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The management of organizational conflict involves the diagnosis of and intervention in affective and substantive conflicts at the interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup levels and the styles (strategies) used to handle these conflicts. A diagnosis should indicate whether there is need for an intervention and the type of intervention needed. In general, an intervention is designed (a) to attain and maintain a moderate amount of substantive conflict in nonroutine tasks at various levels, (b) to reduce affective conflict at all levels, and (c) to enable the organizational members to select and use the appropriate styles of handling conflict so that various situations can be effectively dealt with. Organizational learning and effectiveness can be enhanced through an appropriate diagnosis of and process and structural interventions in conflict.

Seeks to help managers to recognize different types of resistance and how to react to them. Categorizes types of resistance (resistance quadrants) and presents questions to help identify the personality of the resistor. Resistance to change can be intentional or unintentional, covert or overt. Describes causes of resistance and presents diagnostic questions. Managers with self‐awareness and a sense of humour are most successful in overcoming resistance to change.

Briefly examines the organizational context of the clinical director in the NHS. Utilizes theoretical contributions from cultural, symbolic, political and postmodernist perspectives and applies these to the experience of clinical directors. Discusses the importance of understanding individual subjective views of meaning as represented in purposive/cognitive maps. Concludes that the clinical director should be able to diagnose the subjective views of organizational participants as a basis for understanding individual/group behaviour.

This study aims to explore how the implementation of the recapitalisation by the Bank of Ghana disrupted the indigenous banks’ sources of accessing capital to raise the required amount within the mandatory stipulated time/deadline.

This study used purposive sampling techniques to interview key role players and senior members involved in the bank’s recapitalisation process and/or have in-depth information on the 2017–2018 recapitalisation period.

This study revealed that government directives significantly shape banks regulations and strategy; accordingly, any state-directed policies must be communicated cautiously, well explained and implemented to reduce any negative consequences.

This study makes a significant contribution to knowledge by exploring how directives (arbitrary) of regulatory bodies can influence the business as well as its other stakeholders (such as the depositors, public, among others). Secondly, the study highlights how the delays in government support may not derive the benefits expected by the regulator.

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual framework for defensive strategy by integrating market entry modes and the typology of firms suggested by Day and Nedungandi, and to attempt to propose how local incumbent firms utilize their mental models in order to react against market entry of new competition in global markets.

The theoretical perspective adopted in the study is how mental models used by incumbent firms influence their reaction to market entry of new competition in developing defensive strategies to defend their markets.

Mental models of incumbent firms, categorized as self‐centered, competitor‐centered, customer‐oriented, and market‐driven firms, impact their reaction and the development of defensive marketing strategies against market entrants using a variety of market entry modes in global markets.

The paper presents an extensive review of the defensive marketing and mental models literature and shows how the way in which incumbent firms react to market entry of new competition contributes to understanding of incumbent reaction to market entry of new competition in global markets. Research directions for future research and managerial implications are also provided.

In fact, this research seeks to understand, on the one hand, the nature of defensive reactions and, on the other hand, the strategies mobilised by actors to deal with paradoxes of identity.

The authors mobilise a qualitative methodology based on three contrasting longitudinal case studies, several sequences of non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews and secondary data.

The results show, on the one hand, close professional identities despite different organisations and, on the other hand, different reactions and strategies for managing paradoxes of identity despite the proximity of professional identities.

Beyond the singularity of the paradoxes of identity studied, the research invites the authors to develop spaces for discussion.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of incumbents’ defensive strategies, specifically price-cut and capacity expansion, on new entrants’ (NEs) exit decisions and examine the moderating role of incumbents’ relational market-based assets (RMBAs).

Drawing upon real options theory, an empirical study using logistic regression is conducted on a rich, multi-market data set of NE exits between 1997 and 2019 in the U.S. airline industry.

Contrary to intuitive expectation, the results show that cutting prices in response to entry reduces NEs’ likelihood of market exit. However, when incumbents possess strong RMBAs, using a price cut proves to be effective in pushing NEs out of a market. Moreover, an NEs’ exit likelihood is higher when incumbents expand capacities in response to entry.

In this study, market exit is defined as a complete withdrawal from the market and operationalized as a binary variable. Future research could examine different degrees of downscaling by NEs while remaining in the market.

This research demonstrates the opposing effects of price-cut and capacity expansion and the crucial role of RMBAs and advises managers to be cautious and consider trade-offs when implementing their defensive strategies to push NEs out of their markets.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of incumbents’ defensive strategies, price-cut and capacity expansion, side by side and exploring the moderating role of RMBAs. Extant research has focused on antecedents of defensive strategies, whereas the consequences are the focus of this research.

Counter-knowledge is knowledge learned from unverified sources and can be classified as good (i.e. harmful, for instance, funny jokes) or bad (for example, lies to manipulate others’ decisions). The purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between these two elements and on the possible reactions they can induce on people and institutions.

The relationships between good and bad counter-knowledge and the induced reactions – namely, evasive knowledge hiding and defensive reasoning – are analysed through an empirical study among 151 Spanish citizens belonging to a knowledge-intensive organization during the COVID-19 pandemic. A two-step procedure has been established to assess a causal model with SmartPLS 3.2.9.

Results show that good counter-knowledge can lead to bad counter-knowledge. In addition, counter-knowledge can trigger evasive knowledge hiding, which, in turn, fosters defensive reasoning, in a vicious circle, which can negatively affect decision-making and also cause distrust in public institutions. This was evidenced during the covid-19 pandemic in relation to the measures taken by governments.

This study raises the awareness that counter-knowledge is a complex phenomenon, especially in a situation of serious crisis like a pandemic. In particular, it highlights that even good counter-knowledge can turn into bad and affect people’s decisional capability negatively. In addition, it signals that not all reactions to the proliferation of counter-knowledge by public institutions are positive. For instance, censorship and lack of transparency (i.e. evasive knowledge hiding) can trigger defensive reasoning, which can, in turn, affect people’s decisions and attitudes negatively.

The purpose of this research is the exploration of online complainants' revenge based on their consumer-brand relationship strength and received webcare. The authors introduce inter-failures (i.e. the perceived number of earlier independent service failures that a customer has experienced with the same brand involved in the current service failure) as the central frame condition.

To test our hypotheses, both a scenario-based online experiment (n = 316) and an online survey (n = 492) were conducted.

With an increasing number of inter-failures, online complainants with a high-relationship strength move from the “love is blind” effect (no inter-failures) to the “love becomes hate” effect (multiple inter-failures), when they ultimately become more revengeful than their low-relationship strength counterparts. In addition, the authors show that in the case of no or few inter-failures, accommodative webcare has a lasting positive effect over no/defensive webcare for both low- and high-relationship complainants. More importantly, however, when consumers have experienced multiple inter-failures, accommodative webcare becomes ineffective (for low-relationship complainants) or boomerangs by cultivating revenge towards the brand (among high-relationship complainants), but not strategic avoidance.

The findings have pronounced implications for the literature on customer–brand relationships following service failures and the literature, which predominantly emphasizes the unconditionally positive effects of accommodative webcare.

This study is the first that simultaneously considers the prior customer–brand relationship, inter-failures and webcare to explain online complainants' revenge.

This study aims to examine task and relationship conflict and their linkage with defensive communication strategies, i.e. mature, neurotic and immature defensive communication. Furthermore, Study 1 also investigated the mediating impact of relationship conflict and the moderating impact of a manager’s active-empathic listening in dealing with task conflicts and the defensive communication of the employees. Study 2 intended to assess the causal direction of task conflicts and defensive communication strategies.

This research integrates the Job Demands–Resources framework, Conservation of Resources theory and Conflict Expression framework. Data from 124 professionals in India’s tertiary industry was gathered using a longitudinal approach. Study 1 analyses the dynamics between conflicts and defensive communication while considering managers’ active-empathic listening as a potential mitigating factor. Study 2 was conducted after a 10-month interim to delve into the intricate causal connections between defensive communication strategies and task conflicts. For analysing the data, SPSS was used for conducting confirmatory factor analysis. Furthermore, to analyse the conceptual framework and the hypothesised relationships in this study, partial least squares (PLS) modelling was performed using Smart-PLS 4.0.

Task conflicts have a significant negative association with mature and neurotic defensive communication, whereas they have a strong positive relationship with immature defensive communication. Relationship conflict significantly mediates the association between task conflict and immature defensive communication. The moderating role of the manager’s active-empathic listening was not supported. In addition, the relationship between immature defensive communication and task conflict is significantly positive, outlining their bidirectional association. In contrast, the association between mature defensive communication is significantly negative. This highlights the potential of immature defensive communication to create escalatory conflict spirals and of mature defensive communication to de-escalate them.

Defensive communication strategies, commonly explored in the psychological realm, particularly within family and romantic relationship contexts, have received limited attention in organisational behaviour. This longitudinal study offers a unique perspective on the evolution of defensive communication and its impact on task conflict over time, enhancing the understanding of how individuals adapt their communication strategies as conflicts persist or dissipate. The investigation also advances the understanding of conflict spirals, illustrating the potential of mature defensive communication to de-escalate conflicts while revealing a bidirectional connection between immature defensive communication and task conflicts.

Leaders need to prioritise addressing task conflicts, particularly those that might spiral into relationship conflicts. This would present managers with the ability to make task conflicts more functional in nature, which could help to enhance both team and organisational achievements. The bidirectional relationship between task conflict and immature defensive communication points towards the exigency for managerial and organisational initiatives to prevent the development of conflict spirals at the workplace.

This study offers crucial interdisciplinary perspectives into the body of literature with the longitudinal investigation of the connections between managers’ active-empathetic listening, task conflict, relationship conflict and the various defensive communication strategies. With the help of insights from this study, managers and leaders will be empowered to take the necessary actions to reduce employee defensive behaviours and foster a supportive culture for evoking positive and desirable performance.