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This paper aims to identify antecedents for, and consequences of, low-intensity inter-unit conflict in multinational corporations (MNCs). Inter-unit conflict in MNCs is an important and well-researched theme. However, while most studies have focused on open conflict acknowledged by both parties, much less research has dealt with low-intensity conflicts. Still, low-intensity conflicts can be highly damaging – not least because they are rarely resolved.

The authors used a qualitative approach to understanding low-intensity conflict relying on 170 interviews in four Danish MNCs.

They describe consequences of low-intensity conflict and identify three types of actions by headquarters’ representatives that could lead to the development of low-intensity conflicts, namely, ignoring, bypassing and educating.

Very few studies have dealt with low-intensity conflict – not least in international business research. The authors argue that the study of low-intensity conflict in MNCs can provide relevant, novel knowledge of MNC functioning.

This paper aims to add to the current knowledge about conflict management by examining the relationships between conflict type, conflict expression intensity and the use of the conflict management approach.

The authors test theory-based hypotheses using a field study of new product development teams in an interdisciplinary Masters program (Study 1) and an experimental vignette study (Study 2).

Results show that people are more likely to respond to task conflict and conflicts expressed with less intensity using collectivistic conflict management approaches (i.e. problem-solving, compromising and yielding), and to relationship conflicts and conflicts expressed with higher intensity through forcing, an individualistic conflict management approach. Information acquisition and negative emotions experienced by team members mediate these relationships.

Knowing how the characteristics of the conflict (type and expression intensity) affect conflict management, managers can counteract the tendency to use dysfunctional, forcing conflict management approaches in response to high intensity conflicts, as well as to relationship conflicts and support the tendency to use collectivistic conflict management approaches in response to low intensity conflict, as well as task conflicts.

The authors examine an alternative to the prevailing view that conflict management serves as a moderator of the relationship between conflict and team outcomes. The research shows that conflict type and intensity of conflict expression influence the conflict management approach as a result of the information and emotion they evoke. The authors open avenues for future research on the complex and intriguing relationships between conflict characteristics and the conflict management approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution of conflict over various NPD phases and identify the main sources of conflict and the five conflict handling styles in new product development (NPD) from the context of buyer‐supplier collaboration.

A list of the sources of conflict was developed and five conflict handling styles in NPD were identified based on literature review and the opinions of manufacturing experts in Hong Kong. An empirical study comprising a series of personal interviews and a mailed survey was conducted to acquire empirical findings from industry practitioners and suppliers on the conflict issues in collaborative NPD. The relationships between NPD performance and conflict intensity as well as conflict handling styles were analysed. Both reliability and construct validity of the study construct were measured.

The study identified 16 sources of conflict and demonstrated that conflict has a significant negative relationship with NPD performance in terms of product quality, and meeting of target development costs and delivery schedule. The results also showed that cooperative styles (i.e. integrating and obliging) are effective and uncooperative styles (i.e. dominating and avoiding) are ineffective, whereas compromising is a neutral approach.

This research was based on four industry sectors including electronics, toys, machinery, and watches and clocks in Hong Kong. Generalisability to other industries or countries may be limited.

The findings verified that a negative relationship exists between conflict intensity and NPD performance. Both the clients and suppliers should maintain a sustainable level of conflict and should enhance their conflict handling efforts and skills for effective conflict resolutions.

From a suppliers' viewpoint, this paper provides some insights into how client‐supplier collaboration and conflict resolutions could improve NPD performance.

Although mediation has increased considerably in popularity and usage, it lacks a coherent framework and evidence base to illuminate the conditions under which different types of mediation strategies are most effective. This has resulted in a wide array of strategies and tactics being offered to mediators, with little sense of which may work best under different conditions. This paper aims to further develop a contingency model of adaptive mediation.

The current paper extends previous research on adaptive mediation by presenting findings from focus group and survey research with experienced mediators that help to further develop and specify a new adaptive model of mediation.

The findings support the utility of a contingency model of adaptive mediation based on the four fundamental dimensions of mediation situations (conflict intensity, situational constraints, cooperative vs competitive disputant relationships and overt vs covert issues and processes) for better understanding and predicting changes in mediator strategies independent of mediator style preferences.

The present studies reflect the behavioral tactics experienced mediators recommend when facing the four distinct challenges to mediation. Research has yet to determine whether the sets of tactics recommended would actually be more successfully used in mediations presenting the four challenges. Subsequent research should assess the relative effects of the use of the different behavioral strategies under these conditions.

The program of research described and extended in this paper is an attempt to develop an integrative model of adaptive mediation, which can ultimately enhance the critical link between mediation research on the one hand and mediation practice on the other.

Although a great deal of research has focused on the effect of trust on conflict, little research has examined the impact of conflict on trust. The purpose of this paper is to present a model that investigates the relationship between conflict types (task, relationship and process), conflict features (intensity and duration), communication openness (CO) and workplace trust.

Data were collected from 510 employees from public sector organizations. The authors tested the direct effects of the hypothesized links with linear regressions while the mediation effects were tested using the Sobel test. Finally, the authors followed Kenny and Baron's procedure to test the moderation effects.

Results from the regression analyses confirm that conflict features (intensity and duration) fully mediated the link between conflict types (task, relationship and process) and trust, while CO moderated the relationship between conflict features and trust. In addition, prolonged conflict duration was linked with trust. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The study is cross sectional and some of our scales have few items. In future, more robust scales in a longitudinal study should be used to further deepen our understanding of the association between the variables in our model. In addition, we have studied the concept of trust as perceived by the employees without distinguishing between high‐ and low‐trust perceptions. Future studies should compare levels of trust associated with the different types of conflict and especially varying magnitude of conflict intensity (e.g. low, mid and high) at different times.

The study provides new insights into the influence that conflict (task, relationship and process) may have on trust and the moderating role of CO in the link between conflict and trust. The paper also offers a practical assistance to group members and leaders that are interested in building trust especially in the presence of conflict.

Today’s dynamic markets are forcing firms to design increasingly complex channel strategies involving multiple channels of distribution. As the complexity of these systems increases, so too does the opportunity for conflict between individual channel coalitions within the firm. Whereas this hybrid channel conflict can reduce channel performance, it can also serve as a mechanism forcing internal channel coalitions to work harder and smarter to serve their markets. In this paper, we develop and test six hypotheses related to hybrid channel conflict. The findings indicate that hybrid channel conflict is an important determinant of both channel performance and satisfaction. The results suggest further that the relationship between hybrid channel conflict and channel performance is moderated by the lifecycle stage. Moreover, our data support the view that the frequency of conflict, but not its intensity, has a negative effect on channel system performance. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of this study.

Using a multi‐method approach, this paper presents both a qualitative and quantitative examination of workplace conflict, the emotional reactions to bullying and counterproductive behaviors. Three studies were undertaken for the present research. Data for Study 1 emerged from semi‐structured interviews conducted with 50 group leaders and members from six workgroups in two large organizations. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using systematic interpretative techniques. Findings from Study 1 showed that conflict induced a variety of emotional and behavioral responses. Data from Study 2 were collected from 660 employees from 7 public sector organizations using a structured open‐ended survey. Results from Study 2 revealed that the majority of respondents perceived their managers as bullies. Study 3 surveyed 510 staff in 122 workgroups from five organizations. Regression analysis revealed that differing conflict events were associated with bullying, emotional reactions and counterproductive behaviors. In particular, prolonged conflict increased incidents of bullying. Higher levels of bullying were predictive of workplace counterproductive behaviors such as purposely wasting company material and supplies, purposely doing one's work incorrectly and purposely damaging a valuable piece of property belonging to the employer.

The authors investigate the varying impact of three categories of conflicting consumer reviews (i.e. conflicting opinions on attributes of a product item, conflicting ratings of an item and the intensity of conflicting reviews of an item) on the potential customers' perceived informativeness, which is expected to affect the perceived correct purchase.

To test their proposed hypotheses, the authors conducted an experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design for each conflict type comprising two levels (low vs high).

The results of this study found that conflicting opinions on product attributes can enhance potential customers' perceptions of informativeness and subsequent correct purchase decisions while conflicting ratings and the intensity of conflicting reviews can diminish potential customers' perceptions of informativeness. In addition, conflicting ratings negatively moderate the effect of conflicting attributes on perceived informativeness such that the positive effect of conflicting attributes on perceived informativeness will be less prominent when conflicting ratings are present (vs absent).

While potential customers are browsing product descriptions, reviews and comments from other purchasers are also playing a role in influencing a potential customer's purchase decision. However, given the different experiences and temperaments of individuals, the subjective remarks and ratings of individuals are sometimes inconsistent or even conflicting, which can lead to confusion among potential customers. The authors categorize the positive or negative effects of the three conflicting reviews based on the two dimensions of ease of capture and product diagnosticity. The findings can help platforms optimize the display of product reviews to help potential customers make more accurate purchase decisions.

This paper aims to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests from the following four major domains: economic, human security and vulnerability of people, aggressiveness or militancy of the armed forces and global and regional climates.

Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach has been applied on annual data from 1960-2017, to deal with the problems of autocorrelation and non-stationarity of key variables.

First, an increase in crop yield, cereal productivity, food productivity and per capita availability of arable land unequivocally and significantly lower the severity of conflict in Myanmar in the long run. Second, the authors uncover strong evidence that the intensity of conflicts bears a positive relationship with the vulnerability of the people of Myanmar. Third, the authors detect that both regional and global climate variables have limited and rather inconsistent impacts on subnational conflicts in Myanmar. Finally, the authors find that the aggressiveness (militancy index) of the armed forces has significant impacts upon subnational conflicts and economic variables of Myanmar in the long run.

This paper is completely data-driven and explains the long-term dynamics of the intensity of the civil war in Myanmar. ARDL bounds testing approach has been used to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests. It is a novel approach, which overcomes the problems of autocorrelation and nonstationarity and offers reliable results.

West Africa represents a very good case of a sub-region currently plagued with the problem of food insecurity. Traditional theories have attributed the increasing food insecurity in the region to problems of poor governance, corruption and climate change. In view of the persistent and increasing nature of armed conflict in the sub-region, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of increasing armed conflict on food security in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries.

The study utilized the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) to investigate the effect of conflict intensity on food security in the 14 member states of the ECOWAS using annualized panel data from 2005 to 2015.

The findings reveal that armed conflict is a significant predictor of food security in West Africa.

The findings of the study bring to fore, the urgent need to rethink global initiative for combating food insecurity. The effort must also identify the causes of armed conflicts and design sound strategies for de-escalating the armed conflicts. Resolving the escalating armed conflict entails developing a conflict resolution framework that is extremely sensitive to the causes of conflict in Africa and adopting localized ex ante institutional diagnostics that would help in understanding the nature of the conflicts.

Traditional theory perceives climate change, social injustices, property right, food insecurity, religious extremism and bad governance as the predictors of armed conflicts. In this study, the authors departed from the traditional theory by demonstrating that the nature and trend of armed conflict could also pose a serious threat to food security.