Weber Libby, Shantz Angelique Slade, Kistruck Geoffrey M, Lount Robert B
University of California, Irvine.
University of Alberta.
J Manage. 2025 Feb;51(2):748-780. doi: 10.1177/01492063231196556. Epub 2023 Sep 7.
An intractable conflict environment (ICE) is an extreme context in which deep, unsolvable conflict between groups is central to the actors within it. While non-ICEs are typically assumed in organizational research, ICEs are increasingly common contexts for organizations. Moreover, this context influences peoples' interpretation of potential organizational conflict incidents inside the organization and therefore the likelihood and emotional intensity of organizational conflict events. Whereas a potential conflict incident, such as a disagreement over how to complete a task, may be perceived as benign in a more typical environment, the same incident is more likely to be interpreted as much more negative and emotionally intense when taking place in an ICE, increasing the frequency of conflict events (conflictual behavior). Prior work suggests that, in a typical environment, promotion-framed (achieving positives) interventions reduce conflict more than prevention-framed (avoiding negatives) interventions by temporarily inducing promotion orientations that reduce the likelihood of interpreting conflict. However, we argue an ICE induces a strong prevention focus, which overrides promotion-framed interventions. Instead, we argue in an ICE, a prevention- rather than promotion-framed intervention is likely to be more effective because it "matches" the strong prevention focus. To test this prediction, we examine the difference in number of conflict events in farming cooperatives in rural Ghana (an ICE) after instituting prevention- versus promotion-framed interventions aimed at addressing conflict. Quantitative and qualitative findings from a 9-month field experiment support our hypothesis.
棘手冲突环境（ICE）是一种极端情境，其中群体之间深层次的、无法解决的冲突是该情境中行为主体的核心。虽然组织研究中通常假定为非棘手冲突环境，但棘手冲突环境对组织来说越来越常见。此外，这种情境会影响人们对组织内部潜在组织冲突事件的解读，进而影响组织冲突事件发生的可能性和情感强度。在一个更典型的环境中，诸如对如何完成一项任务存在分歧这样的潜在冲突事件可能被视为良性的，但在棘手冲突环境中发生时，同样的事件更有可能被解读为负面得多且情感强度更大，从而增加冲突事件（冲突行为）的频率。先前的研究表明，在典型环境中，促进框架（实现积极方面）的干预措施比预防框架（避免消极方面）的干预措施更能减少冲突，因为前者通过暂时引发促进导向来降低解读冲突的可能性。然而，我们认为棘手冲突环境会引发强烈的预防焦点，这会压倒促进框架的干预措施。相反，我们认为在棘手冲突环境中，预防框架而非促进框架的干预措施可能更有效，因为它“匹配”了强烈的预防焦点。为了验证这一预测，我们考察了在加纳农村的农业合作社（一个棘手冲突环境）中，实施旨在解决冲突的预防框架和促进框架干预措施后冲突事件数量的差异。一项为期9个月的实地实验的定量和定性结果支持了我们的假设。
