Participants

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how meaning and action interact in processes of conflict handling when conflict is understood as an everyday organisational phenomenon that may occur when people meet in social interactions. This perspective on conflict situates conflict contextually as a social, dynamic phenomenon, emphasising the topography of conflict rather than the conflict typologies. My emphasis on the topography of conflict means that my study of conflict is exercised in different complex settings where the meaning of conflict is enacted.

Consequently, I have explored conflict in three different contexts: conflict research literature, the nonprofit organisation of NGO Plus, and my own research context.

My study contributes to two under-studied dimensions of conflict at work: First, my examination of the dominant assumptions of the theoretical domain of organisational conflict revealed how different factions within conflict research conceptualise conflict. Second, through my empirical studies I show how sensemaking plays a critical role in the way staff and management experience and act out conflicts at work. Additionally, the study displays and reflects upon how my own grappling with the research experience shaped my process of theorizing about conflict.

In this chapter, I summarise the main contribution of this study, draw out its implication for the theoretical field of organisational conflict, and discuss perspectives for future research.

The contribution

In this thesis, I set out to investigate three different questions from a sensemaking perspective:

1) How is conflict conceptualised in conflict research literature?

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2) How do staff and management experience and act out conflicts in the nonprofit organisation of NGO Plus and how does changing conflict sensemaking affect conflicts at work?

3) What is my process of theorizing in conflict research?

I will explicate my findings and reflect upon these questions one by one.

How is conflict conceptualised in conflict research literature?

To answer the first research question, I reviewed conflict research literature in two stages where I focused on shifts and positions respectively. In chapter 1, I showed that knowledge about conflict in organisations can be organised via the three major shifts that have occurred within the field of conflict research; that is,

 the shift from viewing conflict as dysfunctional to viewing it as constructive,

 the shift from focusing on what should be done in conflict to focusing on what is done in conflict,

 and the shift from viewing conflict as dyadic interactions to viewing it as an intra-organisational phenomenon.

In chapter 2, I further examined the literature looking for central positions on the phenomenon of conflict. I worked from the assumption that conflict research is never isolated from epistemological commitments and although these are rarely openly displayed within the literature, they are a key feature of how conflict researchers make conflict intelligible. I found three distinct positions on conflict:

 conflict as overt behaviour

 conflict as an outcome

 conflict as a social construction.

Merging the shifts with the positions enables further theoretical insight into the domain of organisational conflict.

Similar to the historical conflict literature, early works on conflict viewed conflict as dysfunctional and often depicted it as part of a conflict-cooperation dichotomy. Accordingly,

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conflict was conceptualised as overt behaviour because it was visible in the breakdown of the relationship and in one party’s deliberate interference with the goals of the other party, which would result in the blocking of cooperative dynamics. The shift to viewing conflict as constructive has emphasised that conflicts can result in positive dynamics and positive consequences for organisations. This shift has spurred conflict research to focus on how to reduce those conflicts that are bad for organisations and stimulate productive conflicts. The theoretical underpinnings of this shift bear witness to the widespread conceptualisation of conflict as an outcome within the domain of organisational conflict.

Similarly, normative research about what should be done in conflict assumes conflict to include a blend of cooperative and competitive motives. Although cooperative or competitive interests each yield different processes of conflict handling, the goal of this faction of research is to make the outcome of conflict productive; it is not to eliminate all conflicts, which reveals theoretical underpinnings of conflict as an outcome. The shift to focus on what is done in conflict has carried over the functionalist view that conflict must be doing some ‘good’

somewhere. Accordingly, it is just a matter of getting the strategy for personal conflict management right for conflict to result in productive outcomes.

A majority of conflict research explores conflict as an interpersonal phenomenon and assumes that this level of analysis represents all organisational conflict. Theoretical underpinnings of this area of research give rise to the view that, if managed correctly, conflict can be used to the organisation's advantage. The shift to view conflict as an intra-organisational phenomenon emphasised two important aspects of conflict: its embeddedness in the context of social relationships and the making of meaning that is attached to it. Accordingly, within this shift conflict is conceptualised as a social construction because by itself it is meaningless; it is given shape and definition only when disputants take action. In table 3, I display an overview of how the distinct positions on conflict relate to the three shifts that have occurred in the domain of conflict research.

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The special feature of this way of reviewing and examining the literature provides insight into the context and dynamics of conflict research. While I on a personal level agree with Coser’s (1956) argument that conflict may provide the impetus for positive developments and change, my examination of conflict research literature clearly reveals that much of modern conflict research is put into the world primarily to aid organisations and conflict professionals at the expense of conceptual developments. For example, the majority of modern conflict research works from the established categories of the conflict typology frameworks and is directed towards the mantra of reducing those conflicts that are bad for the organisation and stimulating those conflicts that benefit the organisation. But this area of conflict research have not investigated the conceptual interconnections between task and relationship elements in conflict.

As I stepped out of the established categories of the conflict typology frameworks within which the majority of conflict research is undertaken and examined the theoretical domain of organisational conflict from a sensemaking perspective, I found three distinct ways that conflict is conceptualised in the field, despite the fact that the majority of conflict research do not discuss their conceptual assumptions of what conflict is. The topography of conflict which is displayed in this thesis represents my research into conflict research typologies as sensemaking and empirical processes of conflict as enactments. Thus, the topography of conflict takes off from my epistemological commitment to view conflict as a social construction. In the section below about the theoretical implications of a sensemaking perspective on conflict, I explain how the

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theoretical contribution of the topography of conflict adds to a sophistication of this position on conflict.

How do staff and management experience and act out conflicts in the nonprofit organisation of NGO Plus and how does changing conflict sensemaking affect conflicts at work?

The second research question relates to my empirical analyses of how conflicts are constructed, enacted, and changed at NGO Plus. In chapter 6, I showed that staff and management draw on competing perceptual frameworks when explaining conflict. These frameworks act as lenses through which staff and management interpret conflict dynamics and it is through these frameworks that staff and management construct what the conflicts are about and decides how to deal with them. Processes of conflict management can be traced to perceptual frameworks, which are guided by institutionalised meanings constituting organisational ideology and identification among staff and management. As I analysed the performative effects of these frameworks, I showed that these dynamics foster a nonconfrontational approach to handling conflict at NGO Plus consistent with its organisational ideology of egalitarianism and striving towards organisational unity. Thus, the study calls attention to the embeddedness of conflict in the organisational cultural system and broader societal structures. As further shown by the study, implication of these dynamics are that conflict often occurs as interlocking events across different organisational levels. I conclude that understanding conflict means to understand (1) competing perceptual frameworks, (2) the embeddedness of conflict, and (3) conflict as interlocking events.

In chapter 7, I showed that attempts to change conflict sensemaking can be accomplished through changes in style of dialogue and thinking about ‘the other’. The chapter showed that by changing the conflict sensemaking, conflict often change and take different forms. This was particularly evident in those conflicts where conflict sensemaking changed for several individuals, and highlights the social aspect of sensemaking activities. Additionally, the chapter showed that in some conflicts, changing the conflict sensemaking was not enough to change conflict. This was particularly evident in conflicts that were shaped by institutional structures beyond the organisation’s controls sphere, and highlights the interlocking aspect of conflict events. In addition to changes in conflict sensemaking, such conflict also required institutional changes. I conclude that (1) changing the conflict sensemaking often change conflict, and that (2) conflict shaped by institutional structures also required institutional changes.

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From these findings, I have showed that sensemaking frameworks provide an advantageous approach to understanding conflict at work because it reveals constructions of meaning in conflict at several levels of analysis and moreover engage the cultural context that influences those constructions of meaning. By focusing particularly on the context and the dynamics of conflict, this approach helps explain why conflict take the form they do.

What is my process of theorizing in conflict research?

The third research question concerning my process of theorizing in conflict research relates to my own sensemaking of research experiences and how this shaped my construction of knowledge about conflict. In chapter 3, I described how field experiences made me change my epistemological commitments from reflecting positivist assumptions about conflict to committing to a more interpretative view of conflict. This meant that my perspective on conflict changed and instead of approaching conflict as ‘something’ in itself, I focused on the configuration of meaning in conflict and the interaction of meaning and action in practices of conflict handling. Thus, these field experiences are what initiated my interpretative approach to studying conflict and my focus on sensemaking in conflict.

In chapter 8, in terms of the interpretative approach to studying conflict I turned back the notion of interpretation that I have used in analysing conflict onto myself to take a critical look at my own process of theorizing in the research process. I show that as I turned my attention to the way I organised and made sense of dilemmas and awkward moments arising throughout the research process, these acts of reflexivity created greater degree of thoroughness in my research.

From the narratives about getting access to information about conflicts in the field, making sense of – or deciding – which stories from the field are conflict stories, and dealing with ethical dilemmas in the process of doing research about conflict it became clear that the way that I organised and made sense of these research experiences shaped my process of theorizing. And that I, in the role of a sensemaker, actively generated representations of what reality of conflict is. While such knowledge is a relational product because what goes on in the actual research context shape the construction of knowledge, it has also been shaped by the review process in the three journals to which I have submitted the articles. This means that three different theoretical domains of knowledge; that is, the conflict research field, the nonprofit organisations research field, and the qualitative research field, each in their own way made an impact on my construction of knowledge about conflict.

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I conclude that my research into conflict is an iterative, dynamic process that takes place in the interface between my world of being the researcher and the worlds of the researched and in negotiation with different theoretical domains of knowledge. It is the dynamics of theorizing in and between all of these research contexts that have added to the knowledge that I have produced about conflict in this thesis.