidence is consistent with the logic that groups need to strike a balance between dis- sension and consensus to perform effectively. Although some disagreement about how to approach the task will lead teams to more deeply consider various perspectives
and recombine ideas in novel ways, an excessive amount of prolonged task conflict may undermine the ability for members to winnow down ideas and converge on com- mon solutions. In this way, “even if task conflicts can gen- erate more creative decisions, too much task conflict can hurt their implementation by limiting consensus” (Jehn and Bendersky 2003, p. 206). Consequently, the primary categories of our typology (see Table 1, column A) are built on the assumption that relational, status, and pro- cess conflict should be minimized, whereas task conflict should be kept in moderation.
Developing Subcategories: Determining How Strate- gies Set Each Conflict Type to Its Optimal Level. Doty and Glick (1994) recommend that each primary category in a typology be evaluated according to the same proper- ties. To identify the properties of conflict that need to be managed for all four conflict types, we sought to uncover themes of conflict that are universal.3 Thus, we turned to how conflict, in its most basic form, has been conceptu- alized. A phrase that reflects the two words that appear most often in 10 of the most influential conceptualizations of conflict is incompatible differences (Behfar et al. 2011, Boulding 1963, De Dreu and Beersma 2005, Deutsch 1973, Jehn 1995, Pondy 1967, Pruitt and Rubin 1986, Rahim 2011, Simmel 1955, Weingart et al. 2015). It is useful to closely inspect both words that comprise this phrase to identify the most basic ways to manage conflict.
Carton and Tewfik: A New Look at Conflict Management in Work Groups 1128 Organization Science 27(5), pp. 1125–1141, © 2016 INFORMS
Given that one word (“differences”) indicates the exis- tence of a property and the other word (“incompatibility”) indicates the way this property is assessed, group mem- bers can manage conflict with two basic types of actions. First, the very existence of differences can be minimized. To the extent that differences are reduced in the first place, it is not possible for them to be assessed as incompatible. Second, differences can continue to exist yet members can view them as tolerable rather than incompatible; that is, rather than viewing differences as destructive, they can be assessed as necessary for group functioning. To represent these two actions, we use reducing differences and tolerating differences as integrative themes for our typology. In the case of task conflict, which should be kept in moderation rather than eliminated, we suggest that moderately strong differences should be established and members should be encouraged to tolerate differences to a moderate extent. Together, these two themes (1) increase the precision of each of the four categories (organizing potential) and (2) serve as common distinctions that cut across each of the four categories (integrative potential). Since these two themes apply to each of the four conflict types, our typology has a total of eight subcategories (see Table 1, column B).
Assessing How Well Specific Conflict Management Strategies Fit Each Category and Subcategory. Finally, we sorted specific examples of conflict management strategies that have been studied in the literature accord- ing to how effectively they directly manage each of the four forms of conflict as well as whether they involve reducing or tolerating differences. We performed an extensive search of academic journals that publish research on group conflict management using a variety of search parameters. See the online appendix (available as supplemental material at orsc.2016.1085) for a complete description of this search process. Altogether, our search based on these parameters culminated in 36 examples of conflict management strategies, such as the adoption of superordinate identities (Fiol et al. 2009) and egalitarian norms (Pereira et al. 2009). These examples of strate- gies have largely been studied separately, and most of them have yet to be integrated within a common frame- work. We then adapted guidelines from Doty and Glick (1994) to assess the extent to which each example directly influenced each of the conflict types and validated this assessment by asking two management scholars to inde- pendently code the strategies using the same procedure we used. See the online appendix for a complete descrip- tion of this coding and validation process.
As we unpack each of the eight subcategories of con- flict management strategies in our typology below, we emphasize examples that most closely correspond to ideal forms—that is, those that set conflict types to their most optimal levels through the reduction or toleration of dif- ferences. Although some instances of conflict are so
intractable that no strategies can mend them (Fiol et al. 2009), these exemplar strategies are likely the best suited to do so. See Table 1, column C, for two exemplar strate- gies for each subcategory. We focus on more than one exemplar strategy for each of the eight subcategories to provide richer descriptions and illustrate core properties via triangulation; that is, although the examples of each ideal type of conflict management strategy have surface- level distinctions, they are united by the reality that, for a given conflict type, they either reduce differences or prompt members to tolerate differences.
The eight grey cells that appear on the diagonals of Table 2 indicate the optimal effects of each of the eight subcategories of conflict management strategies for their targeted conflict types.
Strategies That Attenuate Relational Conflict Relational conflict involves incompatible differences in identity, values, beliefs, or preferences. The most perni- cious instances of this conflict type involve ideological rifts—divisions based on sacred values (Bendersky 2014, Wade-Benzoni et al. 2002).
Reducing Differences. Rather than one party influenc- ing the other to “come to the other side” via persua- sion, the most effective strategies for reducing differences often involve pushing parties to “meet in the middle.” One representative way to achieve this is via the ladder of inference, in which members critically analyze why they have a particular ideological belief (e.g., a belief about the role of women in the workplace) (Ross 1994). By revisiting the assumptions that underlie their ideologies, conflicting parties may be open to converging on certain beliefs. Other approaches to addressing relational conflict involve reducing perceived differences by leveraging the flexibility inherent in one of the dominant mechanisms of cognition: categorization. Members can use recate- gorization, decategorization, and cross-categorization to reshape their understanding of how they are related to other members by developing more inclusive social cate- gories (Brewer 2007, Gaertner et al. 2000). Even if objec- tive characteristics cannot be changed (e.g., two Native Americans and two Hispanics will always belong to dif- ferent racial categories), members can choose which cat- egories are salient as social markers. Given that social categories are seen as proxies for values and beliefs, more inclusive categories can convince members that they are not divided by deep personal schisms. Perhaps the most well-known example of such a categorization-based strat- egy is a superordinate identity (Fiol et al. 2009), a con- cept similar to a common ingroup identity (Gaertner et al. 1993). In the same vein as a superordinate goal (Sherif 1958), a superordinate identity is a broad social category that is shared by those who are in conflict and do not otherwise sense a common bond (Dovidio et al. 2009).
Carton and Tewfik: A New Look at Conflict Management in Work Groups Organization Science 27(5), pp. 1125–1141, © 2016 INFORMS 1129
Table 2 Effects of Conflict Management Strategies on All Conflict Types
Strategies appropriate for managing relational conflict
Strategies appropriate for managing status conflict
Strategies appropriate for managing process conflict
Strategies appropriate for managing task conflict
Reducing differences
Tolerating differences
Reducing differences
Tolerating differences
Reducing differences
Tolerating differences
Establishing a moderate amount of differences
Tolerating differences to a
moderate extent
Effect on relational conflict
1
Attenuates
2
Attenuates
3
No effect
4
Attenuates
5
No effect
6
No effect
7
Escalates
8
Escalates
Effect on status conflict
9
Escalates
10
Escalates
11
Attenuates
12
Attenuates
13
Attenuates
14
Escalates
15
Escalates
16
No effect
Effect on process conflict
17
No effect
18
No effect
19
Escalates
20
Attenuates
21
Attenuates
22
Attenuates
23
No effect
24
No effect
Effect on task conflict
25
No effect
26 Increases
above optimal amount
27 Sets above or below optimal
amount
28 Establishes
optimal amount
29
No effect
30
No effect
31 Establishes
optimal amount
32 Establishes
optimal amount
Notes. Theory relevant to the eight diagonal cells (with green text and grey background) is presented in the section that introduces the typology. Theory relevant to the negative spillovers (the nine cells with text in red) and the positive spillovers (the four cells with text in dark blue) is presented in the section on spillovers. We reference the number in the upper right-hand corner of the relevant cell when articulating our arguments for each spillover effect. In our explication of spillovers, we expound on the “no effect” cells (those with black text).
A distinct, but related, concept is a relational identity. This strategy focuses attention on the uniqueness evident in the relationship between different members rather than a broader category to which members belong (Hogg et al. 2012). By focusing on a common bond, perceived differ- ences in identity are minimized.
Tolerating Differences. Rather than influencing group members to meld with others, approaches that involve tolerating differences push members to appreciate and— when possible—value those who possess different identi- ties, beliefs, and backgrounds. An example is pro-diversity valuation (Homan et al. 2007). Similar to mutual posi- tive distinctiveness (Cramton and Hinds 2004), this tactic involves establishing a norm of interaction that places a premium on how differences in beliefs and ideologies are interpreted. This strategy calls for seeing differences as valuable for authentic self-expression rather than viewing them as deserving of rebuke or derogation. As with multi- culturalism (Richeson and Nussbaum 2004), pro-diversity valuation can mend rifts by triggering a mentality in which individuals learn from those with different back- grounds. Another way to encourage members to under- stand and tolerate others’ differences is through direct exposure to those differences through contact (Gaertner et al. 1994). Such exposure is thought to reduce preju- dice because actors get to know each other as individuals rather than as group members. Individuals who get to
know outgroup members on a personal basis are likely to stop stereotyping them within minutes (Blair 2002). This is similar to the principle of open communication (Behfar et al. 2008). At a more basic level, these approaches share much in common with perspective taking (Batson et al. 1997), which can lead empathy to supplant antagonism.
Strategies That Attenuate Status Conflict Status conflict involves incompatible differences in access to, or interest in, hierarchy-defining resources. This includes power and authority, but is especially likely for status because it is more easily transferrable than other hierarchical characteristics (Hays and Bendersky 2015).
Reducing Differences. Negotiation can be used to re- distribute resources that define hierarchies (Pruitt and Carnevale 1993).4 Since (1) most negotiations involve valued resources and (2) valued resources drive social hierarchies, it is possible that low-status parties can negotiate to reduce differences related to status conflict. Although those who are already in privileged positions often gain disproportionately from negotiations (which could enhance status differences rather than reduce them), subordinate members can position themselves to reduce status-based differences when they align into coali- tions, thereby gaining power in numbers (Mannix 1993). Another way to reduce hierarchical differences is through the establishment of egalitarian norms (Pereira et al.
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2009), which can lead to a balancing out of a vari- ety of cues that send status signals (De Dreu and West 2001). Egalitarian norms can “flatten” teams in a number of respects, including how members are recognized, the order in which they speak during meetings, how long they speak in meetings, and how they dress.
Tolerating Differences. Given that nearly all groups have some type of formal or implied hierarchy (Magee and Galinsky 2008), members can be encouraged to view hierarchical differences as necessary. This can be done by legitimizing the group’s hierarchy (Halevy et al. 2011). According to status characteristics theory (Wagner and Berger 1993), members can draw on formal cues or sig- nals (e.g., job titles, office layout) to display signals that a hierarchy is appropriate, legitimate, and important for the success of all group members (Berger et al. 1998, Tinsley 2001). Rather than leading to resentment of the hierarchy, this can lead to dominance complementarity, whereby even subordinate members derive comfort from the func- tionality and order that hierarchy provides (Anderson and Kilduff 2009, Anderson et al. 2012). Similarly, status conflict may be smoothed over when dominant mem- bers justify the processes that put hierarchies in place. This is tantamount to procedural justice (Lind and Tyler 1988). For example, members can curb resistance from a subordinate bloc of research assistants who have been stripped of decision rights by suggesting that the work group should restrict decision making to a select few indi- viduals in order to preserve efficiency. Another way to tol- erate status differences is via status affirmation—“giving face” to others by displaying recognition and appreciation for their social standing (Bendersky 2014).
Strategies That Attenuate Process Conflict Process conflict involves incompatible differences in how members believe roles and responsibilities should be allo- cated and procedures implemented (Behfar et al. 2011).
Reducing Differences. Strategies that reduce differ- ences associated with process conflict operate primarily by more evenly distributing responsibilities—that is, who does what. The differences that lead to process conflict can be reduced, for example, through job sharing, which involves dividing specific responsibilities equally among group members (Sherwyn and Sturman 2002). Another avenue involves rotating responsibilities so that (1) dif- ferent work group members perform distinct functions at any one given time, but (2) each member fulfills each responsibility at some point (Behfar et al. 2008). A related way to encourage members to reduce differences is to promote dynamic delegation. Klein et al. (2006) found that senior leaders on trauma resuscitation teams allowed junior members to guide the team in a particular phase of the resuscitation process if they had the appropriate skill set. The role of a junior member acting as the pri- mary expert, however, was only temporary; senior mem- bers could redelegate authority as circumstances evolved
in what may be thought of as a “dance of delegation.” In this way, the status hierarchy was preserved, yet roles remained somewhat fluid and dynamic, thus making it an appropriate strategy for reducing differences related to process conflict.
Tolerating Differences. Strategies that promote the toleration of process-based differences raise members’ awareness of, and appreciation for, how they must assume distinct roles for the group to function properly. When members are prompted to consider the functionality of the entire group during task implementation, they are less likely to disagree about how their personal contribu- tions can and should fit within the group. For example, Weick and Roberts (1993) found that an awareness of differentiation and specialization boosted coordination, thereby minimizing process conflict. Weick and Roberts (1993) termed this mentality “subordination” because it reflected an awareness of the importance of putting the group’s functioning before one’s own immediate inter- ests. A similar example is sportsmanship—an attitudinal intervention that can increase members’ appreciation for the reality that they must occupy certain roles or invest an extreme amount of time during task implementation for their group to work effectively (Organ 1988).
Strategies That Optimize Task Conflict Task conflict involves disagreements among group mem- bers about the content and outcomes of the task being performed. To optimize task conflict, ideal conflict man- agement strategies are those that establish a moderate amount of these differences or lead members to under- stand the value of expressing these differences to a mod- erate extent.
Establishing Moderately Strong Differences. Work team members often cluster into distinct task-based sub- groups according to their expertise (Bezrukova et al. 2009, Carton and Cummings 2012). Since different sub- groups are likely to approach the task in divergent ways, they can provide a team with a generative middle ground such that the number of solutions the team considers is neither so small that it stifles healthy disagreement nor so large that it leads to a protracted debate (Bezrukova et al. 2009). However, subgroups can become isolated from one another, causing differences among them to become so extreme that teams struggle to converge on solutions. Teams can reduce this risk by employing boundary spanners—members who keep lines of communication open between subgroups (Gibson and Vermeulen 2003). By proactively culling information from members of one subgroup and sharing it with members of other subgroups (Tushman and Scanlan 1981), boundary spanners prevent subgroups from becoming secluded from one another and thus help teams establish what Gibson and Vermeulen (2003, p. 202) term a “healthy divide.” In this way, indi- viduals who span subgroup divides ensure that different
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subgroups do not approach the task in ways that are so disparate that they are irreconcilable (Lau and Murnighan 2005). Boundary spanning is not far afield from broker- ing (Chen et al. 2008) and gatekeeping (Friedman and Podolny 1992), which preserve the ability for members to develop unique solutions in small clusters while fos- tering the flow of high-quality information between these distinct clusters.
Tolerating Differences to a Moderate Extent. One way to promote a moderate amount of task conflict is to strike a balance across different phases of the task, such that teams avoid task conflict early on and then embrace it later on (Diehl and Stroebe 1987). Since task conflict often consists of members critiquing each other’s ideas, individuals who witness ideas being “shot down” may hesitate to introduce divergent viewpoints (Stasser and Titus 1985). Thus, preserving a stage early in the team’s life cycle when task conflict is weak encourages mem- bers to be more involved in the initial idea generation process. However, the work group must eventually win- now ideas down to a few implementable solutions; this requires task conflict. Indeed, teams that experienced lit- tle task conflict early in a project and a relatively large amount of task conflict late in the same project performed best in a study by Jehn and Mannix (2001). Teams can ensure that they experience a sufficient amount of task conflict in the latter phases of team work by encour- aging members with minority opinions to challenge the group to consider alternative perspectives (Peterson and Nemeth 1996). Similarly, a member can be assigned to be a devil’s advocate and be tasked with advocating for solutions that run counter to what the majority of the team prefers (Cosier and Rose 1977). These tactics create a norm of openness that prevents the team from converging on solutions without sufficiently considering alternative points of view (Janis 1982, Stasser and Titus 1985).
Spillovers Although the logic in our typology suggests that it is clearly worthwhile to employ strategies that are ideally suited to manage one type of conflict, we posit that many of these strategies can escalate other (nontargeted) types of conflict—potentially causing more harm than if no attempt at conflict management was made at all. In addi- tion to these “negative spillovers,” we suggest that there will be some instances of “positive spillovers,” which occur when the beneficial reach of a conflict management strategy is broader than prior research has indicated.5 Our consideration of negative and positive spillovers under- scores our paper’s central thesis, which is the importance of taking a more expansive view of conflict management by understanding the effect of individual strategies on multiple conflict types rather than only the individual form of conflict they are best suited to mitigate.6
Since conflict types co-occur more often than one type exists in isolation (de Wit et al. 2012), negative spillovers are most likely to arise when a strategy exacerbates another preexisting form of conflict. When multiple con- flict types co-occur, members are susceptible to confus- ing manifest conflict (or overt conflict) and underlying conflict (Raven and Kruglanski 1970). Manifest conflict relates to surface-level signals; however, these signals often look similar for the different conflict types. Mem- bers may think that all surface-level behavior stems from one form of conflict when, in actuality, multiple forms are evident. For instance, Murnighan and Conlon (1991, p. 177) observed that even though bickering about how to play a musical piece between members of a string quartet appeared “at first glance” to be conflict about the task at hand, “many of these conflicts were less substan- tive than they appeared.” In a deeper analysis of these groups, Murnighan and Conlon (1991) found that mem- bers sometimes negatively evaluated the ideas of others because of deep and long-lasting interpersonal friction. Thus, whereas it first appeared that only task conflict existed, in reality both task conflict and relational con- flict were co-occurring. We suggest that the confusion between manifest and underlying conflict may explain not only when negative spillovers occur, but also when posi- tive spillovers occur: an intervention can serendipitously resolve a preexisting conflict type that was not the tar- get of the intervention even if members fail to detect it. In addition to considering the occasions when strategies act on preexisting forms of conflict, we consider occa- sions when members employ a strategy that unexpectedly triggers a form of conflict that was not already apparent. In this way, conflict management strategies can actually be the cause of conflict co-occurrence.
The mechanisms that explain how spillovers occur can best be understood by examining how two differ- ent types of conflict can be interdependent. There are six combinations of conflict types (relational/status, rela- tional/process, relational/task, status/process, status/task, and process/task). We examined each of these combina- tions to determine whether the act of reducing or tol- erating differences associated with the targeted conflict type may indirectly influence the nontargeted conflict type by shaping factors—including attitudes (e.g., how members compare themselves to others), behaviors (e.g., communication patterns), and self-defining features (e.g., status associated with certain roles)—that underlie the nontargeted conflict type. We propose that four of the conflict combinations (relational/status, status/process, status/task, and relational/task) are characterized by spe- cific forms of interdependence that lead to spillovers, such that attempts to manage one conflict type will system- atically increase or decrease the other conflict type (see the off-diagonal cells in Table 2). We use our typology as a foundation for our analysis because the distinction between reducing and tolerating differences allows us
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to precisely identify when and how strategies associated with one conflict type escalate or attenuate another con- flict type. We then explain why spillovers are unlikely to result from the remaining two combinations of con- flict types (relational/process and process/task), thereby accounting for the cells in Table 2 for which we sug- gest that a given conflict management strategy will likely have no effect on another conflict type. Although our aim is to build theory that holds across most groups in most situations (Weick 1999), certain factors are likely to occa- sionally condition these effects. We explore some of these possible contingencies in the discussion.
Spillovers That Result from the Interdependence Between Relational and Status Conflict To understand how reducing or tolerating differences that underlie relational conflict can influence status con- flict and how reducing or tolerating status differences can influence relational conflict, it is useful to focus on the centrality of status for individuals’ social identities. Although status is not a definitional component of rela- tionships, the prospect of status loss is often interpreted as a threat to the self in relation to others (Marr and Thau 2014). As a result, people feel more vulnerable in their relationships when status differences are involved. Along these lines, although managing relational conflict by reducing the appearance of differences via a super- ordinate identity or other related strategies can bridge divides when different social groups have equal status, it may build antagonism among members of disenfran- chised subgroups when there are status differentials. Low- status members become more aware of high-status mem- bers and are more likely to engage in negative upward comparisons. These members may also resent the idea that they should consider themselves a part of the same group as those who have high status, especially if low- status members have relied on a belief that their sub- group is unique to cope constructively with their lower social status (Hornsey and Hogg 2000). Additionally, low-status members may experience dissonance and frus- tration when they realize that the opportunity to build stronger interpersonal bonds through the adoption of superordinate and relational identities does not lead to equal access to hierarchy-defining resources. Consistent with these arguments, Saguy et al. (2009) found that high-status subgroups endorsed a superordinate identity that encompassed both their subgroup and low-status sub- groups, whereas low-status subgroups (e.g., ethnic and racial minorities) focused on status differences between their subordinate subgroup and the dominant subgroup. Members of subordinate subgroups found it dispiriting that one social signal (the superordinate social category) indicated equality while another social signal (status) sig- naled inequality. Accordingly, we propose that reduc- ing differences associated with relational conflict may increase status conflict (Table 2, cell 9).
Because of the centrality of status in social contexts, status conflict may escalate not only as a reaction to strategies related to reducing differences associated with relational conflict, but also in reaction to strategies involv- ing the toleration of differences. Strategies such as open communication, pro-diversity valuation, and the contact hypothesis reduce barriers to communication, inducing members to get to know each other as individuals rather than relying on generalized stereotypes (Blair 2002). This, in turn, may reduce relational conflict. Yet this cat- egory of relational conflict strategies can backfire when status differences exist. When members are encouraged to think of each other differently and communicate with each other more openly, they become more aware of each other; that is, outgroup members become more salient. When high-status members become more top of mind for low-status members, low-status members may engage in more frequent and intense upward social comparisons (Dumas et al. 2013). Accordingly, they may stew over their lack of status and become more envious of high- status members than they were in the first place. Further compounding these problems is that low-status members may view strategies aimed at tolerating differences as misplaced and misguided because these strategies patch over disparities related to social hierarchy, which are viewed as sensitive and charged because they relate to a sense of social worth and the opportunity to control one’s own fate (Magee and Galinsky 2008). Thus, low-status members may react to these conflict management strate- gies by undermining, rather than embracing, those who are more privileged (Dovidio et al. 2007).7 Moreover, just as relational conflict management strategies make low-status members more aware of high-status members, high-status members will become more aware of low- status members. This may amplify the tendency for high- status members to treat low-status members with less respect, further escalating status conflict (Amir 1969). In sum, we propose that tolerating differences associ- ated with relational conflict may increase status conflict (Table 2, cell 10).
Whereas tolerating relational differences may escalate status conflict, tolerating status differences may have the opposite effect for relational conflict (i.e., conflict atten- uation). The interdependence between individuals’ status and sense of social worth presents members with a way to reduce interpersonal hostility by affirming an important component of others’ social identities. As an example, in one study a form of relational conflict (ideological con- flict) was reduced when participants were encouraged to affirm gains in status experienced by individuals who had an opposing political ideology (Bendersky 2014). This form of “giving face” reduced adversarial perceptions and buffered individuals against identity threat, making it more likely that they would compromise on a core personal belief. In this way, validating another mem- ber’s social standing can be a catalyst for reducing ide- ological divides. Consequently, we expect that tolerating
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status-based differences may attenuate relational conflict (Table 2, cell 4).
Spillovers That Result from the Interdependence Between Status and Process Conflict Social hierarchy is often essential for effectively assigning and coordinating responsibilities, suggesting that status differences are useful for ensuring that teamwork remains efficient due to minimal process conflict (Magee and Galinsky 2008). In particular, hierarchy is useful for coor- dination because it reduces confusion about which mem- bers should assume different roles (Halevy et al. 2011) and provides a sense of order and predictability (Keltner et al. 2008). Thus, although hierarchy is not a definitional element of process conflict, steps that eliminate a clear hierarchy can be problematic. Toward this end, reducing status differences may escalate process conflict because a poorly defined hierarchy can cause more individuals to campaign for different ways to assign responsibilities. Delegation can thus become haphazard. For example, in a study of equity research analysts, Groysberg et al. (2011, p. 722) noted that small status differences are likely to lead to “too many cooks spoiling the broth.” A greater number of individuals believe they hold sway over the allocation of work, hampering the ability for responsi- bilities to be delegated smoothly. Hence, we propose the following potential spillover: reducing status-based dif- ferences may trigger process conflict (Table 2, cell 19). In contrast, tolerating status-based differences preserves a hierarchy within the team. Those with greater status can use their clout to assign responsibilities, and it is less likely that other members will attempt to interfere with their decisions (Magee and Galinsky 2008). This rep- resents a positive spillover that follows from tolerating, rather than reducing, a status hierarchy. Specifically, we expect that tolerating status-based differences is likely to reduce process conflict (Table 2, cell 20).
However, if a team’s status hierarchy has not been established for legitimate reasons, then some members are likely to experience a sense of inequity. This can be problematic if teams attempt to manage process con- flict by tolerating differences in roles and responsibilities via approaches such as subordination or sportsmanship. Although these approaches can reduce process conflict by clarifying how members who accept different roles ben- efit the work group, individuals who accept unfavorable roles may feel slighted, thereby escalating status conflict. They may understand that assuming an unfavorable role can benefit the group because the lack of role confusion improves the team’s ability to perform; however, they may feel disdain if their role signals diminished social standing. Indeed, employees who occupy a role that is low in status but essential for the functionality of a team are more likely to resent high-status members (Spector and Fox 2010). Individuals who set aside self-interest for the sake of the team’s overall efficiency are sensitive to
feeling exploited, and thus apt to interpret the actions of members in high-status roles as being excessively self- interested. Spector and Fox (2010) suggested that this makes employees more likely to undermine others’ sta- tus. Hence, we propose that ameliorating process conflict by tolerating differences may exacerbate status conflict (Table 2, cell 14).
Following the same logic for why tolerating process- based differences can enhance hierarchical tension, reducing process-based differences is likely to defuse hierarchical tension by balancing status cues through- out the group. For example, Behfar et al. (2008) found that rotating responsibilities promoted a sense of equity. Since each group member executed the same responsi- bilities at one point or another, the chance for members to feel exploited was minimized, lessening the potential for inequality. Although status conflict was not identified at the time of the study by Behfar et al. (2008), exam- ining their finding through a prism informed by status conflict would suggest the presence of a positive spillover since a greater sense of equality corresponds with less hierarchical tension. In this way, we propose that reduc- ing process-based differences may mitigate status conflict (Table 2, cell 13).
Spillovers That Result from the Interdependence Between Status and Task Conflict The interdependence between status and task conflict stems from the reality that social hierarchies shape the way information is exchanged and, likewise, patterns of information exchange can influence social hierarchies (Bunderson and Boumgarden 2010). In particular, strate- gies that aim to reduce status conflict by flattening hier- archies (e.g., egalitarian norms) can reduce the power of individuals who are in the best position to serve as bound- ary spanners between subgroups because they are less likely to have the clout necessary to play an outsized role in within-group communication (Chen et al. 2008). The reduced role of boundary spanners may cause a subopti- mal amount of task conflict because subgroup boundaries either become so weak that the exchange of competing viewpoints becomes unconstrained or subgroups become isolated and disconnected—either of which would impair the ability for teams to experience a moderate amount of task conflict. As an illustration, consider the study by Adams et al. (2003). Whereas individuals responsible for managing conflict first sought to provide opportunities to negotiate finite resources, the researchers concluded that subgroups needed to work through differences in how they framed the problem they were facing. To effec- tively manage this task conflict, some members would need to have sufficient status to serve a more central role in the team as spanners. Yet reallocation of hierarchy- defining resources dilutes this clout. In short, we suggest that reducing status-based differences may set task con- flict below or above an optimal level (Table 2, cell 27).
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Just as attempts to manage status conflict can back- fire for task conflict, strategies aimed at optimizing task conflict by establishing moderately strong differences can likewise backfire for status conflict. As noted earlier, moderately strong differences between subgroups exist when subgroups are linked by individuals who act as boundary spanners. When there is little status conflict, boundary spanners can help promote a moderate amount of task conflict by spanning subgroups that have distinct areas of expertise. However, when status conflict is preva- lent, this type of linking can be problematic. Consider research on brokering. Theory on structural holes sug- gests that brokers are likely to build political capital as they span boundaries, thereby increasing their status (Burt 2009). This can exacerbate preexisting status-based ten- sions among members. Along these lines, Valley et al. (1992) observed that brokers were not trusted by other members because they could acquire an overabundance of power by hoarding information. If there is already tension between group members based on status differ- entials, then brokering is likely to enhance that tension even more (Valley et al. 1992). Indeed, Fleming and Waguespack (2007) found that brokering was viewed with suspicion because group members assumed that brokers inevitably accumulated too much clout, information con- trol, and status. Thus, when viewed through a conflict lens, we suggest that establishing a moderate amount of task-based differences may exacerbate status conflict (Table 2, cell 15).
In addition to the negative spillovers that character- ize the interdependence between status and task conflict, there is an opportunity for a positive spillover: when members tolerate status differences, task conflict can be optimized. Although hierarchy may stifle the sharing of ideas because low-status members are likely to defer to high-status members (Joshi and Knight 2015), feel- ings of affirmation and legitimacy that flow from tactics related to tolerating status-based differences may instill a sense of psychological safety (Edmondson 1999). When both dominant and subordinate members believe that their social standing is respected by other group members, they are likely to feel less vulnerable to “losing face.” Their defenses may be lowered (Bendersky 2014), making them more open to putting forth dissenting viewpoints. In all, the combination of hierarchy (which tends to suppress the exchange of opposing viewpoints) and psychologi- cal safety (which facilitates the exchange of opposing viewpoints) leads us to expect the following spillover: tol- erating status differences establishes a moderate (i.e., optimal) amount of task conflict (Table 2, cell 28).
Spillovers That Result from the Interdependence Between Relational and Task Conflict Although social communication (which underlies rela- tional conflict) and task-related communication (which underlies task conflict) are conceptually distinct, it is often
difficult to disentangle them (Lau and Murnighan 2005). To the extent that individuals are positioned to freely share work-related knowledge, they are more likely to interact about personal matters, and vice versa. This increases the likelihood of spillovers between relational and task con- flict. For instance, interventions that drive members to tol- erate interpersonal differences via increased contact and the encouragement of self-expression can reduce the abil- ity for task conflict to boost performance. As noted ear- lier, a moderate amount of task conflict is likely to occur when boundaries between subgroups are carefully man- aged. When subgroup boundaries are so permeable that most or all work group members interact freely and mem- bers feel less inhibited because a norm of self-expression has been established, members are likely to express their own viewpoints with little constraint. This is likely to cause task conflict to be so extreme as to be harmful (De Dreu 2006). Consider the worst performing and least satisfied work group in the Behfar et al. (2008) study of conflict management strategies. After adopting a pol- icy of open communication (i.e., extreme contact), group performance surprisingly worsened. One member noted, “[w]e talk (and talk, and talk, and talk) until a consensus (or agreement that promises an end to talking) is reached” (Behfar et al. 2008, p. 180). A policy meant to reduce interpersonal friction backfired. Thus, we propose that tolerating relational differences can create too much task conflict (Table 2, cell 26).
As noted earlier, establishing moderately strong differ- ences through strategies such as boundary spanning and gatekeeping streamlines communication between groups with different knowledge bases by channeling it through an individual (Friedman and Podolny 1992). In the pres- ence of relational conflict, this can backfire because it creates a boundary between subgroups, partitioning com- munication patterns across time in a way that may lead to ingroup/outgroup formation. Along these lines, Lau and Murnighan (2005) found that strategies geared toward managing task conflict were not useful because conflict was seeded in faultlines created by social categories. On the occasions when members from different subgroups do interact, their thoughts may be dictated more by “us versus them” antagonism than an understanding of other subgroup members as individuals. As a result, we propose that establishing moderately strong task-based differences may escalate relational conflict (Table 2, cell 7).
Relational conflict can also be exacerbated by strategies aimed at tolerating task-based differences to a moderate extent. For example, minority dissent may be constructive for task conflict because it encourages group members to consider ideas that differ from their own (Peterson and Nemeth 1996), but it also may increase relational tension. Since task-related communication and social communi- cation tend to become entangled, subgroups that form according to divergence in opinions on how to approach the task may shape informal communication patterns.
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This may threaten the group’s social harmony and cohe- siveness. Furthermore, group members may begin to per- sonally identify with their ideas, heightening the sense that task conflict has boosted relational tensions (Mucchi- Faina and Pagliaro 2008). The relationship between social and task-related communication may help explain why Curşeu et al. (2012) found that minority dissent optimized task conflict, but heightened relational conflict. In short, relational conflict may escalate when groups tolerate task- based differences to a moderate extent (Table 2, cell 8).
Combinations of Conflict Types That Are Unlikely to Be Characterized by Spillovers Team members’ roles (which underpin process conflict) can shape—and be shaped by—social communication (which underpins relational conflict) and knowledge shar- ing (which underpins task conflict) (Greer et al. 2008). This raises the possibility that strategies that attenuate process conflict could spill over to relational or task con- flict and strategies that optimize relational and task con- flict could spill over to process conflict. However, in line with our prior arguments, spillovers do not occur as a result of merely any potential form of interdependence between two conflict types. Rather, the act of managing one conflict type must influence the psychological states and interaction patterns of members in a way that sys- tematically increases or decreases the other conflict type. Along these lines, our examination of the literature related to the combination of relational and process conflict did not surface evidence to suggest that such systematic pat- terns exist.8 Similarly, our examination of research related to the combination of process and task conflict did not surface evidence to suggest that spillovers will occur.9
Indeed, within both combinations of conflict types, the evidence suggests that conflict management strategies could both decrease and increase the other conflict type, indicating that there are unlikely to be consistent spillover effects.
Discussion Our typology and theoretical framework shed light on how individual conflict management strategies systemati- cally influence multiple conflict types. Although scholars have studied the impact of conflict management orien- tations (e.g., contention and collaboration) on different types of conflict (De Dreu and Van Vianen 2001, Lovelace et al. 2001), these theories do not provide a framework through which to understand when and whether a conflict management intervention might mitigate one form of con- flict yet have an unexpected negative or positive impact on another. Furthermore, since these models have focused on general dispositions that people have toward conflict, they do not shed light on conflict management strate- gies, which are specific interventions that teams use to manage conflict (e.g., adopting a superordinate identity).
Yet various inconsistencies in the literature involve such strategies. Existing research that has investigated individ- ual strategies (e.g., Richter et al. 2006, Ronay et al. 2012) or multiple strategies (Behfar et al. 2008) has examined how they each influence a single conflict type. In this way, whereas existing work has largely focused on the eight diagonal cells in Table 2 (shaded grey), we have expanded this focus to the 24 off-diagonal cells in Table 2 (with the white background). We conclude by considering how this more holistic approach advances research on conflict management and diversity.
Implications for Theory on Conflict Management Through our expanded view of conflict management, we provide theory on how, why, and when strategies may be more or less helpful than previously assumed. Con- flict management strategies ideally suited to resolve one conflict type may backfire for another conflict type by further escalating conflict or, in the case of task con- flict, setting conflict at a suboptimal level. By shedding light on these negative spillovers, our typology provides a springboard for reconciling apparently contradictory find- ings. We reviewed nearly a dozen instances in the lit- erature in which our identification of negative spillovers can help resolve unanswered questions related to when strategies work effectively and when they do not. Thus, while there are well-known boundaries to conflict man- agement strategies, such as when differences may be so entrenched that active conflict management will not work, our theory raises a new set of boundary condi- tions. Additionally, by uncovering positive spillovers, our model highlights the surprising generalizability of cer- tain strategies. In sum, a more holistic view of conflict management illuminates previously overlooked strengths and limitations of a variety of strategies. To appropriately account for these spillovers, we suggest that scholars test the effects of conflict management strategies on multiple conflict types rather than only the conflict type that the strategy is best equipped to mitigate. As scholars seek to construct models that are sensitive to spillover effects yet parsimonious (i.e., including as few variables and statis- tical tests as are necessary), they can use our predictions in Table 2 as a guide for which conflict types should be tested. In some instances, scholars should investigate the effects of conflict management strategies on all four con- flict types, whereas in others instance they may only need to examine consequences for two or three of them.
We not only shed light on which spillovers are likely to occur, but also provide an integrated sense of the theoret- ical mechanisms that explain how they occur: via interde- pendencies among four pairs of conflict types. Three of these four interdependencies involve status conflict due to the centrality of status for people’s social identities (Marr and Thau 2014) and the importance of social hierarchy for both preserving work flow (a function of process conflict) and maximizing work effectiveness (a function of task
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conflict) (Halevy et al. 2011, Magee and Galinsky 2008). As such, attempts to manage status conflict can influence all other forms of conflict and likewise status conflict can be influenced by attempts to manage the other forms of conflict. The single form of interdependence that does not feature status relates to the strong correspondence between social communication and task-related commu- nication. These two types of communication are difficult to disentangle insofar that employees who share knowl- edge are more likely to communicate informally. This explains why attempts to manage task conflict can esca- late relational conflict and vice versa.
Our theorizing presents other opportunities. Scholars can use our arguments to identify when strategies are likely to exacerbate preexisting forms of conflict ver- sus when they may unexpectedly trigger forms of con- flict that did not already exist in the group. Strategies that trigger conflict types that do not already exist are problematic in all circumstances, whereas strategies that backfire by exacerbating preexisting forms of conflict are only problematic when conflict types co-occur. Our theory can also be used to understand more complex, multistage approaches that occur when teams enact strate- gies that escalate certain forms of conflict and then enact other strategies that offset these undesired repercussions. For example, if strategies used to manage relational, pro- cess, or task conflict escalate status conflict, then groups can respond by enacting strategies aimed at tolerating status differences. Since these strategies are unlikely to backfire (see Table 2, cells 4, 12, 20, and 28), groups can potentially avoid all fallout. Despite the promise of using follow-up strategies to patch over unintended esca- lation, a close inspection of our predictions in Table 2 suggests that there will still be instances when strategies lead to backfiring that is not correctable by employing follow-up strategies (e.g., when relational and task con- flict occur in isolation or together). On these occasions, the “bad is stronger than good” effect would imply that the negativity derived from exacerbating a nontargeted form conflict may outweigh the positivity derived from mitigating the targeted form of conflict (Baumeister et al. 2001). Thus, even if a strategy attenuates one form of conflict, its net effect may be detrimental. Hand in hand with these theoretical implications are important method- ological implications. In particular, scholars should put a greater emphasis on longitudinal studies in order to account for multistage effects in which a conflict inter- vention strategy resolves one conflict type in the short term but then escalates or exacerbates a distinct conflict type in the long term.
Beyond the many implications drawn from illuminating the impact of conflict management strategies on multi- ple conflict types, our theory adds value by integrating an extensive variety of conflict management strategies within the same theoretical framework. Initial progress toward
this end was made by Behfar et al. (2008), who intro- duced an inductively derived taxonomy that sorted seven conflict management strategies according to the conflict type they are best suited to address. We built on this work by integrating three dozen strategies within a deduc- tively constructed typology. In doing so, we highlighted the fundamental ways that conflict management strate- gies are similar to, and different from, one another. We illuminated two subcategories—reducing differences and tolerating differences—that can be used to understand the themes that unite and distinguish all conflict management strategies. As a result, our framework integrates research that remains loosely connected. This comprehensive inte- gration of the literature provides the groundwork for a holistic depiction of the interconnections between conflict management strategies and conflict types. In this way, our typology provides common terminology and sheds light on linkages that have not previously been uncov- ered, paving the way for scholars from a variety of back- grounds to understand the surprising pitfalls of certain conflict management strategies and the untapped potential of others.
The Relationship Between Work Group Diversity and Conflict Management Barclay (1991, p. 145) argued that “an emphasis on man- aging conflict requires a discriminating understanding of its causes.” The most widespread conceptualizations of conflict assume that conflict is rooted in differences, and the study of differences is the province of research on diversity. By distinguishing between two ways that dif- ferences can be addressed (reducing versus tolerating), we have provided a parsimonious way to understand how group diversity causes conflict. At a broad level, it would be useful to consider how the “tolerating” approach com- pares to the “reducing” approach. On balance, the “tol- erating” approach compares favorably to the “reducing” approach, as the latter is likely to backfire more often than the former, especially with respect to status conflict (see Table 2). Moreover, approaches to reducing differ- ences are often more costly than approaches related to tolerating differences. Whereas strategies related to tol- erating differences involve altering members’ attitudes, strategies related to reducing differences (e.g., rotating responsibilities) often require flexibility in routines and structures. In many cases, the costs of the latter approach may be so high as to be prohibitive (e.g., it may be impossible to rotate responsibilities in work groups in which specialization is extreme). When these considera- tions are taken together, one reasonable conclusion is that approaches related to tolerating differences are generally superior. Yet there are reasons not to dismiss approaches related to reducing differences. For instance, these strate- gies are more penetrating; since conflict is seeded in dif- ferences, reducing or eliminating differences associated with relational, status, and process conflict may be more
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permanent and therefore worth the extra cost on many occasions.
The effectiveness of reducing versus tolerating differ- ences depends on the type of conflict that those differ- ences cause. For example, regardless of whether status conflict exists in isolation or co-occurs with any of the other forms of conflict, members should enact strategies aimed at tolerating differences rather than reducing them (see the two columns in Table 2 relevant to managing sta- tus conflict). And regardless of whether process conflict exists in isolation or co-occurs with any other form of conflict, members should enact strategies aimed at reduc- ing differences rather than tolerating them (see the two columns in Table 2 relevant to managing process conflict). In this way, the usefulness of reducing versus tolerating differences for diversity researchers is underscored by the reality that the relative merit of these two approaches depends on which conflict type emerges. Altogether, the distinction between reducing versus tolerating differences is (1) parsimonious because it clusters strategies within each conflict type according to only two fundamental themes, (2) integrative because it shows that this same basic distinction is relevant for each type of conflict, and (3) valuable because it helps further distinguish how each type of conflict should be managed.
Managerial Implications Practitioners can develop a conflict management decision tree by extrapolating from our theory. First, teams should identify which conflict type(s) exist. To avoid misdiagno- sis, members can use several cues at once. At first glance, the most straightforward approaches to diagnosing con- flict may appear to involve a careful probing of each member’s interpretations. Yet work group members do not always agree on which form of conflict is present— or whether conflict exists at all (Jehn et al. 2010). Thus, members can also focus on behaviors that distinguish one form of conflict from another (e.g., jockeying over resources is likely to be unique to status conflict). Addi- tionally, members can make attributions about conflict type according to which member attributes are present (e.g., functional differences may predict task conflict) or even how those attributes are configured—for example, teams are likely to experience the greatest amount of rela- tional conflict when members are split into two equal- sized identity-based subgroups (Carton and Cummings 2012, 2013). Once team members have diagnosed which conflict type(s) exist, they can use our theory to identify the general strategy (reducing differences or tolerating differences) that is most likely to avoid escalating nontar- geted conflict types. If multiple conflict types coexist and the implementation of strategies will always lead to back- firing effects, then teams may be better served by revert- ing to passive forms of conflict management (Thomas and Kilmann 1974).
Future Directions Future research should consider the possibility of inter- play between reducing and tolerating differences, such that the use of one moderates the effectiveness of the other. For instance, tolerating status differences may not be as effective when status differences are extreme because subordinate members may feel disenfranchised. In these cases, high-status members may look to reduce status differences to some extent and only then enact strategies related to tolerating them. The potential inter- play between reducing and tolerating differences re-raises an issue that we acknowledged previously: contingencies on our proposed effects. Toward this end, the broad scope of our theorizing led us to focus on effects that are likely to hold across most situations; however, scholars should be cognizant of the moderating role of factors such as task types, phases of teamwork, and group size. In a sim- ilar vein, scholars should adapt our model to situations in which the assumptions of our theory are likely to change. For instance, in certain instances it may be the case that some amount of process conflict is useful or that there is a positive relationship between task conflict and perfor- mance rather than a curvilinear relationship.
Conclusion When members with different backgrounds, predilec- tions, and expertise work in tandem, conflict is often an inevitable—and sometimes essential—byproduct of teamwork. But whether conflict represents a beneficial or a destructive force in work groups depends on how it is managed. Our Perspectives piece provides a new look at conflict management, helping to shed light on inconsistent findings by identifying when specific interventions are likely to be more beneficial than previously assumed as well as the surprisingly large number of situations when they may backfire. This analysis therefore serves as both an integrative effort and a cautionary tale. Group members should act with heed when attempting to manage conflict, for their good intentions might unexpectedly escalate it.
Supplemental Material Supplemental material to this paper is available at http://dx.doi .org/10.1287/orsc.2016.1085.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Terri Griffith and two reviewers for their gen- erative feedback throughout the review process. For comments on earlier versions of this manuscript, they sincerely thank Lance Ferris, Sujin Jang, Kristin Smith-Crowe, and Isabelle Solal. They also thank Erik Dane, Adam Grant, and Spencer Harrison for providing helpful insights at critical junctures. The authors are indebted to Justin Berg and Shef Patil for their guid- ance with the analyses. Finally, they are grateful for the help from colleagues who attended a seminar at Wharton, especially Sigal Barsade, Samir Nurmohamed, and Nancy Rothbard.
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Endnotes 1Outcomes of conflict management are most long-lasting when work group members participate in the implementation of con- flict management strategies, because members remain oriented toward a common purpose (Hackman 1987). Thus, we distin- guish conflict management from the overarching category of conflict resolution, which can involve controlling members or forcing their capitulation through formal systems. Hence, we do not consider actions such as arbitration, regulation, or the alteration of team composition by management. 2Consistent with the definition used by sociologists, status cor- responds to numerous factors that underpin hierarchies, such as power, prestige, and authority. In this way, status conflict represents zero-sum exchanges in which individuals gain at the expense of others. Furthermore, since they are important for defining hierarchies, we assume that conflict involving resources represents status conflict. 3Since general orientations reflect the dispositions of involved parties (e.g., collaborative versus competitive) rather than ways that the properties of conflict itself can be addressed, we do not rely on theories of conflict management orientations to develop themes. 4Since (1) the possession of resources is a key characteristic of hierarchy and (2) discord over hierarchy is the distinguishing characteristic of status conflict, we position negotiation as more central to status conflict than other forms of conflict. 5It is important to further clarify the distinction between the direct effects covered in our typology and the indirect effects that we cover in our consideration of positive spillovers. By definition, a single conflict management intervention involves a narrow scope of actions or attitudinal changes, and thus is constrained with respect to its influence. The narrow scope of a given strategy leads it to typically only influence one conflict type directly. If a strategy has an effect on another conflict type, this effect is likely to be indirect—working through one of the interdependencies that we identify in the section on spillovers, such that a strategy first reduces one form of conflict, which then has positive downstream consequences for another form of conflict. Consistent with Doty and Glick’s (1994) guidelines, this “positive spillover” for the second conflict type would not lead the strategy to be coded as an “ideal” strategy for that con- flict type because the strategy does not directly influence the member differences that underlie it. Even if a different conflict management strategy can mitigate conflict indirectly, an indi- rect effect is more likely to be attenuated than a direct effect. This is likely why the strategies we code as positive spillovers have not been examined with respect to multiple forms of con- flict; scholars may have assumed that they only have an effect on the targeted conflict type. Consequently, we discuss posi- tive direct effects in the section introducing our typology and positive indirect effects in the section on spillovers. 6When developing our predictions, we do not limit ourselves to work produced by management scholars. Instead, we draw from a diverse array of literatures relevant to group conflict, including political science, anthropology, psychology and soci- ology. In doing so, we answer calls for a view of group conflict informed by a variety of disciplines that focus on groups (Jehn and Bendersky 2003, Mannix 2003). By casting such a wide net, our theory can more clearly contribute to groups scholars in all social science disciplines.
7Although we focus on attempts to influence the attitudes of all group members, these strategies may sometimes be directed exclusively toward high-status members. These strategies are still likely to backfire, however, because they reduce barriers to communication and cause low-status members to be more aware of high-status members, leading to negative upward comparisons. 8We do not predict spillovers for Table 2, cells 5, 6, 17, and 18. The following is a brief overview of the reasons why we do not posit these effects. Reducing differences in roles and respon- sibilities is likely to alter social communication patterns. This could reduce relational conflict by helping people cultivate new social bonds or increase relational conflict by disturbing the communication patterns that underlie existing relationships. Tolerating differences in roles and responsibilities could reduce relational conflict by causing people to appreciate each other more since members are doing what is best for the team, yet it could also increase relational conflict by entrenching people in fixed communication patterns and leaving some members alienated from others. Reducing relational differences could decrease process conflict by helping members respect each other’s role preferences more, yet it could increase process con- flict by leading people to be so tentative to avoid breaching their shared identity that they are unable to divide up tasks efficiently. Tolerating relational differences could decrease pro- cess conflict if it leads members to better take the perspective of others when determining who should take on each role, yet it could also increase process conflict since people may still have an inherent preference to work with those from their same social category. 9We do not predict spillovers for Table 2, cells 23, 24, 29, and 30. The following is a brief overview of the reasons why we do not posit these effects. It is difficult to predict how either establishing or tolerating task-based differences will influence process conflict, as the existence of boundaries between sub- groups may provide a starting point for determining how to divide up roles yet render it more challenging to work through the nuances of implementation and coordination. Similarly, it is unclear how either reducing or tolerating differences in roles and responsibilities will influence task conflict. Whereas the existence of role-based differences may lead to fixed communi- cation patterns in subgroups, it may also make some members feel more marginalized and less likely to participate.
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Andrew M. Carton is an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his Ph.D. from Duke University. His research focuses on how leaders manage intergroup conflict (including racial conflict and subgroup conflict) and communicate about long- term goals.
Basima A. Tewfik is a Ph.D. candidate in management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include conflict, self-presentation, status, and teams.
The hope in conflict management.pdf
Personal Relationships, 21 (2014), 365–386. Printed in the United States of America. Copyright © 2014 IARR; DOI: 10.1111/pere.12037
The role of hope in conflict management and relational maintenance
ANDY J. MEROLLA
Baldwin Wallace University
Abstract Rooted in hope theory, this study examined how dispositional and relationship-specific hope influence communication in romantic relationships. In Study 1a, dispositional hope was positively associated with active and constructive conflict responses and negatively associated with passive and destructive conflict responses. In Study 1b, dispositional hope was mainly a positive predictor of active and constructive responses. Hope was also found to predict certain relational maintenance behaviors. Study 2 then examined the influence of hope in specific relational conflict episodes. Dispositional and relationship-specific hope predicted unique variance in conflict goals and styles. High- relative to low-hope individuals reported more prorelationship goals and fewer hostility-domination goals. They also reported greater integrative problem solving and less personal attacking, withdrawal, and third-party assistance.
From the athletic field to the classroom to the wreckage piles of natural disasters, hope enables people to overcome even the most formidable obstacles (Curry, Snyder, Cook, Ruby, & Rehm, 1997; Feldman, Rand, & Kahle-Wrobleski, 2009; Hackbarth, Pavkov, Wetchler, & Flannery, 2012; Irving, Sny- der, & Crowson, 1998; Snyder, Cheavens, & Sympson, 1997). Hope also appears conse- quential in people’s personal relationships, a domain in which obstacles abound. From relational conflict to job stress, romantic part- ners must overcome various hurdles as they navigate their unique paths toward successful relationship maintenance.
Research rooted in C. R. Snyder’s (2002) hope theory has been instrumental in showing how hopefulness equips people to efficaciously
Andy J. Merolla, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Baldwin Wallace University, Berea, Ohio.
A version of this manuscript was presented at the 2012 National Communication Association convention in Orlando, FL.
Correspondence should be addressed to Andy J. Merolla, Baldwin Wallace University, Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Berea, OH 44017, e-mail: [email protected].
respond to life’s setbacks. In the context of per- sonal relationships, studies have shown hope to be positively associated with perceived relationship quality (Chang, 1998; Segrin & Taylor, 2007). But what is it about hope that benefits relationships? This study examines the possibility that hope is a positive force in rela- tionships because of its effects on the nature of partners’ relational interaction—both in good and in bad times. On a day-to-day basis, hope promotes routine relational maintenance behavior enactment, and during turbulent periods, hope increases partners’ use of con- structive conflict management styles. Overall, this study poses that hopeful people possess cognitive and emotional sets that promote positive communication practices in romantic relationships in the form of routine rela- tional maintenance behaviors and constructive conflict management styles.
Three studies were conducted to explore these ideas. Study 1a examined the relation between dispositional hope and people’s gen- eral approaches to constructive versus destruc- tive relational conflict management. Study 1b tested how dispositional hope is associated with current romantic partners’ perceptions of
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conflict management and relational mainte- nance behavior. Study 2 tested how disposi- tional, as well as relationship-specific, hope shapes conflict management goals and styles with regard to a specific relational conflict episode.
Hope
Defining and differentiating hope and hope theory
Three cornerstone ideas exist in the literature on hope. First, hope is an ancient concept. Hope features, for instance, in the Ancient Greek tale of Pandora as well as in the centuries-old works of various theologians, philosophers, and artists (Eliott, 2005; Snyder, 2000). Second, hope is ubiquitous. Consider, for example, the way the term pervades our everyday communication (e.g., “I hope this e-mail finds you well” and “This news gives me renewed hope”). Third, hope is consequen- tial. Researchers propose that hope not only shapes people’s likelihood of personal achieve- ment, but it also factors into their physical and mental health (Snyder, 2002). This last point likely accounts for the escalating interest in hope among scholars in the medical and social sciences (Alarcon, Bowling, & Khazon, 2013).
Scientific interest in hope emerged by the 1960s (Eliott, 2005). Guided by the belief that hope, or lack thereof, is linked to health, psy- chologists and psychiatrists worked to identify the key features of hope. Influential scholars (e.g., Stotland, 1969) conceptualized hope as a goal-centric phenomenon (see Eliott, 2005 for review). From this view, hope is fundamen- tally about how people conceptualize and pur- sue goals that are important to them. This view of hope clearly differs from the ways in which people often use the term in everyday language (i.e., to connote passive desire or anticipation of positive future outcomes; Peterson & Byron, 2008).
Beginning in the 1980s, Snyder built upon the goal-based conceptualization of hope and proposed hope theory (Snyder, 2002). Snyder (2002) defined hope as a cognitive and moti- vational construct comprising two goal-related factors: pathways and agency. Pathways think- ing generates primary and secondary routes for
goal attainment, whereas agency is the motiva- tion to enact those routes. Hope theory asserts that high-hope people, compared to low-hope people, produce greater numbers of pathways toward goals and have stronger motivation to pursue goal pathways in the face of setbacks (Irving et al., 1998).1 High-hope individuals also experience more positive and fewer neg- ative emotions during goal creation, revision, and pursuit (Snyder, 2002).
Theorists argue that hope exists in three forms: as a dispositional variable (i.e., one’s general hope level across situations), a domain-specific variable (i.e., hope pertaining to school, work, or other contexts), and a state variable (i.e., fluctuating daily hope levels). These forms of hope are related; people’s state hope levels, for instance, “should fluctuate over time, but generally should vary around the mean level of the individual’s dispositional hope” (Lopez, Ciarlelli, Coffman, Stone, & Wyatt, 2000, p. 68).
According to Snyder (2002), people learn to be hopeful. Pathways and agency thinking begin to develop in infancy as children interact with their environment and caregivers. Child- hood experiences, including the presence or absence of trauma and the nature of family interaction (Shorey, Snyder, Yang, & Lewin, 2003), then continue to shape hopefulness. Interaction that facilitates secure attachment appears to enhance hope by providing children a sense of safety to explore their goals (Jiang, Heubner, & Hills, 2013). By adulthood, dis- positional hopefulness takes shape but remains susceptible to change based on goal success and failure in various social arenas.
Snyder, Feldman, Taylor, Schroeder, and Adams (2000; Shorey, Snyder, Rand, Hock- emeyer, & Feldman, 2002; Snyder, 2002) have described in detail how their conceptu- alization of hope is theoretically distinct from
1. One way to think about how high pathways and agency jointly contribute to hope and, ultimately, goal achieve- ment is to consider the goal pursuits of an athlete (Curry et al., 1997). As Curry and colleagues (1997) discussed, an athlete, such as a soccer player, is increasingly likely to achieve his or her goals during a match (e.g., score a goal and make a difficult pass) when he or she (a) can come up with multiple ways to pass and shoot (path- ways) and (b) has high motivation to practice these moves to master them (agency).
Hope in relationships 367
multiple models of optimism, self-esteem, self-efficacy, attachment, problem-solving behavior, negative/positive emotionality, and Type A personality. Further, they have created psychometrically sound self-report instru- ments to measure dispositional, state, and domain-specific hope in adults and children (e.g., Snyder et al., 1991; Snyeder et al., 1996). In developing their dispositional hope mea- sure, Snyder and colleagues (1991) conducted exploratory factor analyses with eight sam- ples of college students and adults (the latter of which were in psychological treatment). Results showed consistent support for the expected two-factor structure of pathways and agency. Later work utilizing confirmatory factor analysis further supported dispositional hope’s dual structure (Babyak, Snyder, & Yoshinobu, 1993; Bryant & Cvengros, 2004).
To test that dispositional hope is unique from related concepts, Magaletta and Oliver (1999) conducted a maximum likelihood factor analysis with items from the Dispo- sitional Hope Scale, as well as items from established self-efficacy and optimism scales. The pathways, agency, self-efficacy, and opti- mism items loaded on four factors, leading the authors to conclude these are “related but not identical constructs” (p. 548). Extending these results, Bryant and Cvengros (2004) employed confirmatory factor analyses and found that hope and optimism items loaded on distinguishable latent factors (see also Alarcon et al., 2013).
Several studies, moreover, show that although hope shares small to moderate corre- lations with variables such as self-esteem, opti- mism, negative affect, and self-efficacy, hope predicts unique variance in a host of outcomes, including school grades (Ciarrochi, Heaven, & Davies, 2007), sport performance (Curry et al., 1997), and pain tolerance (Snyder et al., 2005). Exemplifying this area of research, Peterson and Byron (2008) conducted four studies analyzing the unique effects of hope on the job performance of salespersons, mortgage bro- kers, and executive managers. The first three studies showed that hope significantly and pos- itively predicted job performance (e.g., meet- ing monthly sales quotas) above and beyond self-efficacy and cognitive ability. A fourth
study showed that hope predicted unique vari- ance in performance on a problem-solving task among executives at a Fortune 100 company.
How hope shapes behavior: The elaborated hope model
Snyder’s (2000, 2002) elaborated hope model demonstrates how hope shapes cognition and behavior. The model describes the process of goal pursuit via the iterative and summa- tive nature of pathways and agency thinking. There are three key phases in the hope model: the learning history phase, pre-event phase, and event sequence phase. Learning history includes all previous interactions, begin- ning with infant–caregiver communication. Because past interactions contribute to hope levels, they can influence future goal pursuits (Stotland, 1969). The pre-event and event sequence phases pertain to the pursuit of any single goal or related set of goals that a person deems worthwhile. In the pre-event phase, the person develops “outcome value” for specific goals. A critical point made by hope theorists is that for hope to be relevant to a given goal, the achievement of that goal has to be per- ceived as sufficiently valuable and important (Snyder, 2002). In other words, if people are ambivalent about a goal, hope should not be especially salient to whether or not, and how, they pursue that goal (Feldman et al., 2009).
If a goal is determined to have sufficient outcome value, the person engages in the cog- nitive and motivational work to develop path- ways and agency. The model indicates that it is the generation of pathways and agency that propels the individual to persevere when unexpected events and stressors arise (Snyder, 2000). Indeed, it is in the face of goal blockages and unexpected stressors that hope becomes most consequential to people’s thoughts and behaviors. In particular, because hope is char- acterized as the ability to quickly develop and revise pathways toward a goal, unexpected stressors cause less negative emotional reactiv- ity. In addition to promoting more pathways, hope also appears to promote better pathways. Research, for instance, suggests that high- rel- ative to low-hope people enact more effective coping strategies in stressful situations (Chang & DeSimone, 2001; Snyder et al., 1991).
368 A. J. Merolla
Diary studies indicate that hope might pro- mote goal attainment because it helps indi- viduals manage negative emotion and stress (Ong, Edwards, & Bergeman, 2006; Snyder et al., 1996). Ong and colleagues (2006), for instance, conducted a 45-day diary study of older adults (ages 62–80). Using multilevel modeling, the authors found that daily hope and stress interacted, such that hope lessened the effect of stress on negative emotion. Subse- quent analyses suggested that hope “functions to speed recovery from stress” by mediating the relation between stress and negative emotion- ality (p. 1269).
Given that hope contributes to creative prob- lem solving (Peterson & Byron, 2008) and positive stress management (Ong et al., 2006), it makes sense that hope has been found to be a positive predictor of general well-being and personal achievement. High- compared to low-hope people have been found to experi- ence better adjustment and coping, higher life satisfaction, and lower levels of depression and dysphoria (Chang & DeSimone, 2001; Snyder, 2002). Moreover, in specific life domains, such as work, school, and athletics, hopeful people achieve more of their goals, even when control- ling for factors such as natural ability, previous achievements, and perceived self-worth (e.g., Feldman et al., 2009; Snyder et al., 1997).
Personal relationships and hope
Relational conflict
Because dispositional hope exerts cross- situational influence, it should be salient to behavior in personal relationships. Research suggests that hope is positively associated with perceived interpersonal relationship quality (Chang, 1998; Segrin & Taylor, 2007). One potential explanation for why hope positively affects relationships is that hope supports constructive conflict management. Indeed, conflict is a common stressor in romantic relationships that affects long-term relational quality and stability (Kline, Pleasant, Whitton, & Markman, 2006).
But how should we conceptualize con- structive conflict management? Reviewing the vast interpersonal conflict literature, Canary (2003) suggested that there are “two ubiquitous
dimensions” in the study of conflict behavior, directness–indirectness and cooperation– competition (p. 528). Broadly speaking, effective conflict management often involves direct and cooperative (though sometimes also competitive) communication (Canary, 2003). Other conflict-related frameworks, such as Rusbult and colleagues’ (e.g., Rusbult, Verette, Whitney, Slovik, & Lipkus, 1991) accommodation model, also demonstrate that relationships are typically strongest when partners use active and cooperative behavior to manage disagreements. Researchers of con- flict styles have similarly found that “positive problem solving,” which involves active and constructive behaviors, is a good predictor of relational quality and stability (Kurdek, 1994).
There are at least four specific ways in which hope should support effective relational conflict management. First, consider that rela- tional conflict management is fundamentally a goal-driven process. Canary’s (2003) model of strategic conflict, for example, outlines how partners’ conflict styles and tactics are directly and indirectly influenced by relational, instru- mental, and identity goals. The heightened self-belief and self-efficacy indicative of hope- ful individuals (Snyder, 2002), as well as their propensity toward approach rather than avoid- ance goals in stressful situations (Chang & DeSimone, 2001; Snyder et al., 1991), should lead them to envision and enact active and constructive behavior indicative of voice (Rus- bult et al., 1991) and positive problem solv- ing (Kurdek, 1994). High-hope persons indeed tend to appraise stressful events as control- lable and are motivated to actively solve their problems (Chang, 1998). Supporting the pro- posed link between hope and constructive rela- tional conflict management is the experimental work by Ripley and Worthington (2002), which showed that a majority of couples who com- pleted a hope-based marital enrichment pro- gram significantly increased their ratio of pos- itive to negative communication behaviors in observed interactions.
Second, hope should influence conflict man- agement based on hope’s effects on emotional experience and regulation. As negative emo- tion is more, and positive emotion is less, readily activated in low-hope people during
Hope in relationships 369
stressful situations (Snyder, LaPointe, Crow- son, & Early, 1998), low-hope relational part- ners possess emotional sets that might hinder effective conflict management. Research indi- cates that when partners enter into conflicts with high levels of negative emotion—or if they have difficulty in regulating the amount of negative versus positive emotion during conflict episodes—it (a) reduces use of con- structive conflict management behaviors (e.g., repair attempts), (b) increases use of destruc- tive behaviors (e.g., withdrawal), (c) heightens the likelihood of negative emotional “flood- ing,” and (d) degrades postconflict relationship quality (Carrere & Gottman, 1999; Gottman, 2011).
Third, hope is relevant to conflict manage- ment based on high- versus low-hope individ- uals’ differing propensities toward goal flexi- bility and fixation. According to Snyder and colleagues (1997), “it may be that high-hope people are more able to ‘let go’ of problematic areas by decreasing the importance they assign to them and increasing the importance they assign to more satisfying aspects of their lives” (p. 110). People with low hope, however, focus intensely on inadequacies. As a consequence, not only should high-hope partners be better able to keep sight of the satisfying elements of their relationships during periods of conflict, but they should also be able to avoid push- ing too forcefully with any one conflict style or tactic. Hopeful people might also be able to continually revise their approach to post- conflict relational repair and respond to their partners’ needs in ways that motivate forgive- ness (Pansera & La Guardia, 2012). Overall, the goal flexibility and creativity indicative of hopefulness could mitigate destructive conflict sequences (e.g., demand–withdrawal; Roloff & Chiles, 2011).
A fourth way hope affects conflict man- agement is based on its link to depression. Because extreme low-hope individuals respond to stressors in a similar manner to people expe- riencing depression and dysphoria (Campbell & Kwon, 2001; Chang & DeSimone, 2001; Snyder, 2002), this can limit low-hope part- ners’ ability to successfully manage conflict. Depression is a major risk factor for destructive conflict in relationships (especially marriages)
in part because it reduces partners’ use of inter- active problem solving (Kline et al., 2006).
Routine relational behavior
Although conflict is common in relationships, it is typically less common than other forms of interaction, such as relational maintenance behavior (Canary & Dainton, 2006). Mainte- nance behaviors, which are often enacted on a daily or weekly basis, are defined as “activi- ties in which partners engage to sustain desired relational properties,” including relational sat- isfaction, commitment, and stability (p. 728).
Based on hope theory, maintenance behav- iors can be conceptualized as the pathways by which partners pursue and achieve their rela- tional goals (e.g., satisfaction). According to Snyder and colleagues (2000), hope facilitates primary and secondary enhancement behaviors throughout people’s lives. Primary enhance- ment behaviors ward off problems before they arise, and secondary enhancement behaviors limit the negative effects of problems once they occur. Maintenance behaviors function in a similar manner, strengthening relationships on a day-to-day basis and repairing relationships during turbulent periods (Canary, Stafford, & Semic, 2002). Maintenance behaviors, then, are the very types of enhancement activities high-hope individuals are likely to enact in their romantic relationships (so long as the maintenance of their relationship is perceived as a valuable goal).
Conceptualizing maintenance behaviors as goal directed, and thus germane to hope the- ory, is complicated, however, by the fact that much maintenance behavior enactment is con- sidered routine in nature (Stafford, 2003). But even if maintenance performance is concep- tualized as routine, it can still be considered at least partially goal directed (see Waldron, 2003). As Dillard (1997) noted, communica- tion behaviors are often, at least at first, strate- gic and goal based. Although goals typically become less conscious over time as behavior is habituated, nonconscious interpersonal goals can remain influential on thought and behavior (e.g., Fitzsimmons & Bargh, 2003).
High- more so than low-hope individuals should enact greater amounts of maintenance behaviors, and select more effective behaviors
370 A. J. Merolla
from their “maintenance repertoire” (Stafford, 2003), due to the nature of their pathways and agency thinking. High-hope individuals can consistently create (and re-create) path- ways toward their goals (Snyder, 2002). This should enable high-hope partners to envision multiple ways to effectively maintain their rela- tionship. Maintenance behavior performance should also be influenced by agency, because unless individuals possess sufficient motiva- tion and desire to enact the goal pathways they generate, they will not pursue these pathways with sufficient vigor to overcome unexpected obstacles. And when it comes to the enactment of day-to-day relational maintenance activities, many obstacles exist; fatigue, job stress, and waning attraction are just a few of the factors that can negatively affect one’s desire to engage in daily maintenance behaviors. Though high- and low-hope persons might be equally sus- ceptible to these hindrances, high-hope peo- ple, as has been discussed, possess cognitive and emotional sets that likely make them more manageable.
Study 1a
The first study tested whether dispositional hope is associated with general constructive and destructive conflict management tenden- cies (maintenance behaviors were examined in Study 1b). The focus of this study was on hypothetical relational conflicts with peo- ple not currently in romantic relationships. Looking first at hypothetical relational conflict situations (that are not linked to a specific romantic partner) is an important first step, because it can offer a glimpse of the interplay between people’s dispositional hope and their relational schemas for conflict management. The concepts of dispositional hope and rela- tional schema capture how expectancies for future interactions are shaped by accumulated past experiences (Baldwin, 1992; Snyder, 2002; Stotland, 1969). To be more precise, relational schemas reflect the ways that peo- ple cognitively organize knowledge about, and expectations for, relational interaction. They shape people’s interpersonal scripts for how interactions will transpire, thus guiding, at least initially, expectancies for, and the
creation of, messages (Planalp, 1985). Peo- ple’s schemas for conflict, akin to hope, are influenced by childhood experiences. Both dispositional hope and conflict schemas, for instance, develop based on children’s parental interactions and observations (Dug- gan, O’Brien, & Kennedy, 2001; Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2008).
Constructive and destructive conflict man- agement approaches were operationalized in this study based on Rusbult and colleagues’ (1991) accommodation framework of exit- voice-loyalty-neglect. Accommodation is an “individual’s willingness, when a partner engages in a potentially destructive behavior, to (a) inhibit tendencies to react destruc- tively in turn and (b) instead engage in constructive reaction” (p. 53). The exit-voice- loyalty-neglect framework is a 2× 2 behavioral conceptualization of conflict responses based on the dimensions of activeness–passiveness and constructiveness–destructiveness. Exit is an active and destructive response, whereas voice is an active and constructive response. Loyalty and neglect, though both passive, differ in that loyalty is constructive and neglect is destructive.
From a hope theory perspective, exit-voice- loyalty-neglect responses can be conceptu- alized as generalized conflict management pathways. Just as some accommodation responses are more relationally constructive than are others (Rusbult et al., 1991), hope theory that suggests some pathways are bet- ter suited to goal attainment than are others (Snyder, 2002). When one’s goal in a conflict is successful relational maintenance (and the avoidance of relational damage), voice is a positive response, while exit is not. After considering a range of potential behaviors, high- more so than low-hope people should be inclined to use voice behaviors and disinclined to use exit behaviors. In addition, high-hope individuals should be inclined to engage in active, as opposed to passive, conflict manage- ment strategies, even if those passive styles are constructive (i.e., loyalty). This is based on findings showing that high-hope individuals possess active problem-solving orientations (Chang, 1998; Snyder et al., 1991). To provide an initial test of the relation between hope and
Hope in relationships 371
conflict responses, the following hypotheses were examined:
H1: Dispositional hope is positively related to perceived use of active and constructive accommodation (i.e., voice) in hypothetical conflict situations. H2a/b: Dispositional hope is negatively related to perceived use of the pas- sive accommodation (i.e., loyalty and neglect) in hypothetical conflict situa- tions. H3: Dispositional hope is negatively related to perceived use of active and destructive accommodation (i.e., exit) in hypothetical conflict situations.
Method
Participants and procedure
Participants (N = 153) were students enrolled in communication and psychology courses at a Western university in the United States. Partic- ipants were asked to complete an online survey about communication and self-perceptions. They received a small amount of extra credit for participation. About 62% of the partici- pants were women and 38% men; the average age was about 20 years (Mage = 20.73, SD = 3.84, range = 18–50). All participants in this first study indicated that they were not currently in a romantic relationship. Par- ticipants in the recruitment pool who were currently in a romantic relationship completed the survey reported in Study 1b. In terms of ethnicity, 81% of the participants identified as Caucasian, 10% Hispanic, and 3% or less identified as African American, Asian, Native American, or Other.
Measures
Table 1 lists the means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for the measures.
Dispositional hope. Hope was measured with Snyder and colleagues’ (1991) 12-item Adult Dispositional Hope Scale, containing 4 agency items (e.g., “I energetically pursue my goals”), 4 pathways items (e.g., “There are lots of ways Ta
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372 A. J. Merolla
around any problem”), and 4 filler items (e.g., “I worry about my health”). This measure has been found to be both reliable and valid in sev- eral studies (see Snyder, 2002). Researchers, depending on their needs, can create sepa- rate agency and pathways factors, or they can combine the dimensions to form an indica- tor of overall hope (see, e.g., Chang & DeSi- mone, 2001; Curry et al., 1997; Segrin & Tay- lor, 2007). Participants responded to items on an 8-point scale, ranging from definitely false (1) to definitely true (8).
Relational conflict management. Rusbult and colleagues’ (1991) four-factor relational accommodation measure assessed how indi- viduals respond to conflicts in romantic relationships. The factors, each of which was assessed with four items, were exit (e.g., “When my partner says something really mean, I threaten to leave him/her”), voice (e.g., “When my partner behaves in an unpleasant manner, I calmly discuss things with him/her”), loyalty (e.g., “When my partner is rude to me, I give him/her the benefit of the doubt and forget about it”), and neglect (e.g., “When my partner does something really mean, I sulk and don’t confront the issue”). Response options ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Participants were instructed to answer the questions based on what they would be most likely to do during conflict episodes in romantic relationships. One item (“When my partner acts in an unpleasant manner, I spend less time with him/her”) was dropped from the neglect measure to increase reliability from 0.612 to 0.718.
Results and discussion
The pattern of relationships in Table 1 suggests that hope relates to generalized accommoda- tion practices as expected, thus supporting H1–H3. Agency and pathways (as well as overall hope) were significantly and positively associated with voice (rs = .30 to .353) and negatively associated with exit (rs = −.266 to −.335), loyalty (rs = −.202 to −.230), and neglect (rs = −.365 to −.466). Gender was analyzed as a potential covariate and was sig- nificantly related to only one variable. Specifi- cally, a point biserial correlation (r = .216, p <
.007) showed that women were slightly more likely than men to report exit. Further ruling out potential gender effects, results from partial correlations with gender as a covariate were practically identical to the zero-order results.
Overall, the correlational results produced in this first study suggested that hope might be related to conflict management in romantic relationships. It is possible that just as path- ways and agency thinking enables people to effectively overcome obstacles in their school and work lives, it also helps them actively and constructively manage impediments, such as partner misbehavior, in their personal relation- ships. Although this first study provides inter- esting preliminary evidence for the role of hope in relational conflict management, several lim- itations exist, not the least of which is that the conflicts in this study were hypothetical and were not in reference to a specific relational partner. Further, the use of simplistic corre- lational analyses did not account for relevant relational covariates, such as relationship qual- ity or importance.
Study 1b
This study tested the same predictions made in Study 1a, but did so with a sample of indi- viduals in current romantic relationships. In addition, this study examined the link between hope and relational maintenance behaviors. This study also tested whether dispositional hope predicts accommodation and relational maintenance behaviors above and beyond three variables: ambivalence (Braiker & Kel- ley, 1979), idealized cognition (Tornstam, 1992), and relational quality (Norton, 1983). If partners are ambivalent (i.e., uncertain about their desire to maintain their relationship), this should attenuate the influence of dispositional hope on their inclination to enact active and constructive relational behaviors. As noted earlier, hope is only salient to goal pursuit if individuals perceive a given goal as highly desirable (Feldman et al., 2009).
Idealized relational expectations must also be considered, given that people sometimes have unrealistically positive expectations in their relationships. Idealization is conceptually similar to the concept of “false hope,” which
Hope in relationships 373
is characterized by unrealistically high opti- mism and self-efficacy regarding an outcome expectancy (Snyder, 2002). Because romantic idealization has been found to be a good pre- dictor of perceived relational quality and the likelihood of partners’ using destructive con- flict styles (Murray & Holmes, 1997), con- trolling for idealization helps ensure that any effects of hope on perceptions of conflict man- agement and relational maintenance are inde- pendent of false hope.
Finally, to provide a stringent test of hope’s unique influence on conflict and mainte- nance behavior, it was examined alongside an indicator of relational quality. If hope truly shapes conflict management and main- tenance behavior, it is important to ensure that it does so above and beyond proximal relationship-specific perceptions, such as relational satisfaction.
H1: Dispositional hope positively pre- dicts unique variance in active and con- structive accommodation (i.e., voice) in ongoing romantic relationships. H2a/b: Dispositional hope nega- tively predicts unique variance in passive accommodation (i.e., loyalty and neglect) in ongoing romantic relationships. H3: Dispositional hope negatively pre- dicts unique variance in active and destructive accommodation (i.e., exit) in ongoing romantic relationships. H4: Dispositional hope positively pre- dicts unique variance in the use of rela- tional maintenance behaviors in ongo- ing romantic relationships.
Method
Participants and procedure
Participants (65% women and 35% men) were 119 students in communication and psychol- ogy courses at a Western university. All partici- pants indicated they were currently in a roman- tic relationship and were directed toward scales (using survey skip logics) concerning percep- tions and behavior in their relationships. The average age of participants was about 20 years
(Mage = 20.89, SD = 3.05, range = 18–42). The majority identified as being in a serious dating relationship (73%), with the remainder indicating they were in a casual dating rela- tionship (21.8%), engaged relationship (3.4%), or “other” type of dating relationship (1.7%). The few individuals who indicated they were married (n = 8) were not included in the anal- yses. Approximately 25% of the participants were in relationships 1–3 months in length, 13% 4–6 months, 8% 7–9 months, 4% 10–12 months, 23% 1–2 years, and 25% over 2 years. For those relationships longer than 2 years, the average length was about 5 years (SD = 4.44). Seventy-nine percent of participants identified as Caucasian, 9% Hispanic, 6% African Amer- ican, and 1%–2% Asian, Native American, or Other.
Measures
Means, standard deviations, and reliabilities for each measure can be found in the bottom rows of Table 2. As done in Study 1, dispo- sitional hope was measured with Snyder and colleagues’ (1991) Adult Dispositional Hope Scale. Separate pathways and agency factors and an overall hope factor were created. Par- ticipants also completed the same measure of exit-voice-loyalty-neglect responses (Rusbult et al., 1991) reported in Study 1a, but this time with regard to a current relationship partner.
Stafford’s (2011) revised Relational Main- tenance Behavior Scale was employed. In this study, 24 of the scale’s 27 items were used (3 of the 5 network items were dropped to reduce survey length). Participants reported use of each behavior with an agreement scale rang- ing from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Given that this is a new measure, analyses were conducted to determine the factor struc- ture. Principal axis factor analysis with promax rotation showed that four factors had eigenval- ues above 1.0 (ranging from 12.970 to 1.119), accounting for 73.344% variance. The first fac- tor was by far the strongest, with 9 items load- ing onto it cleanly (i.e., ≥ 0.50 primary load- ing and ≤ 0.30 secondary loading). For fac- tors with more than four clean loadings, the 4 items with the highest loadings were summed to create the factor. This process resulted in a
374 A. J. Merolla
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Hope in relationships 375
4-item positive communication factor (e.g., “I am upbeat when I am together with my part- ner”), a 4-item relationship talk factor (e.g., “I discuss the quality of our relationship”), a 3-item tasks factor (e.g., “I help with the tasks that need to be done”), and a 2-item networks factor (e.g., “I include our friends in our activ- ities”).
Braiker and Kelley’s (1979) measure of ambivalence was employed to assess individ- uals’ degree of uncertainty regarding the main- tenance of their current relationship (e.g., “I am unsure about continuing in this relation- ship”). Tornstam’s (1992) measure of idealis- tic expectations was utilized to tap idealized perceptions (e.g., “You should be able to talk openly about everything”). This measure has been used to estimate idealization previously (Segrin & Nabi, 2002). A modified version of Norton’s (1983) six-item Quality Marriage Index (QMI) was used to measure relation- ship quality. The items were constructed to be appropriate for dating partners (e.g., “My part- ner and I have a good relationship”). Response options for these measures were on a 7-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7).
Results and discussion
Preliminary analyses
The correlational findings in this study some- what differed from those in Study 1a (Table 2). In Study 1a, agency and pathways were signif- icantly correlated with exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. In this study, agency was positively correlated with voice (r = .342, p < .001) and negatively correlated with neglect (r = −.291, p < .001) but was not significantly correlated with exit or loyalty. Pathways was significantly correlated only with voice (r = .273, p < .003). Both agency and pathways were positively correlated with the maintenance factors of positive communication (rs = .355 and .296, ps < .001) and relationship talk (rs = .451 and .222, ps < .001 and .015). Agency, but not pathways, was significantly associated with the network (r = .237, p < .010) and tasks (r = .248, p < .007) factors. In addition, agency, but not pathways, was negatively correlated with
ambivalence (r = −.245, p < .01) and posi- tively correlated with idealized expectations (r = .220, p < .016). Relational quality was positively correlated with agency (r = .372, p < .001) and pathways (r = .216, p < .05).
Regression analyses
Eight 2-step hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses. On the first step of each regression were three vari- ables: ambivalence, idealized expectations, and relationship quality. On the second step was dispositional hope (i.e., the combination of the agency and pathways factors). Using the over- all measure of hope enabled clearer analyses and interpretation of the results. Table 3 dis- plays the results from the regression tests.
H1, which stated that hope positively pre- dicts active and constructive accommodation practices (i.e., voice), was supported (β = .21, p < .05). H2, which stated that hope negatively predicts passive accommodation practices (i.e., loyalty and neglect), was not supported. H3, which asserted that hope negatively predicts active and destructive accommodation prac- tices (i.e., exit), was not supported. H4, which stated that hope positively predicts relational maintenance behaviors, was supported for rela- tionship talk (β = .20, p < .05). Weak support was also found for positive communication (β = .13, p < .10). Hope was not significantly related to tasks or network maintenance in the regression models.
Overall, Study 1b further suggests the appli- cability of hope theory to the study of relational conflict and maintenance. Hope positively pre- dicted self-reported active and constructive conflict management responses (i.e., voice) and did so above and beyond ambivalence, ideal- ization, and relational quality. Unlike in Study 1a, however, hope was not significantly related to any of the other accommodation factors in the regressions. In terms of relational mainte- nance, hope positively predicted relational talk and, to a lesser extent, positive communication. It makes sense that hope is related to these two maintenance factors given that they involve optimism and future planning (Stafford, 2011), which are elements of hopeful thinking (Sny- der, 2002). Hope was not significantly related
376 A. J. Merolla
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Hope in relationships 377
to the maintenance factors of tasks and net- works. In general, the regression models pre- dicted relatively little variance in tasks and net- works (i.e., 6% and 18%). Several maintenance correlates that were not included in the models, such as equity and commitment, are perhaps more proximal predictors of task and network maintenance (see Stafford, 2003).
Although the results of this study further suggest that hope is relevant to relational inter- action, several limitations must be noted. First, this study, like the previous one, examined general conflict management tendencies rather than specific conflict episodes. Thus, both of these studies might only be tapping conflict management schemas. Second, the first two studies did not specifically analyze conflict goals. This is problematic because hope is a goal-based construct. Third, this study utilized a college student sample in dating relation- ships. Yet some scholars have speculated that conflict management experiences and practices might differ in student and nonstudent popu- lations (Kline et al., 2006). Fourth, Studies 1a and 1b analyzed dispositional hope, but they did not test hope that is unique to the personal relationship domain. This is notable given hope can be domain specific (Snyder et al., 1997). Study 2 attempts to address these issues.
Study 2
Dillard (1997) pointed out that although “goals are proximal causes of communication behavior” (p. 64), we cannot infer goals from behavior. In conflict situations, goals function as important precursors to conflict styles, influencing why and how conflict styles are enacted (Canary, Cunningham, & Cody, 1988). Thus, it is helpful to assess conflict goals and behaviors separately (Canary, 2003; Ohbuchi & Tedeschi, 1997; Wang, Fink, & Cai, 2012). This study assessed how hope influences conflict goals and strategies. The range of strategies examined in this study was also more expansive than in the previous studies. More- over, unlike Studies 1a and 1b, this study tested the role of hope in specific relational conflict episodes among a nonstudent population. This study also examined a domain-specific mea- sure of hope—relationship-specific hope—to
determine whether it predicts conflict goals and styles (above and beyond dispositional hope).
Relationship-specific hope was exam- ined because it is possible for hope levels to differ across relationships. Even disposition- ally high-hope people, for instance, might not always be hopeful about their relationship with a specific partner. Thus, relationship-specific hope might be a more robust predictor of rela- tional behavior. Similar arguments have been made by attachment theorists, who suggest that people’s generalized attachment styles and their relationship-specific styles can have different associations with relational variables (see Shaver & Mikulincer, 2006).
To summarize, hope is expected to posi- tively predict prorelationship and constructive conflict goals and styles and negatively pre- dict relationally destructive conflict goals and styles with regard to a specific relational conflict episode. In addition, a research ques- tion was posed about the unique influence of relationship-specific hope on conflict goals and styles.
H1: Dispositional hope positively pre- dicts prorelational conflict goals. H2: Dispositional hope negatively pre- dicts relationally destructive conflict goals. H3: Dispositional hope positively pre- dicts constructive conflict management styles. H4: Dispositional hope negatively pre- dicts destructive conflict management styles. RQ1: Does relationship-specific hope predict conflict goals and styles above and beyond dispositional hope?
Method
Participants and procedure
Participants were 308 individuals (Mage = 30.91, SD = 9.462, range = 18–70, 14 non- reports of age; 59% female, 41% male) who completed an online survey on conflict man- agement as well as topics such as power and investment. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)
378 A. J. Merolla
and were compensated $0.50 for completing the survey. As demonstrated by Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling (2011), MTurk offers streamlined data collection from a demograph- ically diverse, nonstudent population. Based on Buhrmester and colleagues’ analysis, “the quality of data provided by MTurk met or exceeded the psychometric standards asso- ciated with published research” (p. 5). The survey was posted on MTurk site, and approxi- mately 900 people opened the survey link, with approximately 800 completing at least part of the survey. About half of these individuals were from the United States (the population of inter- est), and 367 had sufficiently complete data. The final sample included those individuals (n = 308) who indicated that they could recall and describe a recent conflict in their relationship. The conflicts occurred, on average, about a month ago (M = 36.52 days, Mdn = 9 days).
Married individuals were 34.3% of the sam- ple, seriously dating partners 36.2%, casually dating partners 16.3%, engaged partners 9.1%, and people in civil unions or domestic part- nerships 2.9%. An additional 1.3% selected “Other,” and indicated that they live with their partner but are not married. One person did not report relationship type. In terms of ethnicity, 58% of the participants identified as Caucasian, 25% Asian, 6% Hispanic, 4% African Ameri- can, 4% Other, and 3% Native American.
Measures
Hope. Snyder and colleagues’ (1991) Adult Dispositional Hope Scale was once again employed. As in Study 1b, an overall hope factor (α = .897, M = 5.915, SD = 1.147) was analyzed. To assess relationship-specific hope, a six-item measure was developed for this study. Items focused on agency and pathways thinking in a current relationship (e.g., “If I were to go through a difficult period in my relationship, I could think of ways to get out of it” and “I energetically pursue the goals I have for my relationship”). The items were adapted from Snyder and colleagues’ (1996) six-item State Hope Scale and Feldman and colleagues’ (2009) six-item Goal-Specific Hope Scale. Response options were on an 8-point scale ranging from definitely false
(1) to definitely true (8). Principal axis factor analysis with promax rotation indicated the existence of a single factor (eigenvalue = 3.800, 63.327% variance; M = 6.093, SD = 1.256; α = .877). Relationship-specific and overall dispositional hope were moderately correlated (r = .552, p < .001). To further test whether the relationship-specific measure was unique from the dispositional hope measure, a two-factor confirmatory factor analysis was conducted. Using Amos 19.0 (with maximum likelihood estimation and estimated means and intercepts for missing data), model fit was found to be marginal, χ2(76) = 267.358, p < .001, χ2/df = 3.518, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.919, incremental fit index (IFI) = 0.920, Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) = 0.888, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.091, CI [0.079, 0.102]. The two-factor model, though, provided much bet- ter fit than a single-factor model in which the dispositional and relationship-specific items loaded on one latent factor, χ2(77) = 746.537, p < .001, χ2/df = 9.695, CFI = 0.716, IFI = 0.719, TLI = 0.613, and RMSEA = 0.168, CI [0.157, 0.179]. These results suggest that dispositional and relationship-specific hope are separate constructs.
Conflict goals. Episodic conflict goals were measured with Ohbuchi and Tedeschi’s (1997) 25-item Conflict Goal Index. The measure taps eight conflict goal dimensions (i.e., relation- ship, power, identity, justice, hostility, func- tionality, personal resources, and economic resources). Response options were on a scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Based on principal axis factor anal- ysis with promax rotation, five factors had eigenvalues above 1.0 in the analysis. But based on the pattern of factor loadings and the scree plot, it was clear that a simplified fac- tor structure was optimal. Because the first two factors garnered the vast majority of the load- ings, the analysis was rerun with a two-factor extraction requested. Nearly all of the items loaded cleanly onto the two factors. The first factor (eigenvalue= 5.343, 22.264% variance), termed hostility-domination goals (α = .857, M = 3.10, SD = 1.30), contained nine items that reflected a win–lose orientation and the
Hope in relationships 379
goal of psychological injury (e.g., “During the conflict, I wanted to defeat the other person” and “During the conflict I wanted to punish the other person for his/her negative action”). The second factor (eigenvalue = 3.974, 16.449% variance), termed prorelationship goals (α = .788, M = 5.450, SD = 0.948), contained eight items focused on collaboration and fairness (e.g., “I wanted to have a constructive conver- sation with the other person” and “I wanted to reach a fair solution”).
Conflict styles. A 23-item composite mea- sure based on Ohbuchi and Tedeschi’s (1997) 12-item conflict styles measure and Kurdek’s (1994) 16-item Conflict Resolution Style Inventory was employed. Items from these two measures were used to ensure that this study captured a wide range of conflict styles. Responses were solicited on a 7-point scale with endpoints of strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). Principal axis factor analy- sis with promax rotation yielded a five-factor solution (eigenvalues ranged from 7.509 to 1.076, 64.335% total variance). Emergent was a 4-item personal attacks factor (e.g., “I insulted the other person”; α = .915, M = 2.662, SD = 1.640), a 4-item integrative problem-solving factor (e.g., “I sat down and discussed our differences constructively”; α = .741, M = 4.486, SD = 1.350), a 3-item compliance factor (e.g., “I avoided sticking up for myself”; α = .759, M = 2.849, SD = 1.448), a 3-item third-party factor (e.g., “I asked a third person to help resolve the conflict”; α = .902, M = 2.308, SD = 1.60), and a 3-item withdrawal factor (e.g., “I reaching a limit, ‘shut down,’ and refused to talk any further”; α = .813, M = 3.182, SD = 1.694).
Ongoing negative affect and conflict severity. These variables were controlled for in the anal- yses. Ongoing negative affect was measured with four items (e.g., “I’m still angry about the things that happened during the conflict”; Merolla, 2008; α = .756, M = 3.489, SD = 1.478). Response options ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). A single item asking “How severe was the conflict?” assessed conflict severity (M = 2.48, SD = 1.111). Response options were on a 5-point
scale and ranged from not at all severe (1) to very severe (5).
Results and discussion
Conflict severity and ongoing negative affect were entered on the first step of the regres- sions. Dispositional hope was then entered on the second step and relationship-specific hope on the third. The two conflict goals (i.e., hostility domination and prorelationship) and five conflict styles (i.e., personal attacks, integrative problem solving, compliance, third party, and withdrawal) served as the dependent variables. For the complete regression results, see Table 4.
H1 stated that dispositional hope positively predicts prorelational conflict goals, while H2 stated that dispositional hope negatively predicts relationally destructive goals. H1 was supported, as dispositional hope (on Step 2) positively predicted prorelationship goals (β = .20). H2 was not supported. Yet, when relationship-specific hope was entered into the model (on Step 3), it significantly predicted prorelationship (β = .28) and hos- tility domination (β = −.20) goals. Moreover, dispositional hope became a nonsignificant predictor of prorelationship goals when relationship-specific hope was entered into the model.
H3 stated that dispositional hope positively predicts constructive conflict management styles, while H4 stated that dispositional hope negatively predicts destructive conflict man- agement styles. H3 and H4 were supported, as dispositional hope (on the second step of the model) positively predicted integrative prob- lem solving (β = .25) and negatively predicted personal attacks (β = −.20) and withdrawal (β = −.17). Dispositional hope also negatively predicted third-party assistance (β = −.13). These effects, with the exception of third-party assistance, remained significant even after the entry of relationship-specific hope into the model (see Table 4). Note, though, that the effect for withdrawal on Step 3 was significant at p < .10.
RQ1 asked whether relationship-specific hope predicts conflict goals and styles above and beyond dispositional hope. As noted
380 A. J. Merolla
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Hope in relationships 381
3
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6.5
7
Pro-Relationship Goals Integrative Problem-Solving
High Hope
Low Hope
Figure 1. High- versus low-hope individuals’ (based on mean ± 1 SD) scores on prorelationship conflict goals and integrative problem-solving conflict styles. Mean differences were statistically significant at p < .003 and .001 (ts = −3.026 and −3.557).
previously, relationship-specific hope (on the third step of the model) positively predicted prorelationship conflict goals (β = .28) and negatively predicted hostility-domination goals (β = −.20). Relationship-specific hope also negatively predicted compliance (β = −.16), third-party assistance (β = −.16), and withdrawal (β = −.11) and positively pre- dicted integrative problem solving (β = .11). The results for withdrawal and integrative problem solving, however, were only signifi- cant at p < .10. Overall, relationship-specific hope accounted for approximately 1%–5% unique variance in the conflict goals and styles.
To enhance clarity of how high- and low-hope people differ in conflict manage- ment, high-hope (n = 42) and low-hope (n =
52) groups were created based on the dispo- sitional hope mean ± 1 SD. Figures 1 and 2 show that the low-hope group was less likely to engage in constructive, and more likely to engage in destructive, goals and styles (and experience greater ongoing negative affect). Independent samples t tests indicated that the high- and low-hope groups significantly dif- fered on all the means displayed (see Figures 1 and 2 for t-test results).
Overall, relationship-specific hope, relative to dispositional hope, better predicted both prorelationship and hostility-domination con- flict goals (see Step 3 of the regressions in Table 4). Dispositional hope, however, when entered on Step 2 of the regression models, significantly predicted the conflict styles of
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Ongoing Negative Affect
Hostility-Domination Goals
Withdrawal
High Hope
Low Hope
Personal Attacks
Figure 2. High- versus low-hope individuals’ (based on mean ± 1 SD) scores on ongoing negative affect, hostility-domination goals, and destructive conflict styles. All mean differences were statistically significant at p < .01 or .001, except for hostility-domination goals, which was significant at p < .027 (ts = 2.245–4.625).
382 A. J. Merolla
integrative problem solving, personal attacks, withdrawal, and compliance. It is plausible that relationship-specific hope is a better predictor of conflict goals because partners’ goals during a conflict are likely based on relationship-specific (i.e., proximal) variables, such as the desire for intimacy (Sanderson & Karetsky, 2002). Conflict styles, however, unlike goals, might be influenced not only by relationship-specific variables but also by extrarelationship factors, such as habituated conflict behavior and schemas (Baldwin, 1992; Donohue & Kolt, 1992). In other words, dispo- sitional hope might be more salient to conflict styles because conflict styles, relative to goals, are more stable across contexts.
It is also important to note that low-hope individuals were more likely to experience ongoing negative emotions and ruminations regarding their reported conflict (Figure 2). This is consistent with hope theory research, which suggests that low-hope individuals tend to negatively appraise and ruminate about stressful events (Snyder, 2002). In general, results for this study build on those in Study 1b by showing how dispositional and relationship-specific hope influence self-reported conflict goals and styles in spe- cific conflict episodes. Still, several limitations exist, which are taken up in the General Discussion.
General Discussion
High- compared to low-hope people tend to be more satisfied with the quality of their rela- tional lives (Chang, 1998; Segrin & Taylor, 2007; Snyder, 2002). This study suggests that hope might contribute to relationship quality in part by facilitating constructive forms of con- flict management and relational maintenance. In particular, hope consistently predicted active and constructive conflict styles (e.g., voice in Study 1b and integrative problem solving in Study 2). Moreover, hope positively predicted the relationship talk maintenance factor (in Study 1b) and did so above and beyond other relational variables, including ambivalence and relational quality.
Considering that hope is shaped by people’s life experiences, it is possible that the relational
experiences of high- and low-hope people dif- fer. While the childhood and adulthood attach- ment experiences of high-hope people might have been (on the whole) secure, positive, and rewarding, those of low-hope people might have been conflict-ridden, frustrating, and dif- ficult. Low-hope individuals, as a result, might lack confidence in their ability to effectively manage conflict and sustain intimacy in roman- tic relationships. From a social-cognitive per- spective, it might be that high- and low-hope partners possess differing relational schemas and outcome expectancies for behavior in per- sonal relationships (Baldwin, 1992).
From an interactional perspective, hope’s influence on relationships might be described in terms of a feedback loop, in which destruc- tive relational experiences suppress hope, and this sense of relational hopelessness contributes to further destructive relational communication patterns. These ideas are consonant with Bar-Tal’s (2001) theorizing regarding the relation between hope and fear in the context of large-scale intractable conflicts (e.g., Israeli–Palestinian conflict). Bar-Tal argued that a history of destructive conflict cultivates a collective sense of fear that under- mines people’s confidence in the future and stifles their use of collaborative problem solv- ing. It is possible that these same destructive cycles transpire in personal relationships.
This study’s results are also consistent with research on hope and problem solving. Chang (1998), for instance, found that high- relative to low-hope individuals reported more posi- tive problem solving and less avoidance when coping with academic stressors. Chang, how- ever, found hope to be nonsignificantly related to coping in interpersonal contexts. The cur- rent study suggests that hope might be relevant to problem solving in interpersonal situations if problem solving is conceptualized in terms of conflict management. In Studies 1a and 1b, for example, dispositional hope was positively associated with voice responses, which are active and constructive ways of managing rela- tional problems (Rusbult et al., 1991). Also, in Study 2, dispositional hope positively pre- dicted use of the integrative problem-solving conflict style.
Hope in relationships 383
Although this study indicates that high-hope people have greater relationally constructive tendencies than low-hope people, we should not interpret these results as suggesting that high-hope people are somehow more virtu- ous than low-hope people. Hope is conceptu- alized as “value neutral” (Shorey et al., 2002, p. 322). Snyder (2002), in fact, discussed how high-hope individuals can envision and pur- sue goals that society would deem problematic and immoral. Low-hope people, by extension, should not be viewed as less caring or decent than high-hope individuals. Indeed, high- and low-hope people might share the same good intentions in relationships.2 High-hope indi- viduals, however, might be better able to envi- sion their relationship goals in a manner that results in more consistent goal attainment.
To pinpoint where hope is most conse- quential in relationships, future studies should develop more detailed models. For example, hope’s effects on conflict styles might be mediated by expectations. Not only do part- ners’ expectations going into a conflict predict the likelihood of negative conflict behaviors (Roloff & Chiles, 2011), but hope is theorized to exert significant influence upon the nature of people’s expectations in various social contexts (Snyder, 2002). In addition, although the current results suggest that hope is relevant to conflict communication, additional work is needed to confirm this link. It will be essential, for example, to study actual conflict interac- tions (e.g., in laboratory settings), with more diverse and representative samples.
Researchers might also examine how com- plimentary or asymmetrical partner hope levels affect communication. Snyder and colleagues (2000) stated that interaction between two low-hope people can be difficult. But does this mean that higher hope is always better in
2. If we examine the within-sample means from the high- and low-hope groups in Figures 1 and 2, we see that low-hope individuals’ prorelationship goals mean (M = 5.30) was much higher than their hostility-domination goals mean (M = 3.36). Further- more, although low-hope persons reported significantly higher use of personal attacks (M = 3.24) than did their high-hope counterparts (M =1.86), their personal attacks score was still below the 1–7 scale midpoint and was lower than their integrative problem-solving mean (M = 4.01).
relationships? Might there be some drawbacks or perhaps even a “dark side” (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2007) to hope (see also Alarcon et al., 2013; McNulty & Fincham, 2012)? Could hope lead to overconfidence in one’s ability to manage problems? Further, could hope, if “manipulated selfishly,” be harmful in relationships (Snyder & McCullough, 2000, p. 158)? The existing literature suggests oth- erwise (Snyder, 2002), but future research could examine these questions with regard to relational communication.
The major limitations in this study stem from its use of cross-sectional, survey-based data. Experimental designs (including thera- peutic interventions; Ripley & Worthington, 2002; Snyder & McCullough, 2000) could be used to determine the directionality of effects. Also, as suggested earlier, laboratory studies of couple’s conflict interactions would strengthen our understanding of hope’s role in shaping specific forms of verbal and nonverbal com- munication. Another limitation is that data for Studies 1b and 2 came from only one partner in the romantic couple, even though conflict management and relational maintenance are, at minimum, dyadic processes. Future stud- ies should thus collect data from both part- ners, preferably over time. Study 1a is also limited by the fact that it is unknown what the source was for the participants’ responses (e.g., specific past relationships or communica- tion across all past relationships). More diverse and representative samples would also enable generalizations beyond the samples analyzed in this study. This study is also limited in that it did not account for all of the variables that are likely related to hope as it operates in people’s everyday life. Hope might facili- tate, as well as underlie, other important factors that give meaning to people’s lives and rela- tionships, such as gratitude, resilience, attach- ment, forgiveness, and spirituality (Snyder & McCullough, 2000). Future studies on hope and relational communication should include these variables.
There are also limitations related to mea- surement. In Study 1b, for instance, items were dropped from the network maintenance factor, which raises concerns about the validity of that subscale. In addition, in Study 2, measures
384 A. J. Merolla
such as the conflict goals index were altered from their original use based on EFA. It is pos- sible that the two-factor structure that emerged in this study was due to sample-specific charac- teristics, and thus is not replicable. Whatever direction future research goes to replicate, extend, or improve upon these findings, there seems to be good reason to make hope more prominent in personal relationship research.
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