Frontal Slow Wave

So what can we take away from this study and its findings? Focusing explicitly on the sensemaking activities in explaining conflict at work, this study contributes to the faction within conflict research that uses an interpretative epistemology (e.g. Bartunek et al., 1992; Collier, 2009; Friedman, 1992; Friedman & Berthoin Antal, 2005; Gadlin, 1994; Kolb & McGinn, 2009;

Morrill, 1995; Putnam, 2004). Scholars within this faction have argued that conflicts are a part of an organisation’s social fabric. But what does it really mean that conflicts are part of the social fabric of an organisation? To answer this question, the topography of conflict reveals important theoretical insights about conflict:

 If we want insight into why people act and think the way they do in conflict and into what are meaningful ways for them to address conflict, then the sensemaking frameworks that are constructed and enacted by particular organisational groups are revealing. It is through sensemaking frameworks that people interpret conflict dynamics and construct what the conflict is about.

 However, conflict handling is not only about sensemaking frameworks; it is very much also about the cultural and structural context in which those sensemaking frameworks are constructed and enacted. Essentially this means that conflict handling is intertwined with various aspects of organisational functioning because the particular contextual space in which the conflicts are embedded play an important role in fostering, creating, and maintaining those conflicts (which in turn influence these cultures and structures).

 Moreover, conflict often occurs as interlocking events across different organisational levels and areas. This means that events happening in one areas of the organisation shape

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the occurrence of conflict at another area of the organisation. It is through actions that connect actors that the interlocking takes place.

I confirm my position on conflict as a social construction, but these theoretical insights about conflict constitute my additions to this position’s theoretical assumptions and concepts.

As displayed in table 4, I emphasise that the theoretical concepts of sensemaking, frameworks, enactment, and interlocking are useful concepts when trying to understand conflict at work.

Thus, my contribution adds to the sophistication of the position on conflict as a social construction existing within conflict research.

From these theoretical insights it becomes clear that a sensemaking perspective on conflict emphasises that conflict is about differences, which often result from different views of reality. These world-views grow out of a patchwork of cultural imprints on individuals and groups, which are shaped by numerous factors. As shown in chapter 6-8, conflict that characterises relations between different occupational groups may arise from fundamental differences in how each group members sees his or her position and relationship to others in the organisation. Thus, these differences are ingrained in the organisational system and intertwined with the broader culture in which that organisation operates.

190 POSITIONS OF CONFLICT THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS OBJECTIVES MAIN CONCEPTS SOURCES CONFLICT AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION Conflict is omnipresent. Conflict is shaped by the definition that observers give to it. Conflict is embedded in human interaction. Conflict is part of the social fabric in organisations. Conflicts are processes that are not necessarily visible, acknowledged and verbalized. My additions: People make sense of conflict through particular frameworks and enact conflict in accordance with those frameworks. The structural and cultural context in which the conflict handling occurs shape conflict sensemaking and enactment (which in turn influence these structures and cultures). Conflict often occurs as interlocking events. Descriptive: To explore and understand the social dynamics of conflict. Implication of this is that we may learn how to intervene and deal with conflict. Meaning Cultural context Structural context Embeddedness Experience My additions: Sensemaking Framework Enactment Interlocking Barley, 1991; Bartunek et al., 1992; Brummans et al., 2008; Cloven & Roloff, 1991; Dubinskas, 1992; Felstiner et al., 1980; Friedman, 1992; Friedman & Berthoin Antal, 2005; Gadlin, 1994; Gray et al., 2007; Knapp et al., 1988; Kolb & McGinn, 2009; Kolb, 2008; Kolb & Bartunek, 1992; Kolb & Putnam, 1992; Kusztal, 2002; Martin, 1992; Mather & Yngvesson, 1980; Morrill, 1989; Nader & Todd, 1978; Putnam, 2004; Sheppard, 1992; Van Maanen, 1992; Volkema et al., 1996. My additions: Mikkelsen, 2012a; Mikkelsen, 2012b; Mikkelsen, 2012c Table 4: A final position on conflict

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I began this thesis by criticizing that the majority of conflict research uses laboratory studies and survey instruments as the main methodologies for researching conflict in organisations. I joined the critics who argue that laboratory studies overlook the important role that social context and social process play in shaping the form that conflict takes. I also joined those critics who argue that survey instruments overlook the importance of dynamics over time and disregard conflict interaction between people in organisations manifested by for example social cues such as body language.

Sheppard (1992) argues that organisational conflict research tends to separate the strands of conflict analysis and focuses only on a single level of analysis. Rarely do studies or theories entail more than one level of analysis. He views much of conflict research to be trapped within a single level of analysis. By contrast, the application of a sensemaking perspective on conflict situates conflict contextually as a social, dynamic phenomenon and expands a focus on organisational conflict to the overall organisation, while maintaining a focus on the ways that conflict plays out between individuals. By displaying micro processes of the ways that meaning and action interact in conflict handling, I not only showed what actually happens in real life conflict in one particular organisation, but I also showed how these dynamics are embedded in the organisation’s ideological foundation and the broader societal culture in which the organisation operates. Additionally, the interlocking characteristic of conflict means that conflict arising between two members of the same team may be interconnected with events that take place outside the relationship level of analysis.

Rather than focusing solely on either micro or macro aspects of conflict, this thesis has shown that conflict analysis can take place in the situational mechanisms between micro and macro levels of analysis. Thus, a sensemaking perspective on conflict entails analysing conflict at several levels of analysis because it displays complex interconnections between individual and interpersonal conflict handling and the structural and culturally negotiated context in which these conflicts occur.

In the editorial of a recent issue in the journal of Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, Evert Van de Vliert (2010) – an experienced conflict researcher – argued that emphasis in conflict research has always been on the much studied fruits of conflict rather than the roots of conflict. Many conflict studies have in different ways focused on the effects that conflict has on the workplace and how these effects can be reduced, controlled, managed, separated, or stimulated.

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By investigating how sensemaking plays a critical role in the way conflicts are experienced and acted out, this study contributes to the much less studied roots of conflict. Examining how people engage in sensemaking activities by drawing on frameworks to derive meaning in conflict, expose cultural cues of that particular organisational setting which can explain why conflicts arise in the first place and why they take the form the do. Furthermore, perceiving conflict as interlocking events presents a more dynamic understanding of conflict, which places conflict handling at the heart of organisational functioning. This view is remarkably different from the dominant view of conflict as dyadic interactions that has long been present in conflict research literature and on which much conflict theory is built.

Organisations often over-simplify and over-individualise conflict. Moreover, conflicts at work are often isolated as problems of interpersonal differences and incompatibility that individuals must get over. Additionally conflicts are regarded as special events, dissociated from the everyday activities of working life. However, insights generated by this study suggest that understanding the sensemaking activities that go on in conflict situations and how frameworks are used to ascribe meaning to and act on conflict may help practitioners to address conflict at work. As Weick argues, it is important to focus on the content of meaning because by understanding what people draw upon to construct reality, we gain insight into how we can understand and change behaviours: “an important implication of sensemaking is that, to change a group, one must change what is says and what its words mean” (1995a, p.

108). For the practitioner-oriented field of conflict management this means to tone down the standardised models for resolving conflict and try to gain awareness of the different sensemaking frameworks of conflict that are represented in organisations and work at changing those frameworks.