case study about conflict

• Browse Topics
• Executive Committee
• Affiliated Faculty
• Harvard Negotiation Project
• Great Negotiator
• American Secretaries of State Project
• Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
• Negotiation Programs
• Mediation Programs
• One-Day Programs
• In-House Training and Custom Programs
• In-Person Programs
• Online Programs
• Advanced Materials Search
• Contact Information
• The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center Policies
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Negotiation Journal
• Harvard Negotiation Law Review
• Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation
• Free Reports and Program Guides

Free Videos

• Upcoming Events
• Past Events
• Event Series
• Our Mission
• Keyword Index

PON – Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School - https://www.pon.harvard.edu

Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

Discover how to build a winning team and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report, Team Building Strategies for Your Organization, from Harvard Law School.

A Case Study of Conflict Management and Negotiation

There is a lot to be learned from this case study of conflict management and negotiation..

By PON Staff — on January 22nd, 2024 / Conflict Resolution

Group negotiations are a fact of managerial life, yet the outcomes of teamwork are highly unpredictable. Sometimes, groups cohere, reaching novel solutions to nagging problems, and sometimes infighting causes them to collapse. This is where you may find a case study of conflict management helpful.

How can you predict when the conflict will emerge in groups, and what can you do to stop it?

The following is drawn from a case study of conflict management and negotiation involving multi-party negotiation scenarios. Dora Lau of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Keith Murnighan of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University have examined group conflict in terms of fault lines the cracks that result when groups split into homogenous subgroups according to demographic characteristics.

For instance, in a four-person group made up of two white males in their forties and two African American females in their twenties, a very strong fault line would exist, one clearly defined by age, gender, and race. In a group consisting of one white male, one Asian male, one Hispanic female, and one African American female, all in their thirties, fault lines would be less evident.

Claim your FREE copy: The New Conflict Management

In our FREE special report from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School - The New Conflict Management: Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation – renowned negotiation experts uncover unconventional approaches to conflict management that can turn adversaries into partners.

A Case Study of Conflict Management – Divisions in Group Negotiation

Recently Katerina Bezrukova of Rutgers University and her colleagues compared the effects of fault lines based on social categories (e.g., age, race, or gender) with those based on information (e.g., education or work experience). Their negotiation research found that groups with strong information-based fault lines perform better than groups with strong demographic-based fault lines.

While the latter create dysfunctional conflict within the group, information-based fault lines provide the diversity of information needed for effective performance – in other words, they provide functional conflict .

These studies provide useful hints on how diversity can be effectively managed. Specifically, when forming teams, avoid obvious demographic fault lines that would allow group members to split into categories. When broader diversity exists, fault lines can simply disappear.

Related Conflict Resolution Article:  Conflict Management and Negotiation: Personality and Individual Differences That Matter – How much do personality differences matter in negotiations? Negotiation research has found that negotiators perform similarly from one negotiation to another negotiation and that performance was only slightly impacted by other variables at the bargaining table like personality traits. Unchanging traits, like gender, ethnicity, and level of physical attractiveness, were not tied to negotiation performance. Some traits did affect negotiating performance, however, and in this study, those factors identified by the latest negotiation research are outlined and discussed. How can your beliefs about negotiation impact your ability to negotiate? Read more for negotiation skills and negotiation techniques a negotiator can do to mitigate the impact of these variables on her negotiating performance.

What is your favorite case study of conflict management? Let us know in the comments.

Originally published in 2012.

Related Posts

• Causes of Conflict: When Taboos Create Trouble
• Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
• Managing Expectations in Negotiations
• Elements of Conflict: Diagnose What’s Gone Wrong
• The Two Koreas Practice Conflict Management

No Responses to “A Case Study of Conflict Management and Negotiation”

One response to “a case study of conflict management and negotiation”.

I would love to consider the details of the research that suggests that “demographic fault lines” produce dysfunction in groups. The conclusion has a very subtle bias that could benefit from further investigation. Is it at all possible that the information and proposals are considered differently by people operating in different social contexts and that by “avoiding obvious demographic fault line” the management practice is to simply allow the internal power dynamics – which often have differential impacts along certain demographic fault lines – to play out unimpeded?

Click here to cancel reply.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Negotiation and Leadership

• Learn More about Negotiation and Leadership

NEGOTIATION MASTER CLASS

• Learn More about Harvard Negotiation Master Class

Negotiation Essentials Online

• Learn More about Negotiation Essentials Online

Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes

• Download Program Guide: March 2024
• Register Online: March 2024
• Learn More about Beyond the Back Table

Select Your Free Special Report

• Negotiation and Leadership Fall 2024 Program Guide
• Negotiation Essentials Online (NEO) Spring 2024 Program Guide
• Beyond the Back Table Spring 2024 Program Guide
• Negotiation Master Class May 2024 Program Guide
• Negotiation and Leadership Spring 2024 Program Guide
• Make the Most of Online Negotiations
• Managing Multiparty Negotiations
• Getting the Deal Done
• Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise
• Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation: Cross Cultural Communication Techniques and Negotiation Skills From International Business and Diplomacy

Teaching Negotiation Resource Center

• Teaching Materials and Publications

Stay Connected to PON

Preparing for negotiation.

Understanding how to arrange the meeting space is a key aspect of preparing for negotiation. In this video, Professor Guhan Subramanian discusses a real world example of how seating arrangements can influence a negotiator’s success. This discussion was held at the 3 day executive education workshop for senior executives at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Guhan Subramanian is the Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School and Professor of Business Law at the Harvard Business School.

Articles & Insights

• For Sellers, The Anchoring Effects of a Hidden Price Can Offer Advantages
• BATNA Examples—and What You Can Learn from Them
• Taylor Swift: Negotiation Mastermind?
• Power and Negotiation: Advice on First Offers
• The Good Cop, Bad Cop Negotiation Strategy
• How to Set Negotiation Goals as a Manager
• Selling the Deal to Outsiders
• In a Price Negotiation, Should You Make the First Offer?
• Increase Your Power in Negotiation
• In the Negotiation Planning Process, to Capture the Force, be Patient
• Negotiating Change During the Covid-19 Pandemic
• AI Negotiation in the News
• Crisis Communication Examples: What’s So Funny?
• Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill
• Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team
• Managing Difficult Employees, and Those Who Just Seem Difficult
• How to Deal with Difficult Customers
• Negotiating with Difficult Personalities and “Dark” Personality Traits
• Consensus-Building Techniques
• Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
• How to Counter Offer Successfully With a Strong Rationale
• Negotiation Techniques: The First Offer Dilemma in Negotiations
• 5 Dealmaking Tips for Closing the Deal
• Managing a Multiparty Negotiation
• What Leads to Renegotiation?
• Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
• What Is an Umbrella Agreement?
• What is Dispute System Design?
• Top 10 Dispute Resolution Skills
• 3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
• Prompting Peace Negotiations
• Political Negotiation: Negotiating with Bureaucrats
• Top International Negotiation Examples: The East China Sea Dispute
• Best Negotiators in History: Nelson Mandela and His Negotiation Style
• Cross Cultural Negotiations in International Business: Four Negotiation Tips for Bargaining in China
• Servant Leadership and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge
• How to Negotiate in Cross-Cultural Situations
• Counteracting Negotiation Biases Like Race and Gender in the Workplace
• The Trait Theory of Leadership
• Challenges Facing Women Negotiators
• The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
• Negotiations and Logrolling: Discover Opportunities to Generate Mutual Gains
• How Mediation Can Help Resolve Pro Sports Disputes
• Types of Mediation: Choose the Type Best Suited to Your Conflict
• Mediation Training: What Can You Expect?
• 5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills
• 10 Negotiation Failures
• When a Job Offer is “Nonnegotiable”
• In Negotiation, How Much Do Personality and Other Individual Differences Matter?
• Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes”
• Ethics and Negotiation: 5 Principles of Negotiation to Boost Your Bargaining Skills in Business Situations
• 10 Negotiation Training Skills Every Organization Needs
• Trust in Negotiation: Does Gender Matter?
• Use a Negotiation Preparation Worksheet for Continuous Improvement
• Collaborative Negotiation Examples: Tenants and Landlords
• Renegotiate Salary to Your Advantage
• How to Counter a Job Offer: Avoid Common Mistakes
• Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary
• How to Ask for a Salary Increase
• Setting Standards in Negotiations
• New Simulation: Negotiating a Management Crisis
• New Great Negotiator Case and Video: Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC Executive Secretary
• Download Your Next Mediation Video
• Bidding in an International Business Negotiation: Euro-Idol
• Check Out the All-In-One Curriculum Packages!
• How to Win at Win-Win Negotiation
• Labor Negotiation Strategies
• How to Create Win-Win Situations
• For NFL Players, a Win-Win Negotiation Contract Only in Retrospect?
• Win-Lose Negotiation Examples

PON Publications

• Negotiation Data Repository (NDR)
• New Frontiers, New Roleplays: Next Generation Teaching and Training
• Negotiating Transboundary Water Agreements
• Learning from Practice to Teach for Practice—Reflections From a Novel Training Series for International Climate Negotiators
• Insights From PON’s Great Negotiators and the American Secretaries of State Program
• Gender and Privilege in Negotiation

Remember Me This setting should only be used on your home or work computer.

Lost your password? Create a new password of your choice.

Copyright © 2024 Negotiation Daily. All rights reserved.

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

Conflict Case Studies

• Conference Proceedings
• Newsletters
• Old Archived Documents
• Policy Briefs
• Policy Papers
• Research Papers
• Other Recent Work
• SITC Research Briefs

Case Study #7: Empowered Process---Skilled Leadership: Diffusion, Party Capacity & Speaking Truth to Power

• Erbe, Nancy

This is the seventh case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

Introduction to Conflict Case Studies

Case Study #1: Neutral Fact-Finding and Empowerment Within Conflicted Systems

Case Study #2: Intrapersonal Approaches to Conflict: Cognitive and Perceptual Biases

Case Study #3: Negative Intergroup Influence

Case Study #4: Empathy: Effective Response with Escalating Aggression

Case Study #5: Assessing Covert Bad Faith and Power Abuse

Case Study #6: Cultural Competence: Ethical and Empowered Response With Discrimination

Case Study #7: Empowered Process---Skilled Leadership: Diffusion, Party Capacity and Speaking Truth to Power

Case Series #8: Empowered Process: Multicultural Collaboration

Case Study #2: Intrapersonal Approaches to Conflict: Cognitive & Perceptual Biases

This is the second case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

This is the first case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

This series, Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action, presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying this introduction. Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided here is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

This is the sixth case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

This is the third case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

This is the fourth case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

Case Study #5: Assessing Covert Bad Faith & Power Abuse

This is the fifth case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

Case Study #8: Empowered Process: Multicultural Collaboration

This is the eighth case study in the series Holding These Truths: Empowerment and Recognition in Action. This series presents case studies for a future conflict resolution textbook. It has been successfully piloted with several international classes. Those, who benefit most, stress the importance of carefully studying the introduction. (See Introduction to Conflict Case Studies, Nancy D. Erbe). Because the case study format is intentionally unique, written in an interactive and non-linear workbook style, unlike many introductions, the information provided there is required for understanding the case studies. Readers are encouraged to send comments and critiques directly to the author. Because of the deliberate one-of-a-kind format of the text, detailed page-by-page comments and questions are welcome. A list of the entire series is included below.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Appendix A: Case Studies

List of case studies, case study 1: handling roommate conflicts, case study 2: salary negotiation at college corp, case study 3: oecollaboration, case study 4: the ohio connection, case study 5: uber pays the price, case study 6: diverse teams hold court.

Chapter Reference: Section 2.2 Approaches to Conflict

Whether you have a roommate by choice, by necessity, or through the random selection process of your school’s housing office, it’s important to be able to get along with the person who shares your living space. While having a roommate offers many benefits such as making a new friend, having someone to experience a new situation like college life with, and having someone to split the cost on your own with, there are also challenges. Some common roommate conflicts involve neatness, noise, having guests, sharing possessions, value conflicts, money conflicts, and personality conflicts (Ball State University, 2001). Read the following scenarios and answer the following questions for each one:

• Which conflict management style, from the five discussed, would you use in this situation?
• What are the potential strengths of using this style?
• What are the potential weaknesses of using this style?

Scenario 1: Neatness. Your college dorm has bunk beds, and your roommate takes a lot of time making their bed (the bottom bunk) each morning. They have told you that they don’t want anyone sitting on or sleeping in the bed when they are not in the room. While your roommate is away for the weekend, your friend comes to visit and sits on the bottom bunk bed. You tell your friend what your roommate said, and you try to fix the bed back before your roommate returns to the dorm. When they return, your roommate notices that the bed has been disturbed and confronts you about it.

Scenario 2: Noise and having guests. Your roommate has a job waiting tables and gets home around midnight on Thursday nights. They often brings a couple friends from work home with them. They watch television, listen to music, or play video games and talk and laugh. You have an 8 a.m. class on Friday mornings and are usually asleep when they returns. Last Friday, you talked to your roommate and asked them to keep it down in the future. Tonight, their noise has woken you up and you can’t get back to sleep.

Scenario 3: Sharing possessions. When you go out to eat, you often bring back leftovers to have for lunch the next day during your short break between classes. You didn’t have time to eat breakfast, and you’re really excited about having your leftover pizza for lunch until you get home and see your roommate sitting on the couch eating the last slice.

Scenario 4: Money conflicts. Your roommate got mono and missed two weeks of work last month. Since they have a steady job and you have some savings, you cover their portion of the rent and agree that they will pay your portion next month. The next month comes around and your roommate informs you that they only have enough to pay their half of the rent.

Scenario 5: Value and personality conflicts. You like to go out to clubs and parties and have friends over, but your roommate is much more of an introvert. You’ve tried to get them to come out with you or join the party at your place, but they’d rather study. One day your roommate tells you that they want to break the lease so they can move out early to live with one of their friends. You both signed the lease, so you have to agree or they can’t do it. If you break the lease, you automatically lose your portion of the security deposit

Works Adapted

“ Conflict and Interpersonal Communication ” in Communication in the Real World  by University of Minnesota is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Ball State University. (2001). Roommate conflicts. accessed June 16, 2001, from  http://cms.bsu.edu/CampusLife/CounselingCenter/VirtualSelfHelpLibrary/RoommateIssues.asx.

Chapter Reference:  Section 2.4 Negotiation

Janine just graduated college, she’s ready to head out on her own and get that first job, and she’s through her first interviews. She receives an offer of a $28,000 salary, including benefits from COLLEGE CORP, from an entry-level marketing position that seems like a perfect fit. She is thrown off by the salary they are offering and knows that it is lower than what she was hoping for. Instead of panicking, she takes the advice of her mentor and does a little research to know what the market range for the salary is for her area. She feels better after doing this, knowing that she was correct and the offer is low compared to the market rate. After understanding more about the offer and the rates, she goes back to the HR representative and asks for her preferred rate of $32,500, knowing the minimum that she would accept is $30,000. Instead of going in for her lowest amount, she started higher to be open to negotiations with the company. She also sent a note regarding her expertise that warranted why she asked for that salary. To her happy surprise, the company counter offered at $31,000—and she accepted.

• What key points of Janice’s negotiation led to her success?
• What could have Janice done better to get a better outcome for her salary?

“ Conflict and Negotiations ” in Organizational Behaviour by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

“Good & Bad Salary Negotiations,”  Salary.com , April 19, 2018, https://www.salary.com/articles/good-bad-examples-of-salary-negotiations .

Herner, M. (n.d). 5 things HR wishes you knew about salary negotiation. Payscale.com, accessed October 21, 2018, https://www.payscale.com/salary-negotiation-guide/salary-negotiation-tips-from-hr .

Chapter Reference:  Section 3.2 Creating, Maintaining, and Changing Culture

At OECollaboration, a technology company that develops virtual collaboration software for new companies, Mike Jones is a new manager. One of the biggest challenges he has faced is that the team that he is managing is well established and because he is an outsider, the team members haven’t yet developed trust in him.

Two weeks into his new employment, Mike held a meeting and discussed all of the changes to the remote work agreements as well as implementing new meeting requirements for each employee to have a biweekly meeting scheduled with him to discuss their projects. The team was outraged, they were not excited, and the following days he wasn’t greeted in a friendly way; in addition, his team seemed less engaged when asked to participate in team functions.

Tracy James is also a new manager at OECollaboration who started at the same time as Mike, in a similar situation where she is a new manager of an existing team. Tracy was able to hold a meeting the first day on the job to listen to her team and get to know them. During this meeting she also told the team about herself and her past experiences. Additionally, she held one-on-one meetings to listen to each of her team members to discuss what they were working on and their career goals. After observation and discussion with upper management, she aligned her own team goals closely with the skills and experiences of her new team. She met with the whole team to make changes to a few policies, explaining why they were being changed, and set the strategy for the team moving forward.

Because she got her team involved and learned about them before implementing her new strategy, this was well received. Her team still had questions and concerns, but they felt like they could trust her and that they were included in the changes that were being made.

• What challenges can a new manager encounter when starting to manage an existing team?
• What strategies can a new manager implement to ensure that their new team is engaged with them and open to change and growth?

Adapted Works

“ Organizational Power and Politics ” in Organizational Behaviour by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Giang, V. (2013, July 31). The 7 types of power that shape the workplace. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-7-types-of-power-that-shape-the-workplace-2013-7

Morin, A. (2018, June 25). How to prevent a workplace bully from taking your power. Inc. https://www.inc.com/amy-morin/how-to-prevent-a-workplace-bully-from-taking-your-power.html

Weinstein,  B. (n.d.). 10 tips for dealing with a bully boss,” CIO , accessed October 13, 2018, https://www.cio.com.au/article/198499/10_tips_dealing_bully_boss/.

Chapter Reference:  Section 4.1 Power

Janey worked as an executive assistant to a product manager at her company: Ohio Connection. Overall, she loved her job; she was happy to work with a company that provided great benefits, and she and found enjoyment in her day-to-day work. She had the same product manager boss for years, but last year, her manager left Ohio Connection and retired. Recently her new manager has been treating her unfairly and showcasing bullying behavior.

Yesterday, Janey came into work, and her boss decided to use their power as her manager and her “superior” to demand that she stay late to cover for him, correct reports that he had made mistakes on, and would not pay her overtime. She was going to be late to pick up her son from soccer practice if she stayed late; she told him this, and he was not happy.

Over subsequent days, her boss consistently would make comments about her performance, even though she had always had good remarks on reviews, and created a very negative work environment. The next time she was asked to stay late, she complied for fear of losing her job or having other negative impacts on her job. Janey’s situation was not ideal, but she didn’t feel she had a choice.

• What type of power did Janey’s boss employ to get her to do the things that he wanted her to do?
• What negative consequences are apparent in this situation and other situations where power is not balanced in the workplace?
• What steps should Janey take do to counteract the power struggle that is occurring with her new manager?

Chapter Reference:   Section 5.1 Interpersonal Relationships at Work

Uber revolutionized the taxi industry and the way people commute. With the simple mission “to bring transportation—for everyone, everywhere,” today Uber has reached a valuation of around $70 billion and claimed a market share high of almost 90% in 2015. However, in June 2017 Uber experienced a series of bad press regarding an alleged culture of sexual harassment, which is what most experts believe caused their market share to fall to 75%.

In February of 2017 a former software engineer, Susan Fowler, wrote a lengthy post on her website regarding her experience of being harassed by a manager who was not disciplined by human resources for his behavior. In her post, Fowler wrote that Uber’s HR department and members of upper management told her that because it was the man’s first offense, they would only give him a warning. During her meeting with HR about the incident, Fowler was also advised that she should transfer to another department within the organization. According to Fowler, she was ultimately left no choice but to transfer to another department, despite having specific expertise in the department in which she had originally been working.

As her time at the company went on, she began meeting other women who worked for the company who relayed their own stories of harassment. To her surprise, many of the women reported being harassed by the same person who had harassed her. As she noted in her blog, “It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being his ‘first offense.’” Fowler also reported a number of other instances that she identified as sexist and inappropriate within the organization and claims that she was disciplined severely for continuing to speak out. Fowler eventually left Uber after about two years of working for the company, noting that during her time at Uber the percentage of women working there had dropped to 6% of the workforce, down from 25% when she first started.

Following the fallout from Fowler’s lengthy description of the workplace on her website, Uber’s chief executive Travis Kalanick publicly condemned the behavior described by Fowler, calling it “abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in.” But later in March, Uber board member Arianna Huffington claimed that she believed “sexual harassment was not a systemic problem at the company.” Amid pressure from bad media attention and the company’s falling market share, Uber made some changes after an independent investigation resulted in 215 complaints. As a result, 20 employees were fired for reasons ranging from sexual harassment to bullying to retaliation to discrimination, and Kalanick announced that he would hire a chief operating officer to help manage the company. In an effort to provide the leadership team with more diversity, two senior female executives were hired to fill the positions of chief brand officer and senior vice president for leadership and strategy.

Critical Thinking Questions

• Based on Cox’s business case for diversity, what are some positive outcomes that may result in changes to Uber’s leadership team?
• If the case had occurred in Canada, what forms of legislation would have protected Fowler?
• What strategies should have been put in place to help prevent sexual harassment incidents like this from happening in the first place?

“ Diversity in Organizations ” in Organizational Behaviour by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Della Cava, M. (2017, June 13). Uber has lost market share to Lyft during crisis. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/06/13/uber-market-share-customer-image-hit-string-scandals/102795024/

Fowler, T. (2017, February 19). Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber. https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber.

Lien,  T. (2017, June 6). Uber fires 20 workers after harassment investigation. Los Angeles Times.  http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tn-uber-sexual-harassment-20170606-story.html

Uber (2017, February). Company info. https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/

Chapter Reference:  Section 5.3 Collaboration, Decision-Making and Problem Solving in Groups

Diverse teams have been proven to be better at problem-solving and decision-making for a number of reasons. First, they bring many different perspectives to the table. Second, they rely more on facts and use those facts to substantiate their positions. What is even more interesting is that, according to the Scientific American article “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” simply “being around people who are different from us makes more creative, diligent, and harder-working.”

One case in point is the example of jury decision-making, where fact-finding and logical decision-making are of utmost importance. A 2006 study of jury decision-making, led by social psychologist Samuel Sommers of Tufts University, showed that racially diverse groups exchanged a wider range of information during deliberation of a case than all-White groups did. The researcher also conducted mock jury trials with a group of real jurors to show the impact of diversity on jury decision-making.

Interestingly enough, it was the mere presence of diversity on the jury that made jurors consider the facts more, and they had fewer errors recalling the relevant information. The groups even became more willing to discuss the role of race case, when they hadn’t before with an all-White jury. This wasn’t the case because the diverse jury members brought new information to the group—it happened because, according to the author, the mere presence of diversity made people more open-minded and diligent. Given what we discussed on the benefits of diversity, it makes sense. People are more likely to be prepared, to be diligent, and to think logically about something if they know that they will be pushed or tested on it. And who else would push you or test you on something, if not someone who is different from you in perspective, experience, or thinking. “Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.”

So, the next time you are called for jury duty, or to serve on a board committee, or to make an important decision as part of a team, remember that one way to generate a great discussion and come up with a strong solution is to pull together a diverse team.

• If you don’t have a diverse group of people on your team, how can you ensure that you will have robust discussions and decision-making? What techniques can you use to generate conversations from different perspectives?
• Evaluate your own team at work. Is it a diverse team? How would you rate the quality of decisions generated from that group?

Sources: Adapted from Katherine W. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Scientific American, October 2014, p. 7–8.

“ Critical Thinking Case ” in  Organizational Behaviour by OpenStax is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

Conflict Management Copyright © 2022 by Laura Westmaas, BA, MSc is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Managing conflicts

• Managing yourself
• Interpersonal skills
• Interpersonal communication
• Negotiating skills

How to Ask a Colleague to Mask Up

• Vanessa Bohns
• August 27, 2021

Make Employees Responsible for Outcomes

• June 22, 2015

The Airline Industry’s Whistleblowers

• Barbara Kellerman
• April 21, 2008

Trapped in a Risk-Averse Workplace

• Sarah Green Carmichael
• January 15, 2009

What to Do When Your Boss Betrays You

• Ron Carucci
• July 23, 2019

The Work Conversations We Dread the Most, According to Research

• Kerry Jones
• April 11, 2016

The Co-Worker Who Always Misses Deadlines

• January 23, 2009

Getting Along: How Can I Step Up in My Boss’s Absence — Without Stepping on Their Toes?

• December 19, 2023

Alternative Dispute Resolution: Why It Doesn't Work and Why It Does

• Todd B. Carver
• Albert A. Vondra
• From the May–June 1994 Issue

The Boss Who Yells

• January 29, 2009

Handling the Fall-out from a Failing Leader

• Gill Corkindale
• July 30, 2010

Make Peace with Your Unlived Life

• Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries
• December 21, 2016

Life's Work: George Mitchell

• George Mitchell
• Alison Beard
• From the June 2015 Issue

The Case of the Temperamental Talent

• Lawrence R. Rothstein
• From the November–December 1992 Issue

Conflicting Roles in Budgeting for Operations

• M. Edgar Barrett
• LeRoy B. Fraser, III
• From the July 1977 Issue

Managing Two People Who Hate Each Other

• Liane Davey
• June 09, 2014

How Rudeness Stops People from Working Together

• Christine Porath
• January 20, 2017

Managing in the Cappuccino Economy

• Eileen C. Shapiro
• From the March–April 2000 Issue

How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

• January 11, 2016

You Can Have Constructive Conflict Over Email

• Joseph Grenny
• March 24, 2015

SMA: Micro-Electronic Products Division (A)

• Michael Beer
• Michael L. Tushman
• May 10, 2000

West Point: The Cheating Incident (A)

• Leonard A. Schlesinger
• Lou Zambello
• June 01, 1981

Airbnb: Business Model Development and Future Challenges

• Sayan Chatterjee
• November 24, 2016

Verklar Austria

• Anne Coughlan
• January 01, 2004

Levendary Cafe: The China Challenge

• Christopher A. Bartlett
• October 24, 2011

Medisys Corp.: The IntensCare Product Development Team

• Anne Donnellon
• Joshua D. Margolis
• October 30, 2009

The X-Caliber Project Case (B): Giving and Receiving Feedback - Confidential Instructions for Sebastian

• Horacio Falcao
• Heather Grover
• December 16, 2015

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Communication 2-Volume Collection

• Harvard Business Review
• April 27, 2021

Hindustan Unilever Limited

• Thomas J. DeLong
• January 05, 2010

Centra Software

• John Deighton
• Laetitia Pouliquen
• July 11, 2001

HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict

• April 04, 2017

Negotiate in a Crisis: Oil Disaster in the Argentine Sea. Seal CEO Letter

• Roberto Rafael Luchi
• Tomas Garzon de la Roza
• November 17, 2020

Integrating Beam Suntory (B)

• David G. Fubini
• Rawi Abdelal
• November 13, 2020

HBR's 10 Must Reads for Mid-Level Managers (with bonus article "Managers Can't Do It All" by Diane Gherson and Lynda Gratton)

• Frances X. Frei
• Bruce Tulgan
• Herminia Ibarra
• Steven G. Rogelberg
• August 29, 2023

Managing Conflict in Organizations

• Martin N. Davidson
• September 07, 2001

The Tulsa Massacre and the Call for Reparations

• Mihir A. Desai
• Suzanne Antoniou
• November 10, 2020

McDonald's in India: Not a Happy Meal

• Paul W. Beamish
• Pooja Gupta
• Madhvi Sethi
• October 25, 2019

Bosses, Coworkers, and Building Great Work Relationships (HBR Work Smart Series)

• Eliana Goldstein
• Melody Wilding
• May 14, 2024

Intergenerational Management at GlaxoSmithKline in Asia Pacific

• Poornima Luthra
• Christopher Dula

Wintel (E): From Multi-Market Contact to Multi-Geographic Contact

• David B. Yoffie
• August 20, 2003

You're a Leader Now. Not Everyone is Going to Like You.

• Martin G Moore
• September 16, 2021

How to Confront a Bully at Work

• Savvas Trichas
• April 25, 2022

Popular Topics

Partner center.

Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

Hyper-Polarization, COVID, Racism, and the Constructive Conflict Initiative Read about (and contribute to) the  Constructive Conflict Initiative  and its associated Blog —our effort to assemble what we collectively know about how to move beyond our hyperpolarized politics and start solving society's problems. 

Case Studies

  Africa : Ghana |  Kenya  |  Nigeria  |  Rwanda  |  Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia  |  South Africa  |  Sudan/South Sudan/Darfur  |  Uganda  |  Zimbabwe   Asia:   East Asia  |  South Asia : Afghanistan  |  Central Asia   Europe | Latin America | Middle East | North America | Other

Building Sustainable Peace, a Nationwide Consensus Effort: Practical Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Ghana  - This case study applies Lederach's notion of "The Meeting Place" and Ricigliano's SAT model of peacebuilding to examine the reconciliation and peacebuilding work in Ghana, concluding that, while much is left to be done, Ghana has made great progress in reconciliation after numerous coups destabilized the country.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo: A Case Study of War and Failed Peace  - An analysis of the myriad DRC peace agreements, focusing on their successes and why they all, ultimately, have failed to establish the long-sought peace.  While the complexity of the DRC makes peacemaking particularly difficult, if past successes are built upon, DRC could still achieve its long-sought peace.

• ​ A Case Study of Post-Civil War Peace Building Efforts in Liberia  - This case study reviews the history of Liberia, the 1989-1997 civil war, and the multi-layered attempts to build peace and reconcile after that event.  Koziol observes that some aspects of the peacebuilding process were quite successful, while other aspects are still far from complete. Yet, her analysis gives readers much to learn both about peacebuilding in Liberia, and implications for such efforts more broadly.
• Examining Gender Inequality in the Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Efforts of Sierra Leone  - This case study illustrates how the steps taken in post-war Sierra Leone to improve issues of gender inequality as part of a larger global peacebuilding agenda, failed to address ingrained patriarchal practices in the social, political, and cultural traditions outlined in the nation’s Constitution. Despite the enactment of several reformative bills and policies on both national and international levels, true change could not be achieved as these new policies conflicted with the outdated provisions of Sierra Leone’s Constitution. In order to overcome these problems, the outdated Constitution must be revised, and the peacebuilding groups formed by women must be given the opportunity to partner on a grassroots level with both the Government of Sierra Leone and NGOs who listen to them first, leaving personal and donors’ agendas aside.
• Capacity Building and Governance in Africa: Using Tools and Concepts from Strategic Peacebuilding to Address Long-Standing Challenges After several decades of unsuccessful development efforts in Africa, the international development community has reached consensus that good governance is a “critical prerequisite for sustaining development.” Good governance is in turn seen as contingent upon “environments of developed human and institutional capacities,” which has led to a proliferation of capacity building programs.
• Challenges of Regional Peacebuilding: A Case of the Great Lakes Region For the past twenty years, the Great Lakes region [of Africa] has been engulfed in a series of interrelated conflicts. In response, peacebuilding activities have taken a regional approach. Regional peace conferences, with the support of UN Special Representatives, diplomatic missions (by the UN, European Union [EU], major international development organizations, and donor agencies), and UN peacekeeping missions have been widely carried out in the region. This approach, although successful in some instances, is problematic. This essay argues for a comprehensive peacebuilding approach that synthesizes both peacebuilding policies and grass roots initiatives.
• Child Trafficking in Benin, West Africa This article focuses on the problem of child trafficking as it is practiced in Benin and western Africa more broadly. Although it is a problem in many parts of the world, it has reached epidemic proportions in Benin and the surrounding African countries.
• The Role of Civil Society in International Law: The Relationship Between Civil Society Organizations and the International Criminal Court in the Central African Republic This article looks at civil society's role in the activities of the International Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. Unlike the hostility of civil society in other African countries, the response in the CAR was more positive. This article examines why this might be so, and what can be done to enhance the work of civil society and the ICC throughout Africa and the wider world towards both justice and peace.
• Global Justice! The 2010 ICC Review Conference and the Future of International Justice in Africa This article describes the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to date and looks at the issues that will need to be considered at the May 2010 ICC review conference in Kampala Uganda if the ICC is going to become a successful provider of real justice for all, not just for some. This is co-listed as a case study and a personal reflection, as it has considerable factual material on the ICC, as well as the author's personal reflections on what needs to be done to make it better.
• Kenya: The case of Internally Displaced People following the 2007 Post Election Violence  - This essay outlines the issue of IDPs as a result of the 2007 general elections in which armed conflict claimed the lives of 1,500 people. The author focuses squarely on government action or inaction, and gives recommendations for ways in which the government  can work to reduce tension among the various communities.
• The Power of Theatre in Transforming Conflicts at Kakuma Refugee Camp The author discusses the transformative potential of stage drama and artistic dance, as exemplified by a project organized by the Amani Peoples Theatre (APT) at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya.
• Rebuilding Relationships Through Good Neighborliness Seminars in the Rift Valley, Kenya  - This article, written by one of the peacebuilders in this effort, examines the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) effort to build peace and reconcilation following the 1992 violence in the Rift Valley and Western Kenya through a series of interventions.
• ​ Ethnic Conflict Management in Africa: A Comparative Case Study of Nigeria and South Africa This case study examines theoretical explanations about the causes of ethnic conflict and then does a comparison of such conflict and its resolution (or not) in South Africa and Nigeria. The author examines the factors that appear to have made conflict resolution efforts in South Africa more successful than those in Nigeria.
• Post-Genocide Rwanda: A Unique Case of Political and Psycho-Social Peacebuilding An examination of the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide looking at the post-genocide peacebuilding  and the resulting political and psychosocial changes.
• Comparison of Dialogue Practices -- An examination of dialogue practices in Rwanda and Uganda, in the wake of their mass violence, introducing the novel strategy of Photovoice.
• The Rwandan Genocide This is the first of a series of articles that Kimberly Fornace wrote when she was taking a Peace and Conflict Studies class based on Beyond Intractability. Living in Rwanda at the time, and being extremely perceptive, her papers were of such high quality we asked her if we could publish them here. This is the first overview of the conflict parties and issues. More papers on other aspects of the conflict and long-term prospects are forthcoming as soon as we can get them uploaded.
• Rwanda's Hidden Divisions: From the Ethnicity of Habyarimana to the Politics of Kagame  - Written in 2011, this article argues that seventeen years after the genocide, with a charismatic leader and impressive economic gains, the assumption that the country is without conflict is gravely misleading. Championed by Western nations, the false image of Rwanda as a beacon of freedom may ultimately do more harm than good, as many aspects of the current situation are "strikingly similar to that of "pre-genocide times." 

Horn of Africa: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia

• A Peacebuilding Case Study: Responding to Somali Piracy This article examines the underlying causes of the piracy epidemic in and around Somalia and proposes a set of nonviolent, peacebuilding-oriented responses to try to stem the tide instead of the largely unsuccessful military responses that have been tried so far.
• Bottom-Up Approach: A Viable Strategy in Solving the Somali Conflict This paper discusses the difficulties that have hampered the peace process in Somalia, and argues that a "bottom-up" peacebuilding effort -- built around the initiative of grassroots actors -- might be a more effective solution.
• Drought, Famine, and Conflict: A Case from the Horn of Africa This case study examines the interplay betweeen drought, famine, and conflict; the author argues that each exacerbates the others, making all three especially difficult to solve. Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan are examined as examples.
• The Ethiopia-Eritrea Peace Process: Teetering on the Brink  This essay explains the background of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea and examines the peace process that has been going on for the last six years.

South Africa

• History Education and Reform in Post-Apartheid South Africa  - Although the TRC began a healing process in South Africa, Desmond Tutu and many others believe that a further examination of that nation's history is key to reconciliation. This paper examines the need for and challenges of history education as a means of rememberance of the past since the end of apartheid in South Africa and makes recommendations for improvement.
• Reconciliation through Restorative Justice: Analyzing South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Process  - This is a case study of the South African TRC.  It examines how the TRC came to be, how it worked, and assesses its strengths, weaknesses, and the lessons that can be drawn from it.  
• Sport: A Tool for Bridging Racial Divides in Present Day South Africa The Case Study of 2010 FIFA World Cup  - Under apartheid, sport in South Africa was segregated by race, which not only contributed to the blacks' oppression, but also resulted in the emergence of a powerful opposition and resistance tool, as South Africa was routinely expluded from major international sport competitions.  However, sport has emerged as a powerful tool for peacebuilding in post-apartheid South Africa.
• The Nature of Internal Boundary Disputes: A Case Study of Matatiele Provincial Boundary Demarcation Dispute, Province of the Eastern Cape, South Africa   This paper investigates the nature of internal boundary disputes using one such dispute in South Africa as an examine. The paper also looks into community conflicts that cause and are results of boundary disputes, particularly involving issues of access to resources and government services, identity, and culture. 

Sudan/South Sudan/Darfur

• Negotiating Peace for Darfur: An Overview of Failed Processes This essay evaluates the various attempts at peacemaking in Darfur, examining why they have failed and what will need to change if peace is to be achieved.
• Darfur: The Crisis Continues Darfur has sunk from the news, but not from its misery. While less violent than it had been, peace has not yet been achieved in Darfur. This Dec. 2012 article by Yousif, Brosche, and Rothbart explains why.
• Sudan and South Sudan: Post-Separation Challenges Authors Yousif and Rothbart analyze the current (Dec. 2012) relationship between the two countries. They survey the conflict over borders, the politics of oil, and the economic trade war that emerged following South Sudanese independence. Clearly, much work lies ahead before either country is stable and peaceful.
• The First National South Sudan Education Curriculum  - Even while it is still at war, South Sudan is trying to foster reconciliation though education as evidenced by its first national education curriculum.  Read here about how this is planned to work...and how it has worked so far.
• The Darfur Peace Process: Understanding the Obstacles to Success This article examines the history of efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the violent conflict in the Darfur region of the Sudan. The author points out ways in which attempts at peacemaking have been lacking, and makes suggestions for future endeavors.
• The Darfur Region of the Sudan The horror in Darfur was front-page news for months, yet the international community was unable (or unwilling) to stop the violence. Learn why the conflict in Darfur is so intractable.
• Peace Agreement is the Same Game for War and its Escalation in Sudan  - This article analyzes the Government of Sudan’s strategy of entering peace agreements with armed rebel groups in order to maintain political power, while at the same time orchestrating the continuance of conflict. 
• Peace Politics in Sudan  - This paper uses John Paul Lederach's notion of multiple lenses to examine the Darfur conflict from a variety of perspectives. 
• Religious Actors in Sudan  - This article examines post-referendum negotiations and peacebuilding efforts with respect to the role of religious actors. While the dominant liberal peace paradigm is skeptical about the relevance of religion in political affairs, this author argues that religious actors often traverse the division between the grassroots and elite political actors. Religious actors also live with ordinary people and have often provided them with services in the absence of government structures. For that reason, the author argues, they should have a major role in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts. 
• The Case of Disarmament in South Sudan  - This essay addresses the challenges of post–war disarmament looking specifically at programs initiated by the government of the Republic of South Sudan to disarm civilians, which, due to a variety of factors described in the essay, have not been successful.
• Community Peacebuilding and Performing Arts in Northern Uganda: Reflections from the Field In Uganda, the site of protracted violence for more than two decades, a variety of contemporary and indigenous forms of creative expression were created by local artists and shared widely among war-affected communities. Drawing from more than six years of experience in this field, and the musical and theatrical works of a variety of local artists, this essay provides three reflections on performing arts’ contribution to community-based peacebuilding in northern Uganda.
• An Interactive Media: Reflections on Mega FM and Its Peacebuilding Role in Uganda In stark contrast to the radio stations that escalated the Rwandan Genocide, Mega FM in Uganda is a strong voice for peace. This article describes their programming and how it has led to de-escalation and conflict transformation in one of the brutal rebellions in Africa.
• ​​ Gender, Violence, and Peacebuilding in Northern Uganda  - Without falling into the “women as victims” paradigm, this article details the complex issue of gender-based violence within IDP camps in northern Uganda. It goes on to suggest ways in which peacebuilding efforts could better promote a sustainable peace, both in Uganda, and worldwide.
• ​ Shadowy Renditions: Reflections on the Conflict in Northern Uganda Northern Uganda is often perceived to be a region under relentless siege by a brutal rebel militia. This perception is not inaccurate; however, the media's oversimplification of the conflict and dehumanization of the militia has increased -- not decreased -- the intractability of the situation.
• The Acholi Traditional Approach to Justice and the War in Northern Uganda This essay discusses the impact of the Northern Ugandan war on civilians and examines whether the traditional Acholi approach to forgiveness and reconciliation is beneficial in that extreme situation and how it relates to Western approaches to justice.
• The Power of Storytelling: Personal Reflections On  Ododo Wa , a Storytelling Project of War-affected Women in Northern Uganda
• The Role of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative in Uganda's Peacebuilding Among the many NGOs working to resolve the conflict in northern Uganda, one group of diverse religious leaders is unique, and has effected significant change. This paper discusses the accomplishments of that group -- the Acholi Religious Leader Peace Initiative -- and also discusses the challenges that the group faces moving forward.
• ‘Forgiveness is our culture’: Amnesty and reconciliation in northern Uganda . This paper examines the assertion by religious and cultural leaders in northern Uganda that continued extension of amnesty to the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels is part of their ‘culture’. Examining ‘everyday life’ in one of the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps where amnesty is granted to former captives and soldiers of the LRA, the author considers the traditional coping mechanisms available to victims and the implications of forgiveness in a setting of fear.
• When Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clash: Can Both Prevail Together?  This essay examines the difficulties inherent in pursuing justice and peace (or human rights and conflict resolution) goals simultaneously.  Both are necessary for lasting peace, yet they often are at odds with each other in terms of goals and actions.  These challenges are examined in the context of Bosnia and Uganda. 
• Substantiating the Claim: Establishing the Effectiveness of a Post-Conflict Directory  - This is the final article in Hook's four-part series on Directory-Oriented Peacebuilding in which she applies the idea to the aftermath of the Ugandan Civil War. The first three articles are not location specific, so they are in the "essay section" of BI.  However, they are also linked at the beginning of this case study.
• The Power and Risks of Conversation in Zimbabwe This case study describes one of the authors' peacebuilding work in Zimbabwe, where he found that facilitating conversations was a good way to stimulate conflict transformation. The essay also includes a broader examination of the power of conversation as a peacebuilding tool.
• Addressing Past Injustices in a Wounded Zimbabwe:  Gukurahundi  - Gukurahundi was the massacre of about 20,000 people in Zimbabwe, perpetrated by government forces against "dissidents" that took place in the 1980s.  The author of this case study contends that reconciliation has not yet occurred.  To attain such, he argues, peacebuilding based on truth-telling and acknowledgement must occur.
• Exploring the Role of Collective Memory for Reconciliation:  A Comparative Case of Guatemala and Cambodia  This paper explores how collective memory (the memories of a group generated through shared experience and values) can be used post-trauma for healing and reconciliation.
• Justice for Cambodia? Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunals for the Future Direction of International Criminal Justice This article examines the Extraordinary Chambers of the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) -- the tribunal recently created to try Khmer Rouge leaders for the Cambodian "killing fields." It not only examines the potential effectiveness in the Cambodian
• Conflict Over Tibet: Core Causes and Possible Solutions This article describes the conflict between China and Tibet and recommends nonviolent ways in which this conflict might be transformed.
• context, but also the larger role of hybrid local/international tribunals in the context of the ICC and other war crimes tribunals.
• Unraveling the Mindanao Conflict through the Lens of John Paul Lederach’s Psalm 85 Framework  - Lederach's Psalm 85 framework looks at the intersection of truth, justice, peace, and mercy as four components of reconciliation.  This article examines the history and current (as of 2013) of the Mindanao conflict, and then considered how these four elements play a role in the ancestral domain argument made by separatists and the economic hardships in Mindanao.
• Spreading the Culture of Peace through Family Traditions and Family Values: The Case of Mongolia This case study is a fascinating exploration of basic Mongolian cultural values and their potential impact on Mongolia's ability to avoid ethnic tensions and war.
• Globalization  - With a focus on Sourth Korea and the WTO. 

Afghanistan:

• ​ Conflict Analysis: Afghanistan Since 2001  - The paper is based on the International Alert conflict assessment framework.The paper begins with analysis and a discussion of historical dynamics, actors, structures and international interventions, which are followed by discussion of the root causes. It will provide an overview of the current trends (circa 2015), impediments, and recommendations to address the conflict.
• Peacebuilding in Afghanistan  - This is another analysis of the conflict in Afghanistan and what peacebuilders must do to being to unravel this very complex and intractable conflict.
• Leadership and Strategic Peacebuilding in Afghanistan  - This paper will describe the need for Afghan leadership to redefine power as something to be shared (rather than a zero-sum game), and as useful for building peace.  The paper further defines a strategic leader as someone who has a vision and a systems-thinking approach to peacebuilding. The next paper is a follow-on to this one.
• Leading Peace with Information and Strategy in Afghanistan  - This paper reviews the situation in Afghanistan in 2015 and then calls on Afghan leaders to utilize information and strategy to learn about the needs of people. By developing evidence-based yet creative responses to the current crises, they can improve the current situation as well as the longer-term. 
• Women as Active Partners: Building Peace in Afghanistan This case study shows how Afghan women are playing a part in the construction of a just and fair society, despite the continued tenuousness of their official social and political status.
• Internal Displacement: Simplifying a Complex Social Phenomenon  - Focusing on Kashmir , this paper seeks to provide a systematic and a holistic understanding of the myriad issues that surround internally displaced persons and to explain the IDP phenomenon as an event that is not only triggered by conflicts in most situations, but as one that can potentially become a cause for conflicts in subsequent phases of displacement.
• Kashmir: The Clash of Identities The conflict in Kashmir is multi-faceted and deep-rooted. This paper explores the conflict in detail, and then suggests a series of incremental goals that might be pursued in order to resolve the conflict.
• Development, Democratization, Good Governance and Security: A Case Study of Burma / Myanmar Burma/ Myanmar has been changing very rapidly. This 2012 case study briefly examines Burma's history and the governance changes that have taken place over the last two years. Bergen then goes on to consider what challenges lie ahead and how these might best be met.
• The Potential for and Challenges of a Local Peace Committee (LPC): A Study of the District Level Peace Forum in Kavre, Nepal This article, written by the secretary (the administrative officer) of the Local Peace Committee in the Kavre District of Nepal, talks of the challenges and successes of those local peacebuilding structures. It also recommends additional steps that could be taken to make such local peacebuilding bodies more effective.
• Root Causes of Conflict in Baluchistan,  Pakistan  - The conflict in Baluchistan is protracted and extremely complex. This article examines the historical, political, and social factors that have caused this conflict to spiral out of control. 

Central Asia

Conflict Transformation and Strategic Peacebuilding in Central Asia This case study examines the importance of economic and social security in peacebuilding. By examining the post-Soviet societies of Central Asia (the "stans"), the author explores the hypothesis that peaceful transitions to democracy are more likely to be stable if the state economy is strong and the opportunities for personal security and well-being are high.

• Russia as a Divided Society: a Look at the North Caucuses  - Written by a Russian scholar, this essay examins the post-war situation in Chechnya and the Russian Federation. 

Peacebuilding in Tajikistan This essay discusses ways of building trust -- and through that -- peace in Tajikistan.

• A Civil Alternative: An Evaluation of the IOM KPC Program This article describes and evaluates the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), which was a defense organization designed to facilitate the demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
• Conflict in Ukraine from the European Point of View   - This paper presents the impact of the crisis in Ukraine on the European Union’s foreign and domestic policies, especially the underlying consequences for Central and Eastern Europe, from a strategic policy point of view. It then identifies missing points in the EU’s approach and give recommendations.
• A Case Study of the Minsk II Accords  - This paper uses the theories of realism and the spoiler problem to conclude that the lack of consideration given to Russian and American interests in the Minsk II Accords were largely responsible for their failure. 
• Culture Clash: Moroccan and Turkish Muslim Populations in the Netherlands  - This is a basic conflict assessment of the cultural conflict between Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands with local populations.
• The Franco-German Relationship: From Animosity to Affinity  -- An examination of how France and Germany transformed their relationship from long-term enemies to strong allies--a story of successful reconciliation unlike most others.
• Kurds in Turkey: Building Reconciliation and Local Administrations This paper recounts the history of the conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurdish community living in Turkey, and proposes specific strategies that could be taken by both groups in order to resolve it.
• La France aux Français (France to the French, National Front discourse from the 1980s)  - This case illustrates the ongoing identity conflict, struggle and tension that exist in contemporary France, a deeply divided society. The divisive split along the lines of French national identity and that of the ethnically and religiously different Muslim community, in particular those of North African origin, is examined as of early 2011.
• Reconciliation in Bosnia Almost everyone living in Bosnia has deep emotional scars from the war. Despite their suffering, perpetrators and victims have to learn to work together to rebuild their country.
• Reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina  - This second case study, written in 2017, is not as optimistic as the first--it argues that ethnic groups remain estranged and largely unwilling to work together to pursue stable peace.
• Reconciliation in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict  - This case study examines the Holodomor (the Russian genocide of Ukrainians in the 1930s and examines the impact of that event and responses to it through the years since, including the present Russia-Ukraine conflict.
• The Question of Cultural Genocide and Racism: Personal Reflections on the Case of Northern Cyprus In addition to the tensions between Greeks and Turks on Cyprus, Ulas also explains that there is significant tension between Turks and Turkish Cypriots. In this piece, Ulas suggests that Turks are slowly destroying the Turkish Cypriot culture in an act that he suggests could be considered "cultural genocide".
• Northern Ireland: A Deeply Divided Society Conflict Assessment and Recommendations for Conflict Regulation and Transformation  - This paper assesses the conflict in Northern Ireland, examines the peace negotiations and the resulting power-sharing system and makes recommendations for the continuance of a stable peace with an ultimate goal of reconciliation.
• Roma Marginality in the European Union: An Examination of Divisions in European Society  - The Roma, with an estimated population of between ten and twelve million, are Europe’s largest and most marginalized ethnic population. They have faced hundreds of years of racism, persecution, and discrimination in all facets of life. This paper examines the reasons for the division between Roma and non-Roma in Europe and explores potential ways to transform the conflict.
• Peacebuilding Around World War II: An Approach To Emotional Healing And Social Change This article describes a reconciliation workshop that took place in Germany, involving German Holocaust survivors and their descendants, perpetrators' descendants, and others who are still affected by the history of World War II. The workshop helped the participants to reach a better understanding of their shared humanity, and to become reconciled with each other and with themselves. It is co-listed as a personal reflection and a case study.

Latin America

• Creating a Sacred Space: Cuban Reconciliation and the Catholic Church This essay examines the role of the Roman Catholic Church in fostering reconciliation between Cuban refugees now living in the U.S. and Cuban citizens still living in Cuba. Though hostilities between these two groups used to be strong, the church is making considerable progress in bringing families and larger communities together.
• Cultural Anesthesia in Colombia This short case study of the violence in Colombia asks why the population hasn't risen up against the continued violence.
• Deeply Divided Brazil  - This case study examines the wealth and income inequality in Brazil, and the conflicts that have resulted from that.  It then continues to look at approaches for transforming these conflicts and the underlying inequality.
• Guatemala: Guerrillas, Genocide, and Peace  - This case study examines the civil war in Guatemala and the aftermath, recommending further steps that might be taken to acheive a sustainable peace.
• Peacebuilding from the Grassroots: Equity Conciliation and Conflict Transformation in Colombia Conflict resolution efforts that attempt to work in cooperation with -- rather than in opposition to or in ignorance of -- the local culture in which a conflict is occurring are much more likely to succeed. Colombian culture already contains several powerful conflict resolution mechanisms, which may hold great potential for effecting lasting change. This case study focuses particularly on a mechanism called equity conciliation.
• The Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission The Chilean truth commission held after Pinochet lost power was not as successful as many had hoped, yet it did have significant impacts at both the individual and national level. This case study examines what the truth commission did, and what the short- and longer-term impacts were for individuals and for Chile as a whole.
• No Peace Dividend for Guatemala and the Irony of this Failure  - This essay examines the history of peace negotiations in Guatemala and then examines the failure to carry out their promise.

Middle East

• Reconciliation in the Aftermath of the Yezidi Genocide -  Reconciliation in the case of Yezidis is a process of transformation that involves dealing with the preconditions of protracted social conflicts through the intersection of truth, justice, peace and mercy at the communal, intercommunal and state level.
• East Versus West: Reconciliation in Post-War Jerusalem  - This case study, written by a Palestinian now living in the U.S., argues that the two-state solution is "dead," and the only way to reconcile this long-lasting conflict is to realize that citizens of both cultures will need to learn to live together in harmony in a unified state.
• Moving Beyond: Interreligious Dialogue in Lebanon This article describes interreligious dialogue in Lebanon which, the author finds, provides a key to peacebuilding by creating space for people to be heard and accepted by "the other." The author describes her own dialogue experiences, explaining both its effects on her, and the wider effect of dialogue on the society as a whole.
• The Bedouins in Israel's Negev Desert: Ubiquitous yet Invisible to the Dominant Society The Bedouins of the Negev region of Israel exist on the margins of Israeli society, culture, and law. The authors discuss the challenges facing this disenfranchised population. This article is co-listed as a personal reflection and a case study.
• How a Document Determines Which Palestinian You Are In a very personal essay, the author explains the day-to-day hardships faced by all Palestinians and explains why she believes a one-state solution is the only possible answer for the Palestinians' problem.
• My Neighbor Is A Terrorist: Peacebuilding, Drones, and America's Presence in Yemen In this cross between a case study and a personal reflection, Allyson Mitchell reflects on the impact of US drone attacks in Yemen. Looking at the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki in particular, and other attacks that have involved civilian casualties, Mitchell concludes that peacebuilding in Yemen cannot succeed if US drone strikes continue.
• The Role of Iraqi Refugees and Expatriates in Peacebuilding through Governance This article describes the plight of Iraqi refugees who have not been able to return home to Iraq, yet have not been able to make successful lives for themselves in their host countries. The author considers what needs to happen to allow the refugees successful return to Iraq.

North America

• Reconciliation through Dialogue: Dialogue Circles and Reconciling Racism on the Eastern Shore of Maryland -  A description of how Community Mediation Maryland and its associated community mediation centers have successfully used dialogue circles to address racism, particularly against blacks.
• The US Government Has a Long Way to go with Reconciliation: Japanese Internment Camps  - Kupersmith applied John Paul Lederach's concept of the reconciliation "meeting place" of truth, justice, peace, and mercy to assess to what degree the United States has and has not reconciled with Japanese Americans after World War II.
• The Three R’s: Religion, Relationships, and Reconciliation: A Case Study of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in America  - This case study examines the transition of Mormons in America from a violently persecuted minority to one that is broadly accepted--even admired.  The transition of this conflict into the post-conflict stage demonstrates that interpersonal relationship,s along with governance practices that support equality, are among the most significant factors in moving a conflict towards reconciliation.
• Everyday Third Siders Minimizing Conflict This essay is a personal account of how everyday people can fulfill the role of Third Siders to help minimize conflict and make the world a more peaceful place.  While it could be set anywhere, this particular essay is set in the United States.
• Labor Conflicts: The Case of Two Supermarket Strikes In 2003, California endured the longest supermarket strike in U.S. history. This article discusses labor conflict in the U.S. and how to avoid stalemates like the one in California.
• Locating Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Global Trends This article describes the truth and reconciliation commission that has been instituted to examine the treatment of aboriginal populations in Canada's "Indian Residential Schools." The author examines the problems and benefits of this effort, and how it relates to other TRCs around the world. The Canadian TRC is a critical case for analysis due to the fact that it is located outside the normal political dimensions for the use of truth commissions, it is focused on historical crimes committed against an indigenous population, and it lacks a justice mandate.
• Re-Storying Canada's Past: A Case Study in the Significance of Narratives in Healing Intractable Conflict This article explores the value of culturally-constructed narratives in the peacebuilding process. Specifically, the author discusses the part that consonant and dissonant narratives have played in the treatment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
• Red/Blue Polarization Across the United States, there is talk of the red/blue divide. Is this politics as usual or has the rift between Democrats and Republicans become intractable?
• Red vs. Blue: An examination of modern American polarization  - This 2010 paper examines the causes of the U.S political polarization and then considers possible remedies.
• Globalization   This article introduces the conflict dynamics behind globalization with a focus on South Korea and the WTO.
• Peacebuilding and the War on Terror: The U.S. Drone Program This article argues that "in its current state, the U.S. drone policy does little to build peace and may in fact contribute to recruitment. As a result, the U.S. public cannot be complacent about allowing drone strikes to continue unabated. The Obama administration should curb its targeted killings and overhaul the drone program. Even beyond simply fixing the drone program, the United States must also review its long-term strategy in the War on Terror."
• Strategic Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation: The Catholic Contribution to Peace This essay tempers the popular idea that religion engenders violent conflict, by citing many examples in which religion (specifically the Roman Catholic Church and related entities) has worked to promote and sustain peace.
• The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme  - Kimberley Process is a a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort between governments, civil society, and the diamond industry, introduced in 2003, and designed to regulate the rough diamond trade in order to eradicate conflict diamonds. This article reviews the problem of "conflict" or "blood diamonds," describes how the Kimberly Process came to be, and examines lessons learned so far (the paper was written in 2011).
• The Role of International Publicity Some NGOs try to utilize the threat of negative international publicity to prevent war crimes and other violations of human rights. This essay examines the methods of three NGOs who use this approach: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Peace Brigades International, and Witness for Peace. It examines their "theories of change" and the extent to which those theories lead to effective practice.
• We’ve Looked But Not Seen: War on Queers and LGBTIcide  - This paper explores whether LGBTI individuals and groups are recognized as a distinct minority group and whether violence against LGBTI groups and individuals is accounted for in several indices that measure peacefulness. The objective of this paper is to help peacebuilders, practitioners, academics, and many others understand the gaps in these indices, and to highlight the way in which this silence reinforces violence against LGBTI individuals and groups. 
• Reconciliation and Conflict Transformation The conventional wisdom is that reconciliation can only begin once a peace agreement has ended the conflict (at least temporarily). However, if one adopts the perspective of conflict transformation, rather than conflict resolution, then reconciliation becomes a crucial part and parcel of conflict transformation. Along that line of thinking, this essay aims to examine how reconciliation can fit into the framework of conflict transformation.
• Catholic Strategic Peacebuilding: The Unique Role of the Laity This article examines the Catholic Church's involvement in peacebuilding and how it must engage its strongest asset, the laity, more intentionally in order to influence the world's culture towards peace.

Back to Top

The Intractable Conflict Challenge

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts.   More...

Selected Recent BI Posts Including Hyper-Polarization Posts

• Heidi Burgess Talks With James Coan about Taking De-Polarization Work "to Scale." -- Dialogue is great for the few participants, but it simply cannot be scaled up enough to change societal attitudes and behaviors. James Coan and Heidi Burgess discuss alternative ways to scale depolarization work.
• Colleague and Context Links for the Week of March 17, 2024 -- Submissions from readers, activities and publications from colleagues, and interesting articles from allied fields about conflict, peace, and democracy.
• Gaza, Ukraine, Increasing Global Tensions, and the Nature of War -- An exploration of Quincy Wright's image of total war, reasons why it is so much more dangerous than lesser armed conflicts, and mechanisms through which it could quickly spread around the world.

Get the Newsletter Check Out Our Quick Start Guide

Educators Consider a low-cost BI-based custom text .

Constructive Conflict Initiative

Join Us in calling for a dramatic expansion of efforts to limit the destructiveness of intractable conflict.

Things You Can Do to Help Ideas

Practical things we can all do to limit the destructive conflicts threatening our future.

Conflict Frontiers

A free, open, online seminar exploring new approaches for addressing difficult and intractable conflicts. Major topic areas include:

Scale, Complexity, & Intractability

Massively Parallel Peacebuilding

Authoritarian Populism

Constructive Confrontation

Conflict Fundamentals

An look at to the fundamental building blocks of the peace and conflict field covering both “tractable” and intractable conflict.

Beyond Intractability / CRInfo Knowledge Base

Home / Browse | Essays | Search | About

BI in Context

Links to thought-provoking articles exploring the larger, societal dimension of intractability.

Colleague Activities

Information about interesting conflict and peacebuilding efforts.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Beyond Intractability or the Conflict Information Consortium.

Beyond Intractability 

Unless otherwise noted on individual pages, all content is... Copyright © 2003-2022 The Beyond Intractability Project c/o the Conflict Information Consortium All rights reserved. Content may not be reproduced without prior written permission.

Guidelines for Using Beyond Intractability resources.

Citing Beyond Intractability resources.

Photo Credits for Homepage, Sidebars, and Landing Pages

Contact Beyond Intractability    Privacy Policy The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project  Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess , Co-Directors and Editors  c/o  Conflict Information Consortium Mailing Address: Beyond Intractability, #1188, 1601 29th St. Suite 1292, Boulder CO 80301, USA Contact Form

Powered by  Drupal

production_1

• Browse All Articles
• Newsletter Sign-Up

ConflictManagement →

No results found in working knowledge.

• Were any results found in one of the other content buckets on the left?
• Try removing some search filters.
• Use different search filters.

A Case Study on Conflict: Restoring Safety in Student Relationships

Tier 1: building self-capacity, tier 2: managing conflict, tier 3: participating in conflict, restorative practices in action.

• From your point of view, what happened?
• What do you remember thinking at the time?
• How have you and others been affected?
• What feelings or needs are still with you?
• What would you like to happen next? (Clifford, 2015, p. 52)

Clifford, M. A. (2015). Teaching restorative practices with classroom circles. Center for Restorative Process.

Fronius, T., Persson, H., Guckenburg, S., Hurley, N., & Petrosino, A. (2016). Restorative justice in US schools: A research review. San Francisco, CA: WestEd Justice and Prevention Training Center.

Wachtel, T. (2016). Defining restorative. International Institute for Restorative Practices.

ASCD is a community dedicated to educators' professional growth and well-being.

Let us help you put your vision into action., related articles.

The Value of “Expressive Flexibility”

Let’s Be Trauma-Sensitive to Teachers, Too

Purposeful Work: A Calling or a Siren’s Song?

Tell Us About

EI: A Bedrock of Thriving Schools

To process a transaction with a purchase order please send to [email protected].

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

Exploring the relationships between team leader’s conflict management styles and team passion: From the emotional perspective

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

From the emotional perspective, this study explores how team leader’s conflict management styles affect team passion. A theoretical model is constructed which describes the mediating role of positive team emotional climate and the moderating impact of team emotional intelligence. We collect 101 teams paired data including 101 team leaders and 383 team members to test theoretical model. It is shown that leader’s cooperative conflict management style has a significant positive effect on both positive team emotional climate and team passion. Meanwhile, positive team emotional climate plays a mediating role between leader’s cooperative conflict management style and team passion. In addition, team emotional intelligence has a moderating effect between leader’s cooperative style and positive team emotional climate. This study not only provides a new perspective for follow-up research but also expands the research scope of impacts of conflict management styles. In addition, this study forms the underlying mechanism of team leader’s conflict management styles on team passion from the emotional perspective and investigates the mediating effect and moderating effect of emotional variable, which broadens the research on the mechanisms of conflict management styles on team outcomes to a certain extent.

Introduction

Team work, which emphasizes collaboration and division of labor, is very effective in improving the flexibility of enterprises to cope with the ever-changing internal and external environment. Due to this, teams are widely used in organizations. In a team, the leader and members, for the most part, differ in their backgrounds, preferences, needs, standards, norms, values, and ethics, but they need to actively cooperate and interact to achieve organizational goals ( García and Corbett, 2013 ). Therefore, conflicts within the team are everywhere and unavoidable. Conflict itself is harmless and its handling styles can greatly impact the team or the organization. If it is not properly handled, it may lead to the instability among teams or organizations in the short to long term. However, if it is properly handled, it can bring positive results to the long-term development of the team or the organization ( Shih and Susanto, 2010 ; Way et al., 2016 ). Consequently, it seems studying conflict management is more worthy rather than conflict itself in this particular setting. Whether in organizational-level or team-level, conflicts occur either between employees or between employees and leaders. Raithel et al. (2021) propose that team leaders have a critical effect to deal with conflicts in the team. Therefore, team leader’s conflict management style (CMS) as one of the most important manifestations of leaders’ behaviors, which probably has a significant effect on team members’ attitudes and behaviors.

The existing literature on the influences of CMSs usually split them into two categories. One focuses on the impacts on team climate and team performance ( Shih and Susanto, 2010 ; Tabassi et al., 2018 ; Wang et al., 2020 ), the other is concerned about the impacts on employees’ attitudes and behaviors ( Erkutlu and Chafra, 2015 ; Leon-Perez et al., 2015 ; Way et al., 2016 ; Einarsen et al., 2018 ). Generally, most of related studies are based on cognitive rather than emotional perspective. With the cognitive perspective, previous studies mainly investigate the impacts of CMSs on individual and team outcomes based on social cognitive theory and social exchange theory such as employee innovation ( Desivilya et al., 2010 ) and team coordination ( Tabassi et al., 2018 ). However, a few scholars attempt to probe the relationships between conflict management styles and emotional related outcomes including collective emotional exhaustion ( Benitez et al., 2018 ) and emotional intelligence ( Al-Hamdan et al., 2019 ) with an emotional perspective. Yin et al. (2020b) believes that emotion is a very vital notion for a team. Since many human emotions are generated in interpersonal communication, emotion is critical to a team, especially as the internal mechanism that helps us understand team state and behavior ( Chiang et al., 2020 ). Therefore, it is necessary to consider emotions when carrying out team related studies. Team passion is an important affective factor in teams. Passion refers to individual’s strong inclination to devote time and energy to activities that they like and think important ( Vallerand et al., 2003a ), which can be seen as an attitude based on affection. Permarupan et al. (2013) put forward that behaviors of team members can be evaluated by passions toward their given tasks and roles in the team. Therefore, team passion plays a crucial role in the team as a typical team emotional state. Some scholars explore the factors that affect team passion such as transformational leadership ( Peng et al., 2020 ), shared leadership ( Salas-Vallina et al., 2022 ), temporal leadership ( Zhang et al., 2022 ), and empowering leadership ( Hao et al., 2017 ). It can be seen that leader’s behavior is an impossible-to-ignore antecedent of team passion. A few other scholars attempt to investigate the impact of another common typical leader’s behavior—team leader’s CMSs on team passion. Yin et al. (2020a) prove that team leader’s CMSs have a direct effect on team passion. However, there is no research to explore the mechanism through which that team leader’s conflict management styles impact on team passion by now. Do team leader’s CMSs have indirect effects on team passion by some mediators besides the direct effect? This manuscript is trying to response to the question by examining the intrinsic mechanism between them from the emotional perspective.

On the basis of affective events theory, it considers that work environment characteristics or work events can trigger employees’ affective reactions thus leading to changes of employees’ work attitudes and behaviors, we can infer that team leader’s conflict management styles, as a team event, are likely to influence team passion—a kind of team members’ attitude, through the mediation of some team emotional reaction. Therefore, it is expected that conflict management styles significantly influence team passion. Positive team emotional climate is an important variable of affective reactions ( Levecque et al., 2014 ). Some scholars demonstrated that leader’s behaviors helps to create a team emotional climate ( Chiang et al., 2020 ; Kim et al., 2021 ; Saleh et al., 2022 ). Therefore, this manuscript intends to probe the mediating role of positive team emotional climate. Furthermore, team emotional intelligence (TEI) is a kind of emotional abilities for people to comprehend, manage, and make use of affective information ( Salovey and Mayer, 1990 ). Barsade (2002) proposed that emotional contagion has great influence on individual attitudes and group processes. People who can better perceive other’s emotions have the ability to consider the influence of their behaviors on others ( Ingram et al., 2017 ), then decides the ways to adjust or express his emotions and his emotional impact. Similarly, a team with high TEI is more likely to infect other members’ emotions due that they are able to better perceive, understand and predict other members’ emotions. Consequently, this study posits team emotional intelligence moderates the relationships between team leader’s conflict management styles and team emotional variables.

In conclusion, the purpose of this manuscript is to investigate the mediating mechanism of team leader’s conflict management style on team passion and to determine the boundary condition of these impacts with emotional perspective. The results of this paper can make the following contributions to existing studies of conflict management. On the one hand, this paper expands the research scope of impacts of conflict management styles. On the other hand, this manuscript investigates the mediating and moderating effects of emotional variables between CMSs and team passion, which broadens the study on the mechanisms of CMSs on team outcomes to a certain extent.

Structure of the other parts of the manuscript is as below. The second part discusses the relationships among team leader’s CMSs, positive team emotional climate, and team passion. Furthermore, this part also discusses how TEI plays a moderating role between CMSs and positive team emotional climate. The third part discusses the method of this manuscript, then is the results and the discussions of results. Finally, the fourth part presents theoretical and practical implications, and put forward research limitations and future research agenda.

Literature review and hypothesis

The conflict management theory is mainly originated from Management Grid Theory proposed by Blake and Mouton, which the management model is divided into five different degrees based on two dimensions. Rahim (1983) summarizes five types of CMSs in work teams, i.e., integrating, dominating, avoiding, compromising, and obliging. Then, Thomas (2008) divides CMSs into five kinds: cooperation, competition, avoidance, compromise, and adaptation. However, some scholars question the five-factor classification in virtue of high correlations between different styles ( Ross and DeWine, 1988 ). For example, both compromising and avoiding aim at reducing the differences between the two parties involved in the conflict through indirect and circuitous ways. Besides, collaborating/integrating and compromising concentrates on emphasizing the common interests of both parties so as to calm the contradiction. Tjosvold (1998) divides the conflict management styles into three types: cooperative, competitive, and avoidant.

Cooperative conflict management style embodies an attempt to integrate all people’s interests, which emphasize the openness of others’ viewpoints, considering the interests of both sides and seek a satisfactory solution. Competitive conflict management style only thinks about their own interest and its typical manifestation is that one party’s power dominates the other. Avoidant conflict management style is characterized by flickering words, usually adopting evasive and avoidant methods when facing conflicts. People who adopt this style are not concerned about the outcome of the conflict. Team leaders, as the core of teams, have the duty to organize team and solve problems by using the resources such as human, financial, and material in work teams. Hence, team leaders prefer positive conflict management styles including cooperative and competitive rather than negative ones such as avoidant. Based on this classification, many scholars choose the styles of cooperative and competitive to conduct related research ( Somech et al., 2009 ; Shih and Susanto, 2010 ; Esbati and Korunka, 2021 ). Consequently, this manuscript selects cooperative and competitive conflict management styles for research.

Team leader’s conflict management styles and positive team emotional climate

The existing literature on the impacts of CMSs is able to split into two categories. One focuses on the impacts on team climate and team performance. Some studies confirm that different conflict management styles have different significant impacts on work performance ( Shih and Susanto, 2010 ; Tabassi et al., 2018 ; Wang et al., 2020 ). Others concern about the impacts on members’ attitudes and behaviors, such as job dissatisfaction, bullying behavior, voice behavior, trust, and emotional exhaustion ( Erkutlu and Chafra, 2015 ; Leon-Perez et al., 2015 ; Way et al., 2016 ; Einarsen et al., 2018 ; Esbati and Korunka, 2021 ). As for the influences of leader’s conflict management styles, studies explore their impacts on team performance, employee behaviors, and team climate ( Hempel et al., 2009 ; Erkutlu and Chafra, 2015 ; Tabassi et al., 2018 ) according to social cognitive theory, social exchange theory, and other related theories from the cognitive perspective. Chiang et al. (2020) believe that emotional factors play important roles in team activities. Thus, it is necessary to explore how team leader’s CMSs influence team emotional factors from the emotional rather than the cognitive perspective, so as to provide greater values of conflict management for team development. Scholars generally divide emotions into two dimensions, positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions serve as markers of flourishing, or optimal well-being and in peoples’ lives can be expressed as joy, interest, contentment, and love ( Fredrickson, 2001 ). Negative emotions reduce individual pleasure, as shown in anxiety, sadness, anger, and despair ( Fredrickson, 2001 ; Rank and Frese, 2008 ). When the internal consistency coefficient of emotion in the team is high, which indicates that the emotions of team members are consistent, team emotional climate can be considered to exist ( George and Bettenhausen, 1990 ). Liu et al. (2008) propose that team emotional climate is a common perception of team members to moods and affective interaction in a team which characterizes a team and has a significant influence on teams and members.

As mentioned above, affective events theory emphasizes that work environment characteristics and work events can trigger emotional reactions of employees. Team leader’s behavior, as an event, can affect team members’ emotions and create some team emotional climate. Some researches suggest that leader’s behavior is essential to create team emotional climate ( Chiang et al., 2020 ; Kim et al., 2021 ; Saleh et al., 2022 ). Eisenbeiss et al. (2008) discover that transformational leadership positively impact on team climate shaping. Chiang et al. (2020) declare that authoritarian leadership has a positive relationship with motion suppression climate. Therefore, as one of the significant manifestations of team leader’s behaviors, team leader’s conflict management styles should be able to influence team climate. When dealing with conflicts, team leaders who adopt the cooperative approach usually show respects for team members’ views and actively take a relatively fair way to communicate with team members so as to promote cooperation among the teams, which make team members feel relaxed, equal, free and happy, thus promoting a positive team emotional climate ( Liu et al., 2008 ). Instead, team leaders who adopt the competitive approach tend to impose their opinions on team members. It will lead team members in a passive state which may make them produce negative emotions such as disappointment, tension, suspicion, and fear. It can be inferred that these negative emotions are possible to hinder communications among team members and even aggravate interpersonal relationships, resulting in the deterioration of positive team emotional climate. According to the analysis above, we put forward the following hypotheses:

H1: Team leader’s conflict management styles significantly affect positive team emotional climate.

H1a: Team leader’s cooperative conflict management style has a positive relationship with positive team emotional climate.

H1b: Team leader’s competitive conflict management style has a negative relationship with positive team emotional climate.

Team leader’s conflict management styles and team passion

By now, most of current researches on the influences of conflict management styles are conducted from a cognitive perspective. As emotions have always influenced behaviors, it is valuable to probe the influence of CMSs on emotional factors at team level ( Yin et al., 2020a ). Team passion is a kind of emotional factor which plays a vital role in teams ( Salas-Vallina et al., 2020 , 2022 ; Mindeguia et al., 2021b ). Based on self-determination theory, Vallerand et al. (2003b) define passion as an intensive inclination for people to invest time and effort toward an activity that they like and think is important and categorized it into both harmonious and obsessive passion. The meaning of harmonious passion is internalization by self-determination, which conducts people to join in an activity choicefully and freely. In comparison, obsessive passion comes from an interesting activity that is internalization by non-self-determined method. This kind of passion adjusts actions that are inconsistent with one’s self-concept ( Vallerand et al., 2003b ). This manuscript discusses about harmonious passion. Although passion is not clearly defined at the team level ( Cardon et al., 2009 ), many scholars research the role of passion at the team level ( Permarupan et al., 2013 ; Hao et al., 2017 ; Peng et al., 2020 ; Uy et al., 2021 ; Salas-Vallina et al., 2022 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ). Hence, this manuscript defines team passion as the degree with which a team experiences strong enthusiasm and investment to the team. Because work is indispensable in life, scholars have paid more attention to the passion in the workplace recently ( Vallerand et al., 2003b ; Zigarmi et al., 2009 ; Perttula and Cardon, 2012 ). One line of research has investigated how leaders influence employees’ passion. It is found that leader’s behavior significantly impacts staffs’ work passion, for example, ambidextrous leadership ( Ma J.F. et al., 2018 ) and shared leadership ( Salas-Vallina et al., 2022 ) positively influence members’ work passion. When team leaders adopt cooperative CMS, they usually encourage team members to actively share different viewpoints for discussion, deepen mutual understanding, and promote better cooperation between them. This can help members establish their values in the team and make them willing or even eager to benefit the team and the organization, thus enhancing the team passion. Whereas, team leaders adopt competitive conflict management style tend to impose their thoughts on members. Team members in a passive state may have negative emotions, which hinder the willingness of communication and even aggravate the degree of interpersonal conflicts, thus negatively affecting team passion. According to the analysis above, we propose the following hypotheses:

H2: Team leader’s conflict management styles have significant impacts on team passion.

H2a: Team leader’s cooperative conflict management style is positively related to team passion.

H2b: Team leader’s competitive conflict management style is negatively related to team passion.

The mediating role of positive team emotional climate

The positive team emotional climate refers to the shared perception of the moods and affective interactions among team members as mentioned above ( Liu et al., 2008 ). With positive team emotional climate, there is likely to create a positive emotional “infection” effect within teams, which can produce or maintain a positive emotional state within teams. Based on affective events theory, emotion is considered as a mediating mechanism in the event-outcome relationship. Team members develop shared attitudes, emotional responses, and behavioral patterns through shared experiences or events, and then it will have an influence on team attitudes and behaviors at a higher level conversely. Work passion requires strong positive emotions and internal driving forces and includes the emotional experience of strong work orientation, which leads employees to consider their work as an inner part and want to devote time and energy in it ( Vallerand et al., 2003a ; Birkeland and Nerstad, 2016 ). That is to say, team leader’s conflict management style, as a kind of leadership behavior, can be regarded as a common experience by team members, thus shaping team emotional climate and further stimulating team passion. Yin et al. (2020a) propose that team leader’s conflict management style positively affects positive team emotional climate. Zhu et al. (2022) also prove that paternalistic leadership is positively related to positive team emotional climate. In addition, Permarupan et al. (2013) confirm that the positive organizational climate is conducive to promoting employees’ work passion. Moreover, Mindeguia et al. (2021a) prove that positive climate is a mediating variable between transformational leadership and team passion.

Leaders who adopt a cooperative conflict management style are usually committed to achieving satisfactory results for both parties ( Tjosvold et al., 2006 ). They try to integrate the interests of all members together to form a common best solution ( Tjosvold et al., 2006 ; Desivilya et al., 2010 ). Then, they pay attention to members’ feedback in time and form a free and pleasant environment for communication, thus stimulating the positive emotions of team members and building a positive team emotional climate. Meanwhile, the positive emotional climate makes team members feel comfortable and motivates their passion. Therefore, leader’s cooperative CMS improves team passion by building a positive team emotional climate. Similarly, leader’s competitive CMS reduces team passion by inhibiting positive team emotional climate. Based on hypothesis 1, hypothesis 2, and the above illustration, we propose the following hypotheses:

H3: Positive team emotional climate mediates the relationships between team leader’s conflict management styles and team passion.

The moderating effect of team emotional intelligence

The meaning of team emotional intelligence (TEI) is the competence of teams to formulate a series of standards to manage the processes of emotion ( Lee and Wong, 2017 ). TEI is very important to improve the cooperation and cohesion of team members and promote the behavior of improving team efficiency ( Lee and Wong, 2017 ). Wong and Law (2002) divide TEI as consisting of four dimensions: others’ emotion appraisal (OEA), self-emotion appraisal (SEA), regulation of emotion (ROE), and use of emotion (UOE). Among them, OEA is considered as the ability of individual to sense, comprehend and forecast other emotions. People who have such competence highly are more sensitive to others’ affections ( Wong and Law, 2002 ). Ma and Liu (2019) propose that the impact of emotional intelligence in the context of conflict rests with OEA. Therefore, this manuscript adopts the dimension of OEA to represent and operationalize TEI. TEI is often considered as a method to solve challenging interpersonal relationships ( Samiuddin et al., 2017 ). Miao et al. (2016) proved that emotional intelligence is possible to improve the degree of team members’ satisfaction. TEI can enhance the connection among coworkers, improve the quality of information exchange and decision-making, and reduce conflict in teams ( Lee and Wong, 2017 ). Team with higher emotional intelligence can inspire the confidence and cooperation of team members, thereby building a positive and harmonious working atmosphere, thus promoting communication among members and reducing conflicts ( Rego et al., 2007 ). Therefore, higher emotional intelligence is preferable to perceive the emotional fluctuations of team members in teams. A high TEI team can timely detect members with negative emotions and prompt them to revitalize themselves ( Stubbs and Wolff, 2008 ), which can help create a more positive team emotional climate. We could inferred that high TEI is conducive to communication and conflict resolution in team, and thus improve the positive influence of cooperative CMS on positive team emotional climate and weaken the negative influence of competitive CMS on positive team emotional climate. Teams with low emotional intelligence may not easily recognize the tensions among members and the changes of members’ emotions, in which the barriers to communication between team members become more severe. Thus, low TEI could weaken the positive influence of cooperative CMS on positive team emotional climate and enhance the negative influence of competitive CMS on positive team emotional climate. Then the following hypotheses are proposed:

H4: Team emotional intelligence plays a moderating role between team leader’s conflict management styles and positive team emotional climate.

H4a: High team emotional intelligence enhances the positive influence of cooperative CMS on positive team emotional climate and weakens the negative influence of competitive CMS on positive team emotional climate.

H4b: Low team emotional intelligence weakens the positive influence of cooperative CMS on positive team emotional climate and enhances the negative influence of competitive CMS on positive team emotional climate.

Mindeguia et al. (2021b) propose that high emotional intelligence teams take on the role of “emotion manager” so as to create positive affective events for team members, which can arose passion of team members. Similar to the positive team emotional climate, high TEI teams could rapidly find out the members who lack passion for work and enhance their love for the team. By increasing less-passion members involvement in work, team passion could also be enhanced, which is conducive to the harmonious resolution of conflicts. Mindeguia et al. (2021b) put forward that there is a significant positive relationship between team emotional intelligence and passion. Therefore, this paper infers that teams with high TEI are sensitive to low-passionate members, while teams with low TEI are not. Consequently, high TEI could enhance the positive influence of cooperative CMS on team passion and weaken the negative influence of competitive CMS. On the contrary, low TEI could weaken the positive influence of cooperative CMS on team passion and enhance the negative influence of competitive CMS. Furthermore, Yin et al. (2020b) prove that the moderating role of TEI between team leader’s CMSs and team passion. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed.

H5: TEI has a moderating role between team leader’s conflict management styles and team passion.

H5a: High TEI enhances the positive influence of cooperative conflict management style on team passion and weakens the negative influence of competitive conflict management style on team passion.

H5b: Low TEI weakens the positive influence of cooperative conflict management style on team passion and enhances the negative influence of competitive conflict management style on team passion.

Therefore, the hypothesized model is displayed in Figure 1 .

Conflict management styles on positive team emotional climate and team passion.

Materials and methods

Sample and data collection.

In this paper, we conduct surveys to state-owned enterprises and internet enterprises in Beijing, Shenzhen, Shenyang, China, such as Baidu, Tencent, JD.COM, and Original Chemical by contacting relevant managers of these enterprises ahead of time and visiting the work places with the help of acquaintances and MBA alumni. This study collected team data in departments, which mainly work in a small group, such as sales, R&D, and propaganda, were chosen for the research. Because of the different size of work teams, each team surveyed a team leader and 3–6 team members. Finally, 484 valid surveys were collected, including 101 team leaders and 383 team members. We used anonymous questionnaire to ensure that it can truly reflect the respondents’ ideas. Questionnaires related to conflict management style were responded by leaders, while those related to team passion, positive team emotional climate and TEI were responded by team members. In order to match team leaders and members, we designed three items such as “what’s you last name” and “what’s your team leader’s last name.” For team leader, 86.79% respondents were males. On the aspect of age, 62.86% of the respondents was between 26 and 35 years, which is the most. The largest proportion held a bachelor degree, reaching 65.7%. After that, master degree or above reached 13.3%. The rest are below bachelor degree. In terms of working years, 50.48% respondents have been working for 6–10 years. For team members, 75.82% respondents were males. On the aspect of age, respondents between 26 and 35 years arrived 60.71%, which is the most. 84.9% respondents held a bachelor degree, then master degree or above reached 7.5%, the rest are below bachelor degree. 51.13% respondents have been working for 0–5 years.

We selected internationally established scales and translated into Chinese to measure these variables. To ensure the equivalency of meaning, we translated questionnaire from English to Chinese and back to English. We adopted Likert five-point scale to measure the items of the questionnaire.

Conflict management styles

In this paper, we measured team leader’s cooperative and competitive conflict management styles by the scale established by Tjosvold et al. (2006) . It measured cooperative and competitive conflict management style with nine items, which is answered by leaders. Specifically, cooperative conflict management style included five items such as “My work so that to the extent possible we all get what we really want” and competitive conflict management style contained four items such as “I demand that others agree to my position.”

Team passion

This study adopted the scale designed by Vallerand et al. (2003b) . The scale had total seven items. For example, “This activity allows me to live a variety of experiences,” “This activity reflects the qualities I like about myself” and etc.

Positive team emotional climate

This study used three items of the positive team emotional climate scale derived from team emotional climate measure created by Liu et al. (2008) . Example items included “In our team, members are optimistic and confident” and “Working in my team, members feel hopeful.”

Team emotional intelligence

As mentioned above, since the dimension of OEA reflects the vital role of TEI in the context of conflict, which can help people to perceive, understand, and predict other emotions ( Ma and Liu, 2019 ). We adopted the items about OEA in the scale created by Wong and Law (2002) . Example items included “I am sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others” and “I have good understanding of the emotions of people around me.”

Control variables

In this paper, the gender, age, education level, and working years of participants, which may have potential impacts on CMS, team climate, and team passion are taken as control variables ( Rahim, 1983 ; Lewis, 2000 ; Beitler et al., 2018 ).

Data analysis and results

In this manuscript, SPSS 24.0 and AMOS24.0 ( Podsakoff et al., 2003 ) were used for descriptive statistical analysis, reliability analysis, and structural validity test. Mplus 8.0 was used both for the multiple regression analysis and hypotheses testing ( MacKinnon et al., 2002 ; Muthén and Muthén, 2012 ). We adopted bootstrapping method to enhance the statistical effectiveness ( Grant and Berry, 2011 ) by extracting 5,000 a * b values repeatedly from the raw data and confirm their unbiased interval.

Table 1 summarized the means, variances, correlation coefficients, and reliability test results for each major variable. According to Table 1 , the Cronbach alpha values of all variables is over 0.7, thus each scale has good reliability.

Descriptive statistical analysis and reliability.

Bold value is Cronbach’s alpha. N  = 101; ** p  < 0.01.

Structural validity

Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted in this study. We used Mplus8.0 to test the structural validity. Table 2 was the results.

Structural validity test of different source scales.

N  = 101, PTEC, positive team emotional climate; TEI, team emotional intelligence; TP, team passion; COO, cooperative conflict management style; and COM, competitive conflict management style.

At team-member level, the fitting degree of three-factor model is good (χ 2 /df = 2.36, GFI = 0.95, CFI = 0.98, NFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.06). And three-factor model is superior to single-factor model (combine PTEC, TEI, and TP) and two-factor models (combine PTEC, TEI, and TP in pairs). At team-leader level, the fitting degree of two-factor model is good (χ 2 / df  = 1.58, GFI = 0.90, CFI = 0.92, NFI = 0.86, RMSEA = 0.07), which is superior to single-factor model.

Data convergent testing at team level

In this paper, the consistency reliability ICC(1), ICC(2), and Rwg were calculated to test whether the data is able to converge at team level. According to the test, the ICC(1), ICC(2), and Rwg of team passion were 0.23, 0.47, and 0.893, separately. PTEC were 0.23, 0.48, and 0.893 separately. TEI were 0.28, 0.53, and 0.885 separately. Therefore, the above variables are able to converge at team level.

Hypotheses test

In this manuscript, variance inflation factor (VIF) was tested by Model 1 to prevent multicollinearity. All VIF values were less than 5, illustrating that there was no multicollinearity problems. Refer to Table 3 for details.

Hierarchical regression results.

N  = 101, *** p  < 0.001, * p  < 0.01. COO, cooperative conflict management style; COM, competitive conflict management style; PTEC, positive team emotional climate; TEI, team emotional intelligence; and TP, team passion.

Test of direct effects

As shown in Table 3 , control variables were gender, working years, age, education level of team leaders and average working years, age, and education level of team members, the regression results of different independent variables to dependent variables were obtained, respectively. In model 2, cooperative and competitive conflict management styles were independent variables and positive team emotional climate were dependent variables. We found that the cooperative CMS positively influence positive team emotional climate ( β 1  = 0.785, p  < 0.001), hypothesis 1a was supported; while competitive CMS had no significant influence on the positive team emotional climate ( β 2  = −0.082, p  > 0.05), which not supported hypothesis 1b. In model 3, cooperative and competitive conflict management styles were independent variables and team passion was dependent variable. We found that cooperative CMS positively affected team passion ( β 3  = 0.729, p  < 0.001), hypothesis 2a was supported; however competitive CMS had no significant influence on team passion ( β 4  = −0.001, p  > 0.05), hypothesis 2b was not supported. We took positive team emotional climate was independent variable and team passion as dependent variable in model 4. Model 4 had a path coefficient β 5 of 0.895 ( p  < 0.001), which illustrated that positive team emotional climate was significantly related to team passion, hypothesis 3 was initially validated. On the basis of above models, model 5 took positive team emotional climate as a mediating variable. Because the competitive style has no significant influence in models 2 and 3, it is unnecessary to keep on discussing the mediating impact of positive team emotional climate between competitive style and team passion and the moderating impact of team emotional intelligence between CMS and dependent variables. Consequently, model 5 did not contain competitive conflict management style. The path coefficient β 6 between CMS and team passion was 0.069 ( p  > 0.05) and coefficient β 7 was 0.842 ( p  < 0.001), which further supported hypothesis 3.

Test of indirect effects

Then, we used bootstrapping to exam indirect effects and confidence interval. According to the above, the path coefficients of independent variable-mediating variable ( β 1 ) and mediating variable-dependent variable ( β 7 ) were significant. Then repeated sampling 5,000 times, the mediating effect of positive team emotional climate was significant ( β = 0.258, p  < 0.001, 95% CI of β 1 * β 7 is [0.583, 0.813], excluding 0).

Finally, this manuscript investigated the moderating impact of TEI. Because positive team emotional climate completely mediated the relationship between cooperative CMS and team passion, it was not necessary to test its moderating role between them. Therefore, hypothesis 5 was not supported. The following analysis only examined its moderating effect between cooperative CMS and positive team emotional climate, and the results were shown in model 6. The path coefficients between interaction variable and positive team emotional climate was significant ( β 8  = −0.226, p  < 0.01), which was opposite to hypotheses 4. In this study, method of Aiken and West (1991) was used to further describe team emotional intelligence’s moderating effect. The results are shown as Figure 2 . According to Figure 2 , we can find that whether in higher emotional intelligence teams or in lower emotional intelligence teams, leader’s cooperative CMS positively impact positive team emotional climate ( β 9  = 0.671, p  < 0.001; β 10  = 0.921, p  < 0.001). In addition, with team emotional intelligence higher, the positive effect of cooperative CMS on positive team emotional climate was weaker.

Cooperative styles × TEI influence on positive team emotional climate.

Table 4 showed that cooperative CMS was beneficial to creating a positive team emotional climate and improving team passion. This is because the cooperative CMS requires both parties involved to solve the conflict through open, cooperative, peaceful, and friendly methods. It can not only help create a happy and harmonious team climate, but also mobilize the working motivation of teams. The results also verified the positive impact of positive team emotional climate on team passion. For indirect effects, it showed that positive team emotional climate completely mediated the relationship between cooperative CMS and team passion. Moreover, team emotional intelligence played a moderating effect between cooperative CMS and positive team emotional climate.

Hypotheses results.

CMS, conflict management styles; COO, cooperative conflict management style; COM, competitive conflict management style; PTEC, positive team emotional climate; TEI, team emotional intelligence; and TP, team passion.

Nevertheless, some hypotheses were not supported. First of all, the effects of competitive conflict management style on positive team emotional climate and team passion were not significant. This may be related to the fact that the survey data came from China. The power distance of Chinese society is large. Members who grew up under Chinese traditional education are used to obeying the orders of leaders, even though the current working environment encourages teamwork and reduces the power distance. China is a high power distance society ( Ma Z. et al., 2018 ), and employees accustomed to the commanding work style of leaders. Employees think that leaders have the right to dominant and order them and accept the competitive conflict management style of leaders when confront conflicts. Therefore, team leader’s competitive CMS may not negatively affect team passion and team positive emotional climate. In addition, Chinese culture emphasizes “harmony is precious.” When confronted with conflict, team members are more concerned about escaping from the conflict situation as soon as possible. At that time, even if leaders adopt a competitive conflict management style which members do not like, it is acceptable for team members in order to escape from the conflict environment. We assume that team members’ negative emotions brought by team leader’s competitive conflict management styles and their positive emotions brought by escaping from conflicts may cancel each other out. Therefore, it can be speculated that team leader’s competitive CMS will not affect team members’ emotions. Secondly, TEI plays a negatively moderating role between cooperative CMS and team positive emotional climate. It is likely that team members with high emotional intelligence can regulate and infect other members within the team. According to emotional contagion theory, individuals can influence others or groups through emotional transmission ( Barsade, 2002 ). Consequently, when the level of team emotional intelligence is high, even if team leaders adopt a highly cooperative CMS, positive team emotional climate does not necessarily increase a lot, but keeps a stable standard.

Conclusion and implications

With the perspective of emotion, this manuscript carries out the intrinsic mechanism of two typical conflict management styles on team passion and builds a corresponding theoretical model including the mediating impact of positive team emotional climate and the moderating influence of TEI. The model is tested empirically by investigating the paired data of 101 team leaders and 383 team members. We can find that cooperative CMS is conducive to creating a positive team emotional climate, which can effectively improve team passion. That is to say, positive team emotional climate plays the fully mediating effect between team leader’s cooperative CMS and team passion. Furthermore, TEI plays the moderating effect between leader’s cooperative CMS and positive team emotional climate.

Theoretical implications

First of all, this manuscript explores the impacts of conflict management styles on team outcomes based on affective events theory with emotional perspective. Previous researches on the results of conflict management are mostly based on cognitive perspective and the outcome variables are mainly individual and team performance ( Somech et al., 2009 ; Shih and Susanto, 2010 ; Tabassi et al., 2017 ). Some scholars take organizational identification ( Erkutlu and Chafra, 2015 ), team coordination ( Tabassi et al., 2018 ), and workplace bullying ( Einarsen et al., 2018 ) as outcome variables, but pay less attention to the impacts on team attitudes related to emotions. This manuscript probes the impacts of CMS on an important team attitude related to emotional called team passion from the emotional perspective which not only provides a new perspective for follow-up research but also expands the research scope of impacts of conflict management styles.

Secondly, this study uses cross-level research method to verify the relationships between team leader’s styles of managing conflict and team emotional outcomes. In the past, when examining the impacts of team leader’s behavior on team’s emotion, most studies focus on the influences of leadership behaviors, such as spiritual leadership ( Afsar et al., 2016 ), transformational leadership ( Arnold, 2017 ), empowering leadership ( Kim et al., 2018 ), and authentic leadership ( Agote et al., 2016 ), while few researches concentrate on that of leader’s conflict management styles. Because conflict is inevitable in the team, we can infer that team leader’s CMS as one of the most important manifestations of his/her behaviors should have important effects on team results. Based on this idea, this manuscript explores the relationship between team leader’s CMSs and team emotional outcomes, so as to enrich the literature on the antecedents of team outcomes.

Lastly, this manuscript investigates the intrinsic mechanism of team leader’s CMSs on team passion, confirms the mediating effect of positive team emotional climate between them, and the moderating influence of TEI between CMSs and positive team emotional climate. Previous studies have focused on mediating or moderating effects of cognitive variables, such as team effectiveness ( Cheng et al., 2012 ) and psychological safety ( Erkutlu and Chafra, 2015 ). Since emotions is critical to help individuals comprehend the internal mechanism of team attitudes and behaviors, this manuscript explores the underlying mechanism of team leader’s CMSs on team passion from the emotional perspective and investigates the mediating and moderating effects of emotional variables. This, in turn, broadens the study on the mechanisms of CMSs on team outcomes to a certain extent.

Managerial implications

There are three main managerial implications as well.

Firstly, team leader’s CMSs have a major effect on team climate and team attitude. When teams occur conflicts, team leaders should consider adopting cooperative conflict management style because it is conducive not only to good communication and information exchange within teams, but also to the creation of the positive emotional climate and inspiration of team passion, which helps find more effective solutions to conflicts, ease the relationship between two parties involved in conflict as soon as possible, reduce the loss caused by conflict, improve team performance and etc. Therefore, organizations should guide team leaders to emphasize and adopt cooperative conflict management style to cope with conflicts. Organizations can use case analysis, role-playing, mentor guidance, and other training methods to enhance team leaders’ skills of using cooperative conflict management style. In addition, organizations can also create a harmonious and cooperative working atmosphere that encourages leaders to adopt a cooperative conflict management style in the workplace, so as to improve team innovation performance.

Secondly, as employees’ emotions and working conditions are inseparable, employees’ emotional factors which cannot be ignored since they significantly affect the performance of enterprises or teams should be highly valued by managers. This paper proves that team emotional climate has a significant influence on team outcomes. In addition, leaders and managers should pay more attention to team passion which is the motivation for members to work hard. Therefore, team leaders should not only care about the management of team members’ personal emotions, but also emphasize the shaping of team emotional climate and the stimulation of team passion. On the one hand, it is suggested that team leaders create an open, relaxed, free and friendly atmosphere within the team through team building to arouse team passion. On the other hand, team leaders also can inspire team passion by setting clear and promising goals for team prospects.

Finally, researchers have already found the significance of emotional intelligence at work ( Alkahtani, 2015 ; Lee and Wong, 2017 ; Jamshed and Majeed, 2018 ; Mindeguia et al., 2021b ). The result of this study shows that TEI weakens the influence of cooperative conflict management style on positive team emotional climate. This shows that we do not want to promote the idea that members in teams with high emotional intelligence should be superior, because all members have emotion swings and even individuals with high emotional intelligence cannot avoid negative emotions ( Jordan et al., 2002 ). Moreover, too high TEI is likely to inhibit the promotion and dissemination of a team’s positive emotions since teams with emotional intelligence at a high level may have a strong ability to influence team members’ emotions. Therefore, team leaders should not blindly pursue too high team emotional intelligence, but keep it on a relatively moderate level, so as to play its biggest role.

Limitations and future research directions

Firstly, this manuscript investigates the intrinsic mechanism of team leader’s CMSs on team passion with the perspective of emotion and discovers the mediating effect of positive team emotional climate between them. Future researches can further probe the mediating effect of other emotional variables such as emotional control and affective tone ( Rank and Frese, 2008 ). Secondly, this manuscript only chooses team leader’s CMSs of cooperation and competition. of course, leaders can also adopt other conflict management styles. Thus, future studies can further probe the influence of other CMSs on team outcomes based on emotional perspective. Thirdly, this study just chooses OEA dimension to measure team emotional intelligence. Although it makes sense to some extent, it is relatively simple and not necessarily able to stand criticizing. Consequently, future studies can add other dimensions to measure team emotional intelligence. Fourthly, the data in this manuscript totally came from questionnaire and are measured by self-report lacking of data from multiple evaluation sources. Future researches will consider combining various survey methods to obtain sample data and expand the survey subjects to reduce the impact of homologous data. Finally, we adopt the cross-sectional design in this manuscript. We can collect more longitudinal data in the future.

Data availability statement

Author contributions.

JY contributed to the conceptual design of the study. JY, MQ and MJ contributed to the drafting of the article. GL and ML contributed to the data analyzes. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The research was supported by Beijing Knowledge Management Institute (5212210983) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72002016).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Afsar B., Badir Y., Kiani U. S. (2016). Linking spiritual leadership and employee pro-environmental behavior: the influence of workplace spirituality, intrinsic motivation, and environmental passion . J. Environ. Psychol. 45 , 79–88. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.11.011 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Agote L., Aramburu N., Lines R. (2016). Authentic leadership perception, trust in the leader, and followers’ emotions in organizational change processes . J. Appl. Behav. Sci. 52 , 35–63. doi: 10.1177/0021886315617531 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Aiken L. S., West S. G. (1991). Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions . Newbury Park, CA: Sage [ Google Scholar ]
• Al-Hamdan Z., Al-Ta'amneh I. A., Rayan A., Bawadi H. (2019). The impact of emotional intelligence on conflict management styles used by jordanian nurse managers . J. Nurs. Manag. 27 , 560–566. doi: 10.1111/jonm.12711, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Alkahtani A. H. (2015). The influence of leadership styles on organizational commitment: the moderating effect of emotional intelligence . Bus. Manag. Stud. 2 , 23–34. doi: 10.11114/bms.v2i1.1091 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Arnold K. A. (2017). Transformational leadership and employee psychological well-being: a review and directions for future research . J. Occup. Health Psychol. 22 , 381–393. doi: 10.1037/ocp0000062, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barsade S. G. (2002). The ripple effect: emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior . Adm. Sci. Q. 47 , 644–675. doi: 10.2307/3094912 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beitler L. A., Scherer S., Zapf D. (2018). Interpersonal conflict at work: age and emotional competence differences in conflict management . Organ. Psychol. Rev. 8 , 195–227. doi: 10.1177/2041386618808346 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Benitez M., Medina F. J., Munduate L. (2018). Buffering relationship conflict consequences in teams working in real organizations . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 29 , 279–297. doi: 10.1108/IJCMA-11-2017-0131 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Birkeland I. K., Nerstad C. (2016). Incivility is (not) the very essence of love: passion for work and incivility instigation . J. Occup. Health Psychol. 21 , 77–90. doi: 10.1037/a0039389, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cardon M. S., Wincent J., Singh J., Drnovsek M. (2009). The nature and experience of entrepreneurial passion . Acad. Manag. Rev. 34 , 511–532. doi: 10.5465/amr.2009.40633190 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cheng T., Huang G. H., Lee C., Ren X. (2012). Longitudinal effects of job insecurity on employee outcomes: the moderating role of emotional intelligence and the leader-member exchange . Asia Pac. J. Manag. 29 , 709–728. doi: 10.1007/s10490-010-9227-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chiang J. T. J., Chen X. P., Liu H. Y., Akutsu S., Wang Z. (2020). We have emotions but can't show them! Authoritarian leadership, emotion suppression climate, and team performance . Hum. Relat. 74 , 1082–1111. doi: 10.1177/0018726720908649 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Desivilya H. S., Somech A., Lidgoster H. (2010). Innovation and conflict management in work teams: the effects of team identification and task and relationship conflict . Negot. Confl. Manag. Res. 3 , 28–48. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-4716.2009.00048.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Einarsen S., Skogstad A., Rørvik E., Lande Å. B., Nielsen M. B. (2018). Climate for conflict management, exposure to workplace bullying and work engagement: a moderated mediation analysis . Int. J. Hum. Resour. Manag. 29 , 549–570. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2016.1164216 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Eisenbeiss S. A., van Knippenberg D., Boerner S. (2008). Transformational leadership and team innovation: integrating team climate principles . J. Appl. Psychol. 93 , 1438–1446. doi: 10.1037/a0012716, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Erkutlu H., Chafra J. (2015). The mediating roles of psychological safety and employee voice on the relationship between conflict management styles and organizational identification . Am. J. Bus. 30 , 72–91. doi: 10.1108/AJB-06-2013-0040 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Esbati Z., Korunka C. (2021). Does intragroup conflict intensity matter? The moderating effects of conflict management on emotional exhaustion and work engagement . Front. Psychol. 12 :614001. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.614001, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fredrickson B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions . Am. Psychol. 56 , 218–226. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.218 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• García N. R., Corbett J. (2013). Can organizations learn? Exploring a shift from conflict to collaboration . The George Wright Forum . 30 , 267–272. doi: 10.2307/43598302 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• George J. M., Bettenhausen K. (1990). Understanding prosocial behavior, sales performance, and turnover: a group-level analysis in a service context . J. Appl. Psychol. 75 , 698–709. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.75.6.698 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Grant A. M., Berry J. W. (2011). The necessity of others is the mother of invention: intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity . Acad. Manag. J. 54 , 73–96. doi: 10.5465/amj.2011.59215085 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hao P., He W., Long L. R. (2017). Why and when empowering leadership has different effects on employee work performance: the pivotal roles of passion for work and role breadth self-efficacy . J. Leadersh. Org. Stud. 25 , 85–100. doi: 10.1177/1548051817707517 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hempel P. S., Zhang Z. X., Tjosvold D. (2009). Conflict management between and within teams for trusting relationships and performance in China . J. Organ. Behav. 30 , 41–65. doi: 10.1002/job.540 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ingram A., Peake W. O., Stewart W., Watson W. (2017). Emotional intelligence and venture performance . J. Small Bus. Manag. 57 , 780–800. doi: 10.1111/jsbm.12333 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jamshed S., Majeed N. (2018). Relationship between team culture and team performance through lens of knowledge sharing and team emotional intelligence . J. Knowl. Manag. 23 , 90–109. doi: 10.1108/JKM-04-2018-0265 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jordan P. J., Ashkanasy N. M., Hartel C. E. (2002). Emotional intelligence as a moderator of emotional and behavioral reactions to job insecurity . Acad. Manag. Rev. 27 , 361–372. doi: 10.2307/4134384 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim K. Y., Atwater L., Jolly P., Ugwuanyi I., Baik K., Yu J. (2021). Supportive leadership and job performance: contributions of supportive climate, team-member exchange (TMX), and group-mean TMX . J. Bus. Res. 134 , 661–674. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.06.011 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim M., Beehr T. A., Prewett M. S. (2018). Employee responses to empowering leadership: a meta-analysis . J. Leadersh. Org. Stud. 25 , 257–276. doi: 10.1177/1548051817750538 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lee C., Wong C. S. (2017). The effect of team emotional intelligence on team process and effectiveness . J. Manag. Organ. 25 , 844–859. doi: 10.1017/jmo.2017.43 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Leon-Perez J. M., Medina F. J., Arenas A., Munduate L. (2015). The relationship between interpersonal conflict and workplace bullying . J. Manag. Psychol. 30 , 250–263. doi: 10.1108/JMP-01-2013-0034 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Levecque K., Roose H., Vanroelen C., Rossem R. V. (2014). Affective team climate a multi-level analysis of psychosocial working conditions and psychological distress in team workers . Acta Sociol. 57 , 153–166. doi: 10.1177/0001699313498262 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis K. M. (2000). When leaders display emotion: how followers respond to negative emotional expression of male and female leaders . J. Organ. Behav. 21 , 221–234. [ Google Scholar ]
• Liu X., Sun J., Haertel C. E. (2008). Developing measure of team emotional climate in China . Int. J. Psychol. 43 :285. doi: 10.1080/00273170701710338 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ma J., Liu C. (2019). The moderating effect of emotional intelligence on the relationship between supervisor conflict and employees’ counterproductive work behaviors . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 30 , 227–245. doi: 10.1108/IJCMA-11-2017-0140 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ma Z., Wang L., Cheung K. (2018). The paradox of social capital in China: venture capitalists and entrepreneurs’ social ties and public listed firms’ technological innovation performance . Asian J. Technol. Innov. 26 , 306–324. doi: 10.1080/19761597.2018.1548288 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ma J. F., Zhou X., Chen R., Dong X. (2018). Does ambidextrous leadership motivate work crafting? Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 77 , 159–168. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhm.2018.06.025 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MacKinnon D. P., Lockwood C. M., Hoffman J. M., West S. G., Sheets V. (2002). A comparison of methods to test mediation and other intervening variable effects . Psychol. Methods 7 , 83–104. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.7.1.83, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miao C., Humphrey R. H., Qian S. (2016). Leader emotional intelligence and subordinate job satisfaction: a meta-analysis of main, mediator, and moderator effects . Personal. Individ. Differ. 102 , 13–24. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.056 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mindeguia R., Aritzeta A., Garmendia A., Aranberri A. (2021a). The positive loop at work: a longitudinal Long-term study of transformational leadership, group passion, and employee results . Front. Psychol. 12 :726744. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.726744, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mindeguia R., Aritzeta A., Garmendia A., Martinez-Moreno E., Elorza U., Soroa G. (2021b). Team emotional intelligence: emotional processes as a link between managers and workers . Front. Psychol. 12 :619999. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.619999 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Muthén L. K., Muthén B. O. (2012). Mplus: Statistical Analysis With Latent Variables: User’s Guide (7th Edn.). Los Angeles, CA: Muthén and Muthén [ Google Scholar ]
• Peng J., Chen X., Zou Y. C., Nie Q. (2020). Environmentally specific transformational leadership and team pro-environmental behaviors: the roles of pro-environmental goal clarity, pro-environmental harmonious passion, and power distance . Hum. Relat. 74 , 1864–1888. doi: 10.1177/0018726720942306 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Permarupan P. Y., Saufi R. A., Kasim R. S. R., Balakrishnan B. K. P. D. (2013). The impact of organizational climate on employee's work passion and organizational commitment . Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 107 , 88–95. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.12.403 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Perttula K. H., Cardon M. S. (2012). “ Passion ” in Oxford Library of Psychology, the Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship . eds. Cameron K. S., Spreitzer G. M. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press; ), 190–200. [ Google Scholar ]
• Podsakoff P. M., MacKenzie S. B., Lee J. Y., Podsakoff N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies . J. Appl. Psychol. 88 , 879–903. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rahim M. A. (1983). A measure of styles of handling interpersonal conflict . Acad. Manag. J. 26 , 368–376. doi: 10.2307/255985, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Raithel K., van Knippenberg D., Stam D. (2021). Team leadership and team cultural diversity: the moderating effects of leader cultural background and leader team tenure . J. Leadersh. Org. Stud. 28 , 261–272. doi: 10.1177/15480518211010763 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rank J., Frese M. (2008). “ The impact of emotions, moods, and other affect-related variables on creativity, innovation and initiative ” in Research Companion to Emotion in Organizations . eds. Ashkanasy N. M., Cooper C. L. (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar; ), 103–119. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rego A., Sousa F., Pinae Cunha M., Correia A., Saur-Amaral I. (2007). Leader self-reported emotional intelligence and perceived employee creativity: an exploratory study . Creat. Innov. Manag. 16 , 250–264. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8691.2007.00435.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ross R. G., DeWine S. (1988). Assessing the Ross-DeWine conflict management message style (CMMS) . Manag. Commun. Q. 1 , 389–413. doi: 10.1177/0893318988001003007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salas-Vallina A., Pozo M., Fernandez-Guerrero R. (2020). New times for HRM? Well-being oriented management (WOM), harmonious work passion and innovative work behavior . Employ. Relat. 42 , 561–581. doi: 10.1108/ER-04-2019-0185 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salas-Vallina A., Rofcanin Y., Las Heras M. (2022). Building resilience and performance in turbulent times: the influence of shared leadership and passion at work across levels . Bus. Res. Q. 25 , 8–27. doi: 10.1177/23409444211035138 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Saleh T. A., Sarwar A., Islam M. A., Mohiuddin M., Su Z. (2022). Effects of leader conscientiousness and ethical leadership on employee turnover intention: the mediating role of individual ethical climate and emotional exhaustion . Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 19 :8959. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19158959, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salovey P., Mayer J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence . Imagin. Cogn. Pers. 9 , 185–211. doi: 10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Samiuddin K., Ahmad I., Kazmi S. Z. A. (2017). The role of emotional intelligence in hospital administration: a case study from Pakistan . Cross Cult. Manag. J. 19 , 39–46. Available at: https://econpapers.repec.org/article/cmjjournl/y_3a2017_3ai_3a11_3ap_3a39-46.htm [ Google Scholar ]
• Shih H., Susanto E. (2010). Conflict management styles, emotional intelligence, and job performance in public organizations . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 21 , 147–168. doi: 10.1108/10444061011037387 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Somech A., Desivilya H. S., Lidogoster H. (2009). Team conflict management and team effectiveness: the effects of task interdependence and team identification . J. Organ. Behav. 30 , 359–378. doi: 10.1002/job.537 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stubbs K. E., Wolff S. B. (2008). Emotional intelligence competencies in the team and team leader . J. Manag. Dev. 27 , 55–75. doi: 10.1108/02621710810840767 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tabassi A. A., Abdullah A., Bryde D. J. (2018). Conflict management, team coordination, and performance within multicultural temporary projects: evidence from the construction industry . Proj. Manag. J. 50 , 101–114. doi: 10.1177/8756972818818257 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tabassi A. A., Bryde D. J., Abdullah A., Argyropoulouc M. (2017). Conflict management style of team leaders in multi-cultural work environment in the construction industry . Proc. Comput. Sci. 121 , 41–46. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2017.11.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Thomas K. W. (2008). Thomas-Kilmann conflict mode. TKI Profile and Interpretive Report, 1–11.
• Tjosvold D. (1998). Cooperative and competitive goal approach to conflict: accomplishments and challenges . Appl. Psychol. 47 , 285–313. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-0597.1998.tb00025.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tjosvold D., Law K. S., Sun H. (2006). Effectiveness of Chinese teams: the role of conflict types and conflict management approaches . Manag. Organ. Rev. 2 , 231–252. doi: 10.1111/j.1740-8784.2006.00040.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Uy M. A., Jacob G. H., Gielnik M. M., Frese M., Antonio T., Wonohadidjojo D. M., et al.. (2021). When passions collide: passion convergence in entrepreneurial teams . J. Appl. Psychol. 106 , 902–920. doi: 10.1037/apl0000812, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vallerand R. J., Blanchard C., Mageau G. A., Koestner R., Ratelle C., Léonard M., et al.. (2003a). Les passions de l'ame: on obsessive and harmonious passion . J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 85 , 756–767. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.756, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Vallerand R. J., Houlfort N., Fores J. (2003b). Passion at work. Emerging perspectives on values in organizations, 175–204.
• Wang T., Wu J. L., Gu J. B., Hu L. (2020). Impact of open innovation on organizational performance in different conflict management styles: based on resource dependence theory . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 32 , 199–222. doi: 10.1108/IJCMA-09-2019-0165 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Way K. A., Jimmieson N. L., Bordia P. (2016). Shared perceptions of supervisor conflict management style: a cross-level moderator of relationship conflict and employee outcomes . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 27 , 25–49. doi: 10.1108/IJCMA-07-2014-0046 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wong C. S., Law K. S. (2002). The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: an exploratory study . Leadersh. Q. 13 , 243–274. doi: 10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00099-1 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Yin J. L., Jia M. X., Ma Z. Z., Liao G. (2020a). Team leader’s conflict management styles and innovation performance in entrepreneurial teams . Int. J. Confl. Manag. 31 , 373–392. doi: 10.1108/IJCMA-09-2019-0168 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Yin J. L., Jia M. X., Ma Z. Z., Liao G. (2020b). Research on the impact of team leader’s conflict management styles on team innovation performance. The mediating role of team positive emotional climate . J. Technol. Econ. 39 , 153–161. Available at: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2020&filename=JSJI202009018&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=KOA1Y1RNp1l3MjvUqnebxNHTL7XTA37a5O7XroXLdxhhprdA8QTsvikGNtNRVLPF [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhang M. L., Hu E. H., Lin Y. M. (2022). The impact of flexibility-oriented HRM systems on innovative behaviour in China: a moderated mediation model of dualistic passion and inclusive leadership . Asia Pac. Bus. Rev. 51 , 299–316. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhu Y. Y., Ma Y., Ouyang C. H., Guo M. (2022). Paternalistic leadership and craftsmanship of manufacturing employees: influence of job involvement and team positive emotional climate . J. Syst. Manag. 31 , 89–103. Available at: https://kns.cnki.net/kcms/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2022&filename=XTGL202201008&uniplatform=NZKPT&v=G1SxY1NNQdD9plIrh6nX8byGu2VYUJSWYN0vZDUPwwXfrZAZTcsczIOGhzoVGaGy [ Google Scholar ]
• Zigarmi D., Nimon K., Houson D., Witt D., Diehl J. (2009). Beyond engagement: toward a framework and operational definition for employee work passion . Hum. Resour. Dev. Rev. 8 , 300–326. doi: 10.1177/1534484309338171 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Advertisement

A review of how we study coastal and marine conflicts: is social science taking a broad enough view?

• Open access
• Published: 21 June 2023
• Volume 22 , article number  29 , ( 2023 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Lol Iana Dahlet   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1743-852X 1 , 2 ,
• Samiya A. Selim 1 , 3 &
• Ingrid van Putten 4 , 5  

2057 Accesses

6 Citations

4 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Conflict in the marine environment is of increasing relevance as blue growth boundaries are pushed and resource access and use are in dispute. Social science disciplines have a long history and a wide range of approaches for studying conflict. However, understanding the approaches used to study marine conflict is challenging since the literature is large, broad, difficult to navigate, and there is little connection between conflict themes and the associated methods used to analyze these conflicts. In the present study, we take a first step to address this by systematically reviewing 109 peer-reviewed articles that employ empirical social science methods to study marine conflict. We find that studies on marine conflicts have centered on disputed space, mainly at local scale, and natural resources, such as fish. The main parties at the center of the conflicts are small-scale fisheries and public authorities, although with a growing presence of blue growth sectors. Most studies employed qualitative approaches to study marine conflicts. Current gaps in the understanding of marine conflict include gaps in understanding relational interactions and historical causal events. The need for social science research into marine conflict and the application of multiple social science methods is ongoing as different constellations of conflict actors emerge and as disputed ocean spaces expand beyond EEZs, to include polar regions, and the sea floor.

Similar content being viewed by others

Introductory commentary: Marine conflicts and pathways to sustainability in an era of Blue Growth and climate change

Fred Saunders, Ralph Tafon, … Samiya Ahmed Selim

What is marine justice?

Jennifer A. Martin, Summer Gray, … Becky Twohey

Two decades of research on ocean multi-use: achievements, challenges and the need for transdisciplinarity

Josselin Guyot-Téphany, Brice Trouillet, … Ivana Lukic

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Finding ways to address conflicts between people, groups and societies has been the topic of research for many centuries (Wieviorka 2013 ). Conflict comes in many different forms (Picard and Marc 2015 ), can be of different durations (Collier et al. 2004 ), and can have diverse causes (Kriesberg 1982 ), including resource access and scarcity (Homer-Dixon 1991 ).

Spatially, conflicts are not limited to land but extend to coastal and marine environments as marine uses increase and, subsequently, so do anthropogenic pressure from human activities (Jouffray et al. 2020 ). As the frontiers of exploitation of marine resources shift, an increasing number of actors seek to occupy new spaces opening up at sea and in negotiation arenas (Stojanovic and Farmer 2013 ). Growing interests in the marine environment and the new focus on the blue economy creates increasingly complex governance issues (e.g., Voyer et al. 2018 ). New types of conflicts over the marine environment emerge, sometimes reshaping, or amplifying ones that already exist (Bax et al. 2021 ; Silver et al. 2015 ). The existence of conflicts may hinder efforts to advance ocean sustainability by, for example, exacerbating social injustices and the loss of biodiversity worldwide (Bennett 2019 ). Marine conflicts are therefore becoming an eminent field in the science of sustainability, invariably defined as problem-driven and interdisciplinary (Kates et al. 2001 ). Transdisciplinary sustainability sciences account for the need of a transformational approach that tackles root causes of social-ecological conflicts Footnote 1 (Tafon et al. 2021 ). This includes embracing research methods that facilitate cross-fertilization from different disciplines (Lang et al. 2012 ) and methodological approaches.

The interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature of marine conflicts is associated with a vast, dispersed, and ongoing literature. This literature draws from diverse academic disciplines and methodological approaches. For example, recent work on territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and the more abundant literature on disputes between industrial and small-scale fishing fleets often appear in non-marine discipline-based journals (i.e., criminology; see Goyes 2021 ) and apply widely varying methodological approaches.

To our knowledge, no systematic review exists on coastal and marine conflicts in terms of approaches and methods. Haddaway et al. ( 2015 ) recommend a systematic review that summarizes knowledge advancements and gaps to apprehend growing bodies of literature, in order to make informed suggestions on possible developments. Our aim was thus to gain insights into previously used approaches that could help other researchers venturing into the abundant but dispersed field of marine conflicts, identify gaps, and find new ways forward. The impetus for this review arose from the international project “Negotiating Ocean Conflicts among RIvals for Sustainable and Equitable Solutions” (NO CRISES) Footnote 2 that aims to develop generally applicable social science methods to assess the origin, drivers, and mitigation strategies of ocean conflicts. When commencing this project, it soon became apparent that there was no previous study that had investigated the different social science methods that had been applied to studying conflict.

This review addresses this gap by conducting a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the ways that social sciences have approached the study of coastal and marine conflict. We explore the use of different methods and the conflict context in which they have been applied. Our results can facilitate an informed choice of research design and provide critical evidence to enhance conflict analysis capabilities. This understanding is especially relevant for a mostly problem-oriented research field such as the coastal and marine conflict, which may lead to the formulation of policy recommendations.

Social conflicts and the environment

The conflict literature is abundant and conflicts are defined in different ways. It is therefore useful to first provide a brief outline of conflict theories, paradigms, and where conflict sits with respect to sustainability research, followed by a brief overview of conflicts in the marine realm.

Conflict has been defined as resulting “from a purposeful interaction among two or more parties in a competitive setting” (Oberschall 1978 , p. 291) or as a “relational situation structured around an antagonism” Footnote 3 (Picard and Marc 2015 , p. 7). Several approaches see conflicts as inherent to the social relationships that constitute and shape our societies (Simmel 1904a ). Conflict paradigms emerge from a number of foundational theories that describe the causes, functions and dynamics of social conflicts. Marx’s (Marx and Engels 1848 ) and Simmel’s (Simmel 1904a ; 1904b ) contributions are acknowledged for their particular influence on the field of sociology of conflict (Turner 1975 ). According to Marx’s theory of class struggle (1850), social conflicts arise as industrial societies draw from power and wealth accumulation of an elite. The social dynamics would therefore be directly attributed to conflicting interests between the one who subjugates and the one subjugated. Simmel’s theory of stratification (1908) instead advocates that social conflict is also constituted by a combination of associative and dissociative impulses driven by humans’ instinct (Turner 1975 ). Both thinkers agree that conflicts create social change (Harvey 1993 ). However, since the 1990s, social conflict theory broadened its scope to the field of natural resource exploitation and management (Boonstra et al., this collection). Homer-Dixon ( 1991 ) linked environmental stress and conflict and was the founder of the scarcity hypothesis. According to the author, increasing resource scarcity derived from a combination of an increasing environmental degradation, resource depletion, unequal resource access, and population growth will lead to conflict, and such conflict can be expressed in violence.

Sustainability research which also gained momentum since the 1990s was another field that recognized conflict as an important aspect of sustainability. Sustainability research aims to address complex social-ecological problems in an era where anthropogenic forces have become the main drivers of bio geophysical change (Glaser et al. 2012 ). A growing focus on social-ecological systems (SES), which are “complex, adaptive systems consisting of a bio-geophysical unit and its associated social actors and institutions surrounding a particular issue or problem” (Glaser et al. 2012 , p. 4), stresses the complexity of human-nature relations. This SES framework frames a conflict as emerging from a particular combination of social-ecological actors and institutions across multiple societal levels and dimensions. Importantly, Ostrom’s SES framework (Ostrom 2009 ) considers conflicts among users as one key variable that affects the system. Since the 1990s, the fields of Political Ecology and Ecological Economics have also played a prominent role in analyzing the political drivers that shape resource conflicts (e.g., Rocheleau 1995 ; Le Billon 2001 ; Martinez-Alier 2006 ; Harper et al. 2018 ); with an increasing acknowledgement of social movements and struggles to mobilize against social and environmental injustices (Scheidel et al. 2020 ). Simultaneously, new knowledge and theories that focus on the dynamics of violent conflicts have been advanced by Peace and Conflict studies (Webel and Galtung 2007 ). The SES and other perspectives are all relevant to studying coastal and marine systems (Turner 2000 ; Aswani 2019 ) particularly with the growing vulnerability of these systems.

In the marine realm, two major conflict triggers are typically debated: competition for resources (Bavinck et al. 2014 ) or space (e.g., Seto et al. 2023 ). Conflict may also be linked to diverging interests and perspectives over the use and management of ocean resources between direct and indirect users of coastal and marine resources, and public authorities (Stepanova and Bruckmeier 2013 ). At the international level, marine conflicts are mainly between two or more countries claiming rights and/or sovereignty over marine resources such as fish (Spijkers et al. 2019 ), oil and gas (Stocker 2017 ), and more broadly, maritime territory (Sakuwa 2017 ). At the national level, conflicts are reported for key blue economy sectors such as fisheries (e.g., Spijkers and Boonstra 2017 ; Dahlet et al. 2021 ), renewable energy (Hooper et al. 2017 ), mining, tourism (Kinseng et al. 2018 ), large-scale fishing (Link and Watson 2019 ), local livelihoods, and conservation (e.g., Harper et al. 2018 ). Industrial and touristic mega projects have been a source of conflict in Bangladesh (Abdullah et al. 2017 ), Peru (González Velarde 2019 ), and elsewhere (Andrews et al. 2021 ) through the “privatization” of coastal areas, thus preventing traditional use of natural resources.

Empirical social science approaches to ocean conflict

There is growing recognition of the role of social sciences in informing solutions that help societies move toward more sustainable SES. Through a broad range of disciplines (Bennett et al. 2017 ), social sciences provide tools that can help in characterizing highly complex and evolving human-nature relations, while also acknowledging intrinsic multi-level and multi-scale dynamics (Aswani et al. 2018 ). Yet, the choice for a particular method is also a choice to explore certain features of the system under study. Preiser et al. ( 2018 ) argue that acknowledging the complex nature of SESs has strong implications on the choice of methodological approaches. For example, the authors demonstrate that to account for the relational aspects of complex adaptive systems, network analysis and cognitive maps can be used. Agent-based modeling helps identifying feedback structures, which relate to the dynamic aspect of complex adaptive systems, while the openness of the system is better captured using qualitative comparative case studies analysis, or participatory mapping among others. This study analyzes the methods used to study marine conflict and the context in which they have been applied by performing a systematic literature review. In particular, we aim to:

Diagnose how marine conflicts are represented in the literature, based on main descriptive characteristics of the conflicts (geographical location, stakeholders, conflict scale and conflict level)

Present the methods that are used to study marine conflicts

Consider the links between the methods and the descriptive characteristics of the conflict

Suggest possible further avenues of research based on identified knowledge gaps and yet little explored potentialities

Introduced in the 2000s in the field of conservation (Pullin and Stewart 2006 ), the literature review is a powerful method to take stock of progresses made within a research field (Haddaway et al. 2015 ). Different approaches exist to undertake literature reviews (including rapid reviews, literature reviews, narrative reviews, and scoping reviews). Generally, researchers systematically follow a methodological protocol (Moher et al. 2015 ; Grant and Booth 2009 ).

We use a systematic literature review approach based on the best-practice guidelines for systematic reviews (e.g., Collaboration for Environmental Evidence 2013 ). This approach allows us to analyze a large, complex, and heterogeneous body of literature. A systematic literature review further provides a high degree of transparency and methodological rigor to ensure that results are reliable within acknowledged limitations.

Data collection

The online databases used for the search were Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus in October 2020 and March 2021 respectively. A preliminary literature search was done as a first step to detect key papers on oceans conflicts based on related keywords. This ensured that the strings defined for the database search would be comprehensive and robust. We developed the search strings (named A, B, C, and D, c.f. Figure  1 ) on the basis of the team’s scientific expertise and keywords related to three basic components of the research question: social science methods, conflict, and marine:

conflict OR resolution* Footnote 4

marine OR ocean* OR sea OR fish*

survey* OR interview* OR questiona* OR network analys* OR empirical OR case stud* OR participatory

marine protected area* OR MPA OR marine conservation area*

Decision tree used to conduct a systematic literature research on Web of Science. Based on (Moher et al. 2009 )

A higher specificity was adopted for search string C to reflect the focus of our study on empirical social science methods. Separate searches were implemented for each search string. The results from all the searches were then combined and duplicates were removed (Fig.  1 ). This approach is equivalent to the AND function in both databases. We also included five relevant studies of our knowledge that were not picked up in the search. Identifying additional studies from other sources is also part of data collection for systematic literature reviews (c.f. Liberati et al. 2009 ).

Inclusion criteria

To refine the search and ensure a manageable number of publications, we only included studies that fit the following criteria:

Peer-reviewed publications

Within the timeframe 2000–2020

Written in English language; and

Research relevant to domains related to the marine, coastal and social-ecological contexts

This resulted in a total of 915 publications. All files were exported to the reference management platform Mendeley (Elsevier, 2020). An Excel table was generated with the title, abstract, authors, date of publication, and name of the journal, for each of the 682 references imported from WoS and 233 from SCOPUS.

A first screening of the titles and abstracts was used to decide which articles would be included in further analysis. Three criteria were then applied to determine eligibility for inclusion in the systematic review: The papers had to (1) be related to the coastal and/or marine environment(s) (e.g., not inland or freshwater); (2) have a central focus on conflict and/or conflict resolution between humans and between humans and non-humans (i.e., wildlife); and (3) be empirical. If any one of these criteria was not met, the article was excluded from the analysis. If an abstract was not available, the entry was either rejected based on the title or the full text was screened. When doubts remained on whether the article met the criteria, those were classified as “unsure” and taken to the next step of analysis.

The three co-authors reviewed the articles and applied the inclusion criteria. To assure consistency between the reviewers, a randomly selected sub-sample of the 128 papers were scored by at least two different co-authors. The average consistency between co-authors was 69% indicating they largely understood and implemented the inclusion criteria in the same manner.

Defining the categories

Explanatory categories were pre-defined based on the key-articles (Charles 1992 ; Warner 2000 ), but as literature reviews are an iterative process (Haddaway et al. 2020 ), the categories were complemented or modified as the reading of the full articles progressed. In particular, the choice of the sub-categories under “Method(s) applied” was supported by a previous short literature search.

In our study, we use the word “ methods ” to designate a range of techniques and approaches for data collection and data analysis. For the category “Method(s) applied” (c.f. Table  1 ), previous literature research on empirical environmental social sciences research informed the initial definition of sub-categories. Empirical environmental social sciences research can be classified as experimental, observational or synthetic, and all build upon empirical data (Cox 2015 ). Synthetic research is based on a literature review or a meta-analysis. And while experimental research specifically designs and executes experiments, observational studies consist of natural experiments, case studies, and correlational studies. The empirical methods used in marine social sciences adopt qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches (Bennett 2019 ). Mixed-method approaches have developed over the past 20 years and are now regularly adopted in social sciences (Timans et al. 2019 ). By employing both qualitative and quantitative science methods, this approach can be helpful, particularly when addressing complex real-world problems. Thus, assessing these categories in our corpus of articles was particularly relevant given their focus on coastal and marine conflicts.

Typically, when involving human participants, data collection can be done through different types of interviews (structured or semi-structured interviews, informal conversations), focus group discussions, survey and questionnaires, participant or direct observation (Pellowe and Leslie 2020 ; Chakraborty et al. 2020 ; González Velarde 2019 ) generating primary data. Secondary data are also needed to support methodologies such as case studies (see for example Scobie et al. 2020 and Saint-Paul 2006 ) and process-tracing analyses (Collier 2011 ). These latter draw from a robust corpus of data gathered from different sources (either primary and/or secondary data) and create an in-depth picture of the situation in focus (Merriam 2009 ). In particular, the process-tracing analysis focuses on understanding causal mechanisms or connections that help explaining the emergence of a determined event (Collier 2011 ). Content analysis is a key method in social sciences to analyze the construction of realities and meanings through narrative (Preiser et al. 2022 ). Content analysis can be applied to analyze interviews (primary data) and other types of text-based document (secondary data). Because conflicts are mostly about relationships between groups of people, we included stakeholder analysis and network analysis as methods which were also found in our literature review. Quantitative empirical methods using modeling approaches, such as agent-based modeling (ABM), are also employed in marine social sciences (Glaeser et al. 2015 ; Schulze et al. 2017 ; Schill et al. 2016 ; Glaser et al. 2012 ). ABM allows social-ecological relationships and interactions to be assessed and related to certain outcomes (e.g., cooperation behavior of natural resource users, as studied by Schill et al. 2016 ). Moreover, as different methods appeared in our corpus, those were progressively compiled.

Reference scoring

In total, 227 articles were fully read (equivalent to the sum of Output F and Output F’, c.f. Figure  1 ), to identify the central focus of the research (see Table  1 ). Codes were generated based on the research questions. Categories and codes were revisited as an increasing number of studies were assessed, providing constant comparative reevaluation of categories (Table  1 ).

A total of 109 articles (corresponding to the sum of Final Output H and Final Output H’, c.f. Figure  1 ) had conflict as a central focus of the research. These were scored against the codes (Table  1 ) after full reading. Aside from some continuous variables (i.e., dates and sample sizes), most categories are dummy variables which, per definition, were scored with a 0 (for absence) or a 1 (for presence).

Data analysis

All data were entered and analyzed in Excel. Frequencies were calculated for each of the categories in Table  1 . To facilitate graphic visualization, in some cases categories with low frequencies were merged. To map the study locations, the United Nations’ world geographical subregions definition was used (available at: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/ , accessed January 2022).

For an exploratory content analysis, a word cloud was created using the abstracts of the publications selected from the WoS search. The words included in the search string were excluded from the word cloud. The RStudio (Version 1.1.453) software was used, with packages tm, NLP, wordcloud, and RColorBrewer.

Methodological limitations

Limitations of a literature review (Haddaway et al. 2020 ) are important to acknowledge, particularly for systematic reviews, which must meet methodological rigor in order to produce the best evidence. The relevance and consistency of the research may be compromised when the bibliographic search is incomplete or incorrect. To address this limitation, the support of a librarian from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO, Tasmania) was sought and key-papers related to the research topic were read in advance to help in the construction of robust search strings. Recurrent meetings between the co-authors ensured a common understanding of the meaning of each category and helped homogenize coding of the data. Furthermore, we acknowledge the occurrence of selection and publication biases (Haddaway et al. 2020 ). The choice of specific databases and articles only in English in peer-reviewed publications implies selection and publications biases (Falagas et al. 2008 ). The selection criteria used to refine our search (see “ Data collection ” section) also entails the exclusion of other relevant publications. However, these selection criteria were required to get a manageable number of publications for analysis, and to achieve analysis within approximately 1 year. We acknowledge that the list of publications assessed in this study is not representative of the bulk of the literature on marine conflict. Still, they allow hypothesizing on possible research trends.

Publications on marine conflicts from 2000 to 2020

To gain a quick overview of the main topics in the full set of papers (Output F -WoS search, c.f. Figure  1 ), we used a word cloud. The word cloud shows that the words “management,” “social,” “local,” and “coastal” are most frequently used (Fig.  2 and Table  2 ).

Word cloud of the 203 abstracts representing publications from the Output F of the Web of Science search. The size of the words refers to their frequency of occurrence (see Table  2 )

Conflict was not the primary focus for all the papers that were extracted using the above search terms. In several papers, conflict or conflict resolution was a finding, or by-product, but was not central to the study (i.e., did not provide the impetus for the study). Out of the 227 papers reviewed, we further explored 109 papers that had conflict as a central focus (see Supplementary material for an overview of the 109 articles reviewed). The number of publications focusing on marine conflicts has increased over the course of the past 20 years (Fig.  3 ).

Absolute frequency of publications that study marine conflicts from 2000 to 2020 analysed in this study

An average number of 30.4 publications per year was obtained from the search for 2000–2020. The average number of publications that were included in our analysis was 2.8 per year in the early period (2000–2010) increasing to 8.4 between 2011 and 2020. In 2000, only one publication was kept for analysis out of 8, while in 2020 a total of 10 publications were retained for analysis.

Characterization of marine conflicts in the literature

Coastal and marine conflicts were mostly related to “Control over access to the resource” ( n  = 76) and/or to “Control over how the activity is carried out” ( n  = 74). A total of 46 conflict cases fitted under both categories. The main objects of dispute were space (e.g., over coastal land in Thompson et al. 2016 , and over the ocean space in Usher and Gomez 2017 ) and natural (living) resources such as fish (Maya-Jariego et al. 2017 ), when access of one group was hampered or compromised by the physical presence, activity, or political influence and interference of another group.

The geographic scope

The continents most often represented in the 109 publications are Asia ( n  = 34 studies), followed by America ( n  = 32 studies) and Europe ( n  = 25 studies) (Fig.  4 (a)). Southeast Asia accounted for 56% of Asian-located studies, Northern America accounted for 53% of American studies, Northern Europe accounted for 36% of European marine conflict publications, and Eastern Africa accounted for 50% of Africans studies.

( a1 ) Percentage of studies focusing on different continents ( N  = 109). Studies classified as Global encompass at least one country from each continent. One study included in this category encompasses America, Europe, Middle East, and Asia only. ( a2 ) Absolute frequency of study location, as per the United Nations’ world subregions definition. A total of eight studies encompass two to four subregions, and among those, two encompass subregions from different continents. ( b ) Spatial extent of the conflict studied (in percentage of publications, N  = 109)

A total of 67.9% of the publications are about marine conflicts, while 29.4% report conflicts encompassing both land and sea, and 2.7% cover coastal land only (Fig.  4 (b)).

Conflicting parties, conflict scale, and conflict level

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) were part of a conflict in 60.6% ( n  = 66) of the 109 studies, while public authorities and political parties were cited in 57.8% ( n  = 63) of the selected articles (Fig.  5 (a)). A total of 37.6% ( n  = 41) and 31.2% ( n  = 34) of the studies reported local communities Footnote 5 and conservation Footnote 6 respectively as conflict parties. Fish traders and supply chain actors are the least cited together with science and scientists ( n  = 6 publications for each group).

Identified conflict parties and number of publications (out of N  = 109) citing each party. In (a), Other* includes local investors, pirates, the recreational diving sector, UN naval peacekeeping missions, land invaders, coral mining activity, marine fauna, military actors, paramilitaries, activists, migrants, surfers, recreational beach uses, civil society. In (b), ** refers to blue growth sectors and includes tourism, industry and aquaculture

Temporally, conflicts including the fishing sector were present over the whole period (2000–2020). However, the frequency of citation for each conflict party varied over time (Fig.  5 (b). The small-scale fishing sector was cited in 76% of the publications in the early period (2000–2010) decreasing to 56% for the latter period (2011–2020). The same decreasing trend is observed for conservation, cited in 52% and 26% of the total publications for 2000–2010 and 2011–2020 respectively. The opposite trend is observed for blue growth sectors consisting of industry, tourism and aquaculture, public authorities and political parties, and local communities. For those conflict parties, the average citation rate increases in the publications across decades.

Scale wise, 47.9% ( n  = 45 publications) of the conflicts studied are situated at the local scale (Fig.  5 (c)), followed by 24.8% at the regional scale ( n  = 33 publications), and 17.4% at the international or global scale. The national scale is the least represented with only 5.5% of the publications. Studying conflict at the local scale also reflects the analytical focus. For example, we found that more than half of the small-scale fisheries (SSF) conflicts are at the local scale, with 38.1% focusing on the regional scale. The exception is for conflicts involving the semi- and/or large-scale fishing sector, where conflicts are studied more frequently at the regional scale. Political authorities are the most recurrent party in studies that analyze conflicts on a global or international scale.

Conflicts are more commonly studied at the single level, with most studies focusing on inter micro–macro interactions ( n  = 37) (Fig.  5 (d)). Micro–macro interactions are between a group of direct resource users with a group of indirect resource users. The second most commonly found interactions were micro-micro interactions ( n  = 23). A total of 17 publications addressed conflicts happening both at the inter micro-micro and inter micro–macro levels. Only two publications looked at conflict interactions at three or more levels.

Interactions between different groups of actors are most often the topic of the studied conflicts ( n  = 57 publications). The fishing sector stands out when it comes to conflicts within the same sector (Fig.  6 ), whereas blue growth sectors are mainly involved in conflicts with different sectors. Public authorities and political parties are also part of conflicts involving relationships external to the sectors (e.g., corruption).

Types of conflict relationship per conflict party ( N  = 109). Blue growth sectors combined include tourism, industry, aquaculture

Social science methods used to understand marine and coastal conflict

Primary and secondary data have been used in 56% and 28.4% of the studies respectively, while 15.6% of the publications encompass both primary and secondary data together (Fig.  7 (a)). A qualitative approach was employed in 66% of the publications, while 28.4% applied a mixed approach. Only four articles applied quantitative methods. A single-methods approach was used in 38 studies, whereas 71 studies used two or more, five being the maximum number of methods used by one study (Fig.  7 (b)).

( a ) Data type per study approach. ( b ) Number of methods used by number of publications

Among the methods used to study marine conflicts, the most frequent one was interviews, employed by 70 studies (Fig.  8 ) followed by observations, including ethnographic observation and participant observation, which were used in 40 studies. Content analysis and case studies were undertaken in 38 (34.9%) and 31 (28.4%) studies respectively.

Social science methods used to study coastal and marine conflicts and summary of methods under different conflict scale and different conflict party recorded

Interviews, observation, case study, and surveys are mainly applied at the local level, while content analysis is applied more frequently to regional, international, and global studies.

For studies using content analysis and case study, the most frequent conflicting parties are public authorities and political parties, with 26 and 20 publications respectively. Mapping and modeling is particularly important for conflicts that include small-scale fisheries and conservation.

We investigated further details on the methodologies used, such as date of data collection, period of study, and sample size. However, assessing these results turned out to be challenging. More than 45 cases did not explicitly inform on the date of data collection, nor on the period under study. Regarding the sample size, a variety of units are used to report on the number of participants (e.g., number of participants, number of households, number of focus group discussions, and interviews) and/or of observations (e.g., number of observations, time spent observing). We found no evidence of a shared approach to the definition of these parameters.

This study summarizes the state of marine conflict scholarship by comprehensively reviewing the social science methods applied in the study of coastal and marine conflict. We divide the discussion of our results into three Sects. (4.1 to 4.3). In each section, we highlight the relationship between conflict themes and the use of social science methods, and we highlight topics that could benefit from further research.

A growing field of research

In the last 20 years, conflicts have been the increasing focus of marine sustainability research (Bennett 2018 ) evidenced by the increasing number of publications on this topic over the period 2000–2020. This increasing trend is mirrored in related topics such as marine SES research (Refulio-Coronado et al. 2021 ), and more broadly SES (De Vos et al. 2019 ) and sustainability sciences (Bettencourt and Kaur 2011 ). Increases in the number of publications can be driven by an increase in the relevance of the topic but also, for example, due to greater data availability, enhanced digital means, or greater collaboration and communication among scientists and other stakeholders (Dalton et al. 2020 ; Bettencourt and Kaur 2011 ).

The main themes in marine conflict research relate to keywords such as “management,” “social,” “local,” “coastal,” “resources,” “stakeholders,” “policy,” and “environmental.” The local scale perspective and the specific actors of the conflict who operate at this scale were key Footnote 7 (e.g., “local” was often related to “local communities”). Analysis of the management system in place, or the advice provided through policy recommendations and frameworks for more sustainable resource management were also key at the local scale but also at larger scales.

Causal connections between local social processes and marine resource management (Aswani et al. 2018 ) are an important focus for environment social scientists. For a number of studies that simultaneously address social and environmental spheres, descriptions of coastal social-ecological systems are central for determining conflict situations. We found that marine conflicts predominantly had an ocean-based focus and that the scope of focal conflicts mostly related to fisheries. This may have been due to the inclusion criteria used in the literature search. Nevertheless, from a SES perspective, this is a key finding for developing further understanding of the processes and dynamics shaping the ocean-land interface, particularly when it comes to coastal and marine systems governance and institutions (Tafon et al. 2021 ; Refulio-Coronado et al. 2021 ; Manlosa et al. 2022 ). This is also pertinent at the international level where marine disputes touch upon geopolitical issues (Daniels and Mitchell 2017 ). For instance, the bulk of the studied Asian marine conflicts focused on the South China Sea conflict where China’s activities are in opposition to Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam (Rahman and Tsamenyi 2010 ). From these articles, the marine environment in the South China Sea conflict is less an object of contention than a scene where different countries dispute their power (see Boonstra et al., this collection). European marine geopolitics were also addressed in some studies (e.g., Østhagen and Raspotnik 2018 ; Spijkers and Boonstra 2017 ) but not as frequently as the South China Sea conflict.

There were no studies showcasing international conflicts in Africa and America and no study focused on conflicts over the polar regions. Empirical research on marine conflicts in polar regions is a prospective gap, as already highlighted by Keil ( 2013 ). Under the current warming climate scenario, new maritime routes are opened up as the ice retreats for longer periods, and possibilities for marine resource exploitation increase. Thus, political interests and power constellations between states are (re-)configured, opening the path for new conflicts to emerge (Wegge and Keil 2018 ; Spijkers et al. 2021 ).

We acknowledge several shortcomings in this research with respect to regional findings. The results may ensue from the way our search strings were formulated, whereby search string B (see “ Data collection ” section above) contained key-words specific to the marine domain, although our subsequent selection criteria included the coastal realm. The use of Scopus and WoS may also introduce an intrinsic bias, as these databases contain a disproportionate amount of Southeast Asian, European, and North American publications at the expense of academic productions coming from the Global South (Tennant 2020 ).

Blue growth sectors are increasingly part of the marine conflict narrative

Understanding the number of conflicting parties involved in a dispute can give a sense of the complexity of the conflict. An average of 3.8 parties are cited per study, suggesting that most conflicts involve two or more stakeholder groups. Small-scale fishers, public authorities and political parties, and local communities are the most common actors in conflict. As also outlined in the previous section, marine conflict scholars have mostly focused on fisheries social-ecological systems (Dahlet et al. 2021 ). However, the diversity in the number and type of conflicting parties increases from 2005. Blue growth sectors are increasingly part of the conflict narrative while the small-scale fisheries sector is less of a focus. The proportionate decrease in focus on small-scale fishers’ conflict may have implications, given the context of poverty and vulnerability in many of these fisheries (Béné 2003 ; Jentoft et al. 2018 ; Nayak et al. 2014 ). The reduced focus on SSFs could be a result of a switch toward an increasing attention to local communities as main parties of blue growth conflicts, as suggested by our results. Other possible explanations include that conflict is less of an issue in the SSF sector or that it has been resolved, but we have no evidence to support this assertion.

The growing complexity of marine conflict is evident in our data as the blue economy focus expands and advances (Silver et al. 2015 ). The blue economy agenda is a new turn in the development and intensification of activities based on the exploitation of ocean resources or ocean space. The blue economy may push the ocean’s geological boundaries out and down, toward, for example, deeper water fish resources and mineral resources. By exploring further and deeper environments, that are beyond the limits of national jurisdiction, a new arena of potential conflict may be introduced (Carver 2019 ). This is particularly problematic due to weak institutional governance in high seas (Ardron et al. 2013 ). A case in point may be deep seabed-mining where international exploitation regulations are not yet in place but where activities are planned (Carver 2019 ). Even though deep seabed-mining has already been a source of litigation (Levin et al. 2020 ), it does not appear in the marine conflict literature (as per our search).

In parallel to the blue growth push, there has also been a global growth of 4.6% per year (between 1984 and 2006) in conservation initiatives, mainly in the form of marine protected areas (MPAs) (Wood et al. 2008 ). Within areas of national jurisdiction (EEZs), protected area coverage increased up to 18.01% over the last 10 years (UNEP-WCMC, IUCN, and NGS 2021 ). Of the 34 publications we found where conflicts involve conservation parties, half of them are directly related to MPAs within areas of national jurisdiction, with only one publication mentioning the case of protected areas beyond national jurisdiction. As knowledge on local socio-ecological processes for MPA implementation has grown over time (Gallacher et al. 2016 ), and as MPAs are potentially increasingly legitimized by local communities (Ferse et al. 2010 ), conflict arising around conservation might be reduced. This would be in line with a decrease in the number of papers on conservation related conflict in our findings. However, if conservation efforts are to continue in the areas beyond EEZ, new conflict-related challenges may arise from their implementation and management in the future.

Overall, our results suggest that marine conflict research is moving into a new setting, where the oceans are squeezed between the expansion of the blue economy sectors and conservation initiatives beyond EEZs. Thus evolves the landscape of marine conflicts: different constellations of conflict actors are expected to emerge with diverse power relations, and whose geographic area of contestation may move to more offshore zones or to the bottom of the seas.

Marine conflict research remains mainly local, context-based

The literature on coastal and marine SESs focuses mainly on the relationship between local user groups directly involved in the resource use (Refulio-Coronado et al. 2021 ). This is mirrored in the literature on marine conflicts that is also mainly at the local and regional scales focused on resource user groups who are directly involved in the resource use. There appears to be a gap in marine conflict studies that address conflicts within one user group and conflicts between non-user groups.

Conflict complexity (i.e., the number of stakeholders) tends to be greater at the local scale. While acknowledging the limitations of our literature search, it may be that empirically based conflict research is more tractable at the smaller scale and less commonly applied at larger scales. Some sectors such as fish traders and recreational boating are simply not included in research addressing conflicts at the international or global scale. Small-scale fisheries and local communities in contrast are present in cross-national conflicts, albeit at a lesser extent than in sub-national conflicts. Small-scale fishers and local communities may not participate at international or global levels of decision-making, due to lack of inclusion, or due to capacity and logistical impediments. In contrast, NGOs and international bodies are key actors at the global and regional scales (Bennett et al. 2017 ) but are overall not much explored by marine conflict scholars based on our findings. Our conclusion is that overall, there is room for more cross-scale and cross-level analysis of marine conflicts to gain greater resolution on stakeholder participation at all levels.

Methods applied in marine conflict studies and implications for the results

Marine conflicts are mostly explored qualitatively, rather than using a mixed or quantitative approach. The poor representation of the quantitative approach in our sample may be explained by the fact that we may have missed some quantitative-oriented publications due to our search criteria. In our corpus of publications, 31 studies adopt a mixed method approach, but only few included both qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g., Maya-Jariego et al. 2017 ). As in De Vos et al. ( 2019 ), we had few studies that draw on the collection of, for instance, biological or oceanographic data. Exceptions were found among the studies focusing on conflicts related to marine protected areas (e.g., Bloomfield et al. 2012 ). This is a potential gap, given the growing need to consider the environmental change-social conflict nexus as the impacts of local anthropogenic activities are felt globally. We argue that efforts toward an interdisciplinary science that concatenates methodological approaches from the natural and social sciences may result in a more holistic and dynamic picture of the drivers of marine conflicts.

Multi-methods conflict studies often combine the output from interviews, observations, case study analysis, and content analysis (Harrison et al. 2017 ; Bennett et al. 2017 ). This choice of methods might indicate a primary interest in contextually grounded research that enlightens local particularities and complexities of the focal conflict. Interviews are the most recurrent method used by marine conflict scholars as it also is in sustainability science (Mielke et al. 2017 ). Interviews can provide foundational evidence to build a case study and offer an in-depth understanding of a context-based situation through an analysis of the complex social, ecological, political, and economic processes which precede and drive the emergence of conflict. Observation, case study, group discussions, and surveys, which are among the six most used methods in marine conflict research, are also mainly applied at the local level (Shackleton et al. 2022 ). The preference given to these methods might partly explain why marine conflicts are mostly pictured at the single and local-based level, as shown by our results and those in other resource management studies (De Vos et al. 2019 ). Marine conflict research places a great emphasis on the description of social, economic, and political variables that make up the studied conflict. On the other hand, an explicit spatial component is rarely included in the analysis, omitting an important dimension of marine conflicts related to resource use and spatial competition.

From a complex adaptive systems (CAS) perspective, Preiser et al. ( 2018 ) demonstrate how the choice of methodological approaches influence how the results will reflect different features of CAS. The principal methods used by marine conflict scholars acknowledge the “contextual” (i.e., CAS are context-dependent) and “radically open” (i.e., the influence of external variables on the system) features of a system (Preiser et al. 2018 ). The fact that a higher diversity of methods is employed by studies at the local scales than at regional to global scales may either indicate that conflict complexity is enhanced at local scales, or that challenges are greater when collecting data at larger scales.

Generating primary data engages with ideals of participative research needed to address sustainability challenges (Mielke et al. 2017 ; Campbell 2002 ). However, the rationale for the use, modalities (i.e., at what stage of the research are other stakeholders involved) and operationalization of such principles as well as those drawing from the transdisciplinary research approach (Lang et al. 2012 ) are seldom developed in marine conflict studies. Difficulties in implementing participatory approaches or in accessing data may explain why, according to our results, conflicts at the national and multinational scale are less frequent. Participatory approaches are particularly challenging to implement in relation to certain actors like transnational corporations involved in the seafood industry and other blue industries. This is critical since transnational corporations play an incommensurate role over marine social-ecological systems’ dynamics (Österblom et al. 2015 ). However, mistrust and an unwillingness to share information may be a factor. Similar challenges for primary data collection relate to high-level public authorities. Interestingly, this group of stakeholders is among the most cited conflict actors, particularly when studies make use of content analysis techniques. Content analysis and case studies using secondary data prove to be important methods on which marine conflict scholars can rely to circumvent potential challenges associated with participatory data collection approaches. This holds particularly true for regional and (inter)national cases. Survey and content analysis find much relevance at this greater scale analyses—including during the COVID-19 pandemic, which hampered field trips and in situ data collection. Among the reviewed documents in such studies were public records of meetings and fishing management plans (e.g., Boucquey 2016 ), legislative (e.g., Clarke and Jupiter 2010 ; Tafon 2019 ), and media content (e.g., Scobie et al. 2020 ). In cases where participatory approaches are successfully applied, secondary data can provide further valuable perspectives on the conflict, enabling a better understanding of the different subjectivities that lie behind research participants’ perceptions.

Potential and challenges of different research methods

Although a wide range of methods are used in marine conflict research, some remain under-explored. Marine conflicts are primarily about dynamic social and social-ecological relations. However, we find that methods that assess the “relational” feature of marine conflicts (Preiser et al. 2018 ) are not frequently used. Bodin et al. ( 2020 ) argue that environmental governance studies mostly focus on conflict as isolated phenomenon. Conflicts are less often analyzed in relation to the network of relationships, including collaboration, in which they are embedded.

Network analysis can help to understand relational features and has had extensive use within the social-ecological sciences (Sayles et al. 2019 ). Network analysis can provide an understanding of complex relationships between a set of different groups of actors, and between humans and their environment. Social networks were analyzed in three different small-scale fisheries catch zones to enlighten the power dynamics in a conflict opposing artisanal fisheries, to the industrial fisheries, oil extraction, and tourism sectors (Maya-Jariego et al. 2017 ). Social-ecological networks hold great potential to explore the causal complexity behind environmental change and social conflict.

Stakeholder analysis is also a method that can help discern the types of relationship that prevail. The usefulness of stakeholder analysis has already been acknowledged in relation to understanding natural resource management conflicts (e.g., Reed et al. 2009 ) but few marine conflict scholars have explored this, in particular in international conflicts. It is noted though that the process of stakeholder analysis can cause or exacerbate conflict in and by itself (Ramírez 1999 ). This may happen, for instance, if the convener is unaware of the dominant cultural norms and values, or power relationships. A sense of vulnerability or exposure may develop among participants, which in turn can exacerbate conflict.

In-depth historical accounts of the origin and/or causal mechanisms that lead to the emergence of the conflict were not frequently implemented (but see Afroz et al. 2017 ; Bustos and Román 2019 ; Blanchard 2009 ). Participant observation and social-ecological experiments are among the methods that allow capturing “complex causality” (Preiser et al. 2018 ). Furthermore, we suggest that a powerful tool to capture causal explanations, highlight non-linearity and thresholds in the process leading to the conflict, is the process-tracing method (Collier 2011 ). Process-tracing requires a theorization of the process(es) in focus, as well as an accurate explanation on how the empirical combined with meta data allow causality derivation (Beach 2017 ). By understanding the mechanisms that drive the emergence of conflicts, conflict management and prevention can be facilitated. Process tracing was used in only three publications (published in 2013, 2017 and 2018) out of 109. This low number may be due to (1) the recent introduction, or adoption of process-tracing to study marine conflicts (for an application, see, e.g., Spijkers and Boonstra 2017); or (2) the lack of a systematic framework for this approach which makes it difficult to operationalize the method (Boonstra et al., this collection).

It is important to be aware of potential biases in systematic reviews such as this one. For example, we analyzed only a limited number of publications that were selected according to criteria related to feasibility needs (see “ Methodological limitations ” section above). However, this method has proven effective as our findings seize important features and tendencies in the current empirical coastal and marine conflict scholarship. We hope this can serve as a baseline for future scholars to frame their research, cognizant of existing potentialities and gaps.

Conclusions and recommendations for future research

The world’s oceans are changing at a rapid pace, along with related patterns of marine resource use, perceptions, power relations, and other variables. Marine conflicts emerge and evolve, often negatively impacting the sustainability of social-ecological systems. This systematic literature review takes stock of the social science methods used in the burgeoning marine conflict scholarship. The in-depth analyses of 109 studies, published between 2000 and 2020, reveals that marine conflict empirical research is increasingly expanding to include blue economy conflict issues. Blue economy sectors, public authorities, and local communities are increasingly cited as marine conflict parties. There is less focus on the previously dominant fisheries sector in the empirical conflict literature. Some important blue economy actors, such as the deep sea mining industry, transnational sea food traders, and the global maritime transport, are under-researched but are likely to be important actors in future marine conflict (both in terms of space and resource access).

The marine and terrestrial realm are rarely approached as a continuum in conflict studies, and studies are mostly undertaken at the local and regional scales as opposed to the international or global scale. The strong engagement of marine conflict research with principles of participative research is reflected by the main methods used, namely interview, case study, group discussion, and survey. In contexts where a participatory research approach is challenging, for instance at the international and global scale, we suggest that content analysis of documents may be an important method for perspectives on a conflict. Marine conflict research would also benefit from a greater focus on the structure and dynamics of relationships between conflict actors (i.e., network analysis), and historical developments and causal mechanisms that lead to, and can explain, the conflict (i.e., process tracing).

Given the current sustainability challenges and global threats to our oceans, it would seem timely to increase our research efforts at multiple levels with broad stakeholder representation. Further insights on international conflict and power relationships dynamics are needed to ensure adequate international management of new blue economy activities (e.g., renewable energy, deep seabed mining). The techniques reviewed in this study will need to be complemented by new approaches that can deal with the growing complexity of coastal and marine conflicts.

Data Availability

The dataset generated by this study is available upon request from the corresponding author.

Conflict transformation/resolution is however out of our scope of analysis.

The NO CRISES project is funded by the Belmont Forum over the period 2020–2023 and brings together an interdisciplinary group of scientists.

Free translation of LID from original text in French.

There are various synonyms for the word “conflict” which is however the most widely used to study the topic. We thus decided to only focus on articles that use the term “conflict” to gain insights on how conflict is conceptualized. To focus our analysis, papers only addressing “resolution” were subsequently excluded.

Local communities correspond to any social group other than SSF, belonging to local communities.

The “conservation”: category refers to entities with no party specified, but that relate to coastal and marine conservation, e.g., mostly Marine Protected Areas. Instead, conservation parties linked to public authorities were categorized as “Public authorities and Political parties,” while those belonging to Non-Governmental Organizations were marked under the category of the same name.

This emphasis on a local-based perspective is further discussed in the next section.

References   

Abdullah, Abu Nasar, Bronwyn Myers, Natasha Stacey, Kerstin K. Zander, and Stephen T. Garnett. 2017. The impact of the expansion of shrimp aquaculture on livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh. Environment, Development and Sustainability 19 (5): 2093–2114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-016-9824-5 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Afroz, Sharmin, Rob Cramb, and Clemens Grünbühel. 2017. Exclusion and counter-exclusion: The struggle over shrimp farming in a coastal village in Bangladesh. Development and Change 48 (4): 692–720. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12310 .

Andrews, Nathan, Nathan J. Bennett, Philippe Le Billon, Stephanie J. Green, Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor, Sandra Amongin, Noella J. Gray, and U. Rashid Sumaila. 2021. Oil, fisheries and coastal communities: a review of impacts on the environment, livelihoods, space and governance. Energy Research and Social Science 75: 102009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102009 .

Ardron, Jeff, Elisabeth Druel, Kristina Gjerde, Katherine Houghton, Julien Rochette & Sebastian Unger. 2013. Advancing governance of the high seas. IASS Policy Brief 1/2013. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam (IASS) e.V. Potsdam, Germany. 11 pp. Available online: https://publications.iass-potsdam.de/rest/items/item_301427_4/component/file_301426/content . Accessed 17 June 2022.

Aswani, S. 2019. Perspectives in coastal human ecology (CHE) for marine conservation. Biological Conservation 236: 223–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.05.047 .

Aswani, Shankar, Xavier Basurto, Sebastian Ferse, Marion Glaser, Lisa Campbell, Joshua E. Cinner, Tracey Dalton, et al. 2018. Marine resource management and conservation in the Anthropocene. Environmental Conservation 45 (2): 192–202. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892917000431 .

Bavinck, Maarten, Lorenzo Pellegrini, and Erik Mostert. 2014. Conflicts over natural resources in the Global South. Conceptual Approaches , 224. Croydon: Taylor & Francis Group.

Book   Google Scholar  

Bax, Narissa, Camilla Novaglio, Kimberley H. Maxwell, Koen Meyers, Joy McCann, Sarah Jennings, Stewart Frusher, et al. 2021. Ocean resource use: Building the coastal blue economy. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 32: 189–207. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-021-09636-0 .

Beach, Derek. 2017. Process-tracing methods in social science. Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Politics . https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.176 .

Béné, Christophe. 2003. When fishery rhymes with poverty: A first step beyond the old paradigm on poverty. World Development 31 (6): 949–975. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(03)00045-7 .

Bennett, Nathan J. 2018. Navigating a just and inclusive path towards sustainable oceans. Marine Policy 97: 139–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2018.06.001 .

Bennett, Nathan J. 2019. Marine social science for the peopled seas. Coastal Management 47 (2): 244–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2019.1564958 .

Bennett, Nathan J., Robin Roth, Sarah C. Klain, Kai Chan, Patrick Christie, Douglas A. Clark, Georgina Cullman, et al. 2017. Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation. Biological Conservation 205: 93–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2016.10.006 .

Bettencourt, Luís. M..A.., and Jasleen Kaur. 2011. Evolution and structure of sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (49): 19540–19545. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1102712108 .

Blanchard, Jean-Marc F. 2009. Economics and Asia-Pacific region territorial and maritime disputes. Politics 1 (4): 682–708.

Google Scholar  

Bloomfield, Helen J., Christopher J. Sweeting, Aileen Mill, Selina N. Stead, and Nick V.C.. Polunin. 2012. No-trawl area impacts: Perceptions, compliance and fish abundances. Environmental Conservation 39 (3): 237–247. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892912000112P .

Bodin, Örjan., María Mancilla. García, and Garry Robins. 2020. Reconciling conflict and cooperation in environmental governance: A social network perspective. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 45: 471–495. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-011020-064352 .

Boucquey, Noëlle. C. 2016. Actors and audiences: Negotiating fisheries management. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 18 (4): 426–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2015.1116377 .

Bustos, Beatriz, and Álvaro. Román. 2019. A sea uprooted: islandness and political identity on Chiloé Island. Chile. Island Studies Journal 14 (2): 97–114. https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.91 .

Campbell, John. 2002. A critical appraisal of participatory methods in development research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 5 (1): 19–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645570110098046 .

Carver, Rosanna. 2019. Resource sovereignty and accumulation in the blue economy: The case of seabed mining in Namibia. Journal of Political Ecology 26 (1): 381–402. https://doi.org/10.2458/v26i1.23025 .

Chakraborty, Shamik, Shantanu Kumar Saha, and Samiya Ahmed Selim. 2020. Recreational services in tourism dominated coastal ecosystems: bringing the non-economic values into focus. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism 30: 100279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jort.2020.100279 .

Charles, Anthony T. 1992. Fishery conflicts. A Unified Framework. Marine Policy 16 (5): 379–393. https://doi.org/10.1016/0308-597X(92)90006-B .

Clarke, Pepe, and Stacy D. Jupiter. 2010. Law, custom and community-based natural resource management in Kubulau District (Fiji). Environmental Conservation 37 (1): 98–106. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892910000354 .

Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. 2013. Guidelines for Systematic Review and Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management. Version 4.2. Environmental Evidence. www.environmentalevidence.org/Documents/Guidelines/Guidelines4.2.pdf . Accessed Oct 2020.

Collier, David. 2011. Understanding process tracing. PS - Political Science and Politics 44 (4): 823–830. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096511001429 .

Collier, Paul, Anke Hoeffler, and Måns. Söderbom. 2004. On the duration of civil war. Journal of Peace Research 41 (3): 253–273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343304043769 .

Cox, Michael. 2015. A basic guide for empirical environmental social science. Ecology and Society 20 (1): 63. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07400-200163 .

Dahlet, Lol I., Amber Himes-Cornell, and Rebecca Metzner. 2021. Fisheries conflicts as drivers of social transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 53: 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2021.03.011 .

Dalton, Kathryn, Marlena Skrobe, Henry Bell, Benjamin Kantner, Dave Berndtson, Leopoldo C. Gerhardinger, and Patrick Christie. 2020. Marine-related learning networks: Shifting the paradigm toward collaborative ocean governance. Frontiers in Marine Science . https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.595054 .

Daniels, Kelly, and Sara Mclaughlin Mitchell. 2017. Bones of democratic contention: maritime disputes. International Area Studies Review 20 (4): 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1177/2233865917740269 .

Falagas, Matthew E., Eleni I. Pitsouni, George A. Malietzis, and Georgios Pappas. 2008. Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: Strengths and weaknesses. The FASEB Journal 22 (2): 338–342. https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.07-9492lsf .

Ferse, Sebastian, Maria Máñez. Costa, Kathleen Schwerdtner Máñez, Dedi S. Adhuri, and Marion Glaser. 2010. Allies, not aliens: Increasing the role of local communities in marine protected area implementation. Environmental Conservation 37 (1): 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892910000172 .

Gallacher, J., H. Natascha Simmonds, N. Fellowes, N. Brown, et al. 2016. Evaluating the success of a marine protected area: a systematic review approach. Journal of Environmental Management 183 (1): 280–293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.08.029 .

Glaeser, Bernhard, Karl Bruckmeier, Marion Glaser, and Gesche Krause. 2015. Social-ecological systems analysis in coastal and marine areas: a path toward integration of interdisciplinary knowledge. In Current Trends in Human Ecology, ed. Lopes & Begossi, 83–203. London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Glaser, Marion, Gesche Krause, Beate M.W.. Ratter, and Martin Welp. 2012. Human-nature interactions in the anthropocene . Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203123195 .

González, Velarde, and Fernando. 2019. Land struggles in vulnerable coastal territories: Tourism development in Mancora, Peru. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 110 (1): 70–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12341 .

Goyes, David Rodríguez. 2021. Environmental crime in Latin America and Southern Green criminology. Criminology and Criminal Justice . https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.588 .

Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. 2009. A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal 26 (2): 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x .

Haddaway, Neal R., Paul Woodcock, Biljana Macura, and Alexandra Collins. 2015. Making literature reviews more reliable through application of lessons from systematic reviews. Conservation Biology 29 (6): 1596–1605. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12541 .

Haddaway, Neal R., Alison Bethel, Lynn V. Dicks, Julia Koricheva, Biljana Macura, Gillian Petrokofsky, Andrew S. Pullin, Sini Savilaakso, and Gavin B. Stewart. 2020. Eight problems with literature reviews and how to fix them. Nature Ecology and Evolution 4 (12): 1582–1589. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-01295-x .

Harper, Sarah, Anne K. Salomon, Dianne Newell, Pauline Hilistis Waterfall, Kelly Brown, Leila M. Harris, and U. Rashid Sumaila. 2018. Indigenous women respond to fisheries conflict and catalyze change in governance on Canada’s Pacific coast. Maritime Studies 17 (2): 189–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0101-0 .

Harrison, Helena, Melanie Birks, Richard Franklin, and Jane Mills. 2017. Case study research: foundations and methodological orientations. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung 18 (1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-18.1.2655 .

Harvey, David. 1993. The nature of environment: the dialectics of social and environmental change. The Socialist Register 29:1–51.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. 1991. On the threshold: Environmental changes as causes of acute conflict. International Security 16 (2): 76–116. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539061 .

Hooper, Tara, Caroline Hattam, and Melanie Austen. 2017. Recreational use of offshore wind farms: Experiences and opinions of sea anglers in the UK. Marine Policy 78: 55–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.01.013 .

Jentoft, Svein, Maarten Bavinck, Enrique Alonso-Población, Anna Child, Antonio Diegues, Daniela Kalikoski, John Kurien, et al. 2018. Working together in small-scale fisheries: Harnessing collective action for poverty eradication. Maritime Studies 17 (1): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0094-8 .

Jouffray, Jean-Baptiste., Robert Blasiak, Albert V. Norström, Henrik Österblom, and Magnus Nyström. 2020. The blue acceleration: The trajectory of human expansion into the ocean. One Earth 2 (1): 43–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.016 .

Kates, Robert W., William C. Clark, J. Robert Corell, Michael Hall, Carlo C. Jaeger, Ian Lowe, James J. McCarthy, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Bert Bolin, Nancy M. Dickson, Sylvie Faucheux, Gilberto C. Gallopin, Arnulf Griibler, Brian Huntley, Jill Jager, Narpat S. Jodha, Roger E. Kasperson, Akin Mabogunje, Pamela Matson, Harold Mooney, Berrien Moore Ill, Timothy O’Riordan, and Uno Svedin. 2001. Sustainability Science. Science 292 (5517): 641–642.

Keil, Kathrin. 2013. The Arctic: A new region of conflict? The case of oil and gas. Cooperation and Conflict 49 (2): 162–190. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836713482555 .

Kinseng, Rilus A., Fredian Tonny Nasdian, Anna Fatchiya, Amir Mahmud, and Richard J. Stanford. 2018. Marine-tourism development on a small island in Indonesia: Blessing or curse? Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research 23 (11): 1062–1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/10941665.2018.1515781 .

Kriesberg, Louis. 1982. Social conflict theories and conflict resolution. Peace & Change 8 (2–3): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.1982.tb00644.x .

Lang, Daniel J., Arnim Wiek, Matthias Bergmann, Michael Stauffacher, Pim Martens, Peter Moll, Mark Swilling, and Christopher J. Thomas. 2012. Transdisciplinary research in sustainability science: Practice, principles, and challenges. Sustainability Science 7 (SUPPL. 1): 25–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-011-0149-x .

Levin, Lisa A., Diva J. Amon, and Hannah Lily. 2020. Challenges to the sustainability of deep-seabed mining. Nature Sustainability 3: 784–794. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0558-x .

Liberati, Alessandro, Douglas G. Altman, Jennifer Tetzlaff, Cynthia Mulrow, Peter C. Gøtzsche, et al. 2009. The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: explanation and elaboration. PLOS Medicine 6 (7): e1000100. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000100 .

Link, Jason S., and Reg A. Watson. 2019. Global ecosystem overfishing: Clear delineation within real limits to production. Science Advances 5 (6): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav0474 .

Manlosa, Aisa O., Achim Schlüter, and Anna-Katharina. Hornidge. 2022. Governing land-sea interactions: an urgent necessity in the Anthropocene. Rural 21 (1): 4–7 ( https://www.rural21.com/fileadmin/downloads/2022/en-01/Rural21_1_2022.pdf ).

Martinez-Alier, Joan. 2006. Los conflictos ecológico-distributivos y los indicadores de sustentabilidade. Polis 13.   http://journals.openedition.org/polis/5359 .  Accessed Sept 2022.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1848. Manifeste Du Parti Communiste . Edited by Jean-Marie Tremblay. Les Classiques Des Sciences Sociales. Chicoutimi. https://socialpolicy.ucc.ie/Literature_collection/Manifest_French.pdf . Accessed Apr 2021.

Maya-Jariego, Isidro, José F. Querevalú-Miñán, Lourdes G. Varela, and Javier Ávila. 2017. Escape the lion cage: Social networks by catch zones of small-scale fisheries in the oil settlement of Lobitos (Peru). Marine Policy 81: 340–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.04.010 .

Merriam, Sharan B. 2009. Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mielke, Jahel, Hannah Vermassen, and Saskia Ellenbeck. 2017. Ideals, practices, and future prospects of stakeholder involvement in sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (50): E10648–E10657. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706085114 .

Moher, David, Alessandro Liberati, Jennifer Tetzlaff, Douglas G. Altman, Doug Altman, Gerd Antes, David Atkins, et al. 2009. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Medicine 6 (7): e1000097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097 .

Moher, David, Lesley Stewart, and Paul Shekelle. 2015. All in the family: systematic reviews, rapid reviews, scoping reviews, realist reviews, and more. Systematic Reviews 4 (183). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-015-0163-7 .

Nayak, Prateep K., Luiz E. Oliveira, and Fikret Berkes. 2014. Resource degradation, marginalization, and poverty in small-scale fisheries: threats to social-ecological resilience in India and Brazil. Ecology and Society 19 (2): 73.  https://doi.org/10.5751/es-06656-190273 .

Nyhus, Philip J. 2016. Human-wildlife conflict and coexistence. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41: 143–171. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085634 .

Oberschall, Anthony. 1978. Theories of social conflict. Annual Review of Sociology 4: 291–315. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.04.080178.001451 .

Österblom, Henrik, Jean-Baptiste. Jouffray, Carl Folke, Beatrice Crona, Max Troell, Andrew Merrie, and Johan Rockström. 2015. Transnational corporations as ‘Keystone Actors’ in Marine Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 10 (5): e0127533. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127533 .

Østhagen, Andreas, and Andreas Raspotnik. 2018. Crab! How a dispute over snow crab became a diplomatic headache between Norway and the EU. Marine Policy 98: 58–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2018.09.007 .

Ostrom, Elinor. 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science 325 (5939): 419–422. https://doi.org/10.5055/jem.2013.0130 .

Pellowe, Kara E., and Heather M. Leslie. 2020. The interplay between formal and informal institutions and the potential for co-management in a Mexican small-scale fishery. Marine Policy 121: 104179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104179 .

Philippe, Le Billon. 2001. The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts. Political geography 20 (5): 561–584. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00015-4 .

Picard, Dominique, Edmond Marc. 2015. La notion de conflit. In Les conflits relationnels , ed. Presses Universitaires de France, 7–17. https://www.cairn.info/--.htm . Accessed Apr 2021.

Preiser, Rika, Reinette Biggs, Alta De Vos, and Carl Folke. 2018. Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: Organizing principles for advancing research methods and approaches. Ecology and Society 23 (4): 46. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10558-230446 .

Preiser, Rika, María Mancilla García, Lloyd Hill and Louis Klein. Qualitative content analysis. 2022. In The Routledge handbook of research methods for social-ecological systems , ed. Reinette Biggs, Alta de Vos, Rika Preiser, Hayley Clements, Kristine Maciejewski, Maja Schlüter, 270–281. New York: Routledge

Pullin, Andrew, and Gavin B. Stewart. 2006. Guidelines for systematic review in conservation and environmental management. Conservation Biology 20 (6): 1647–1656. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00485.x .

Rahman, Chris, and Martin Tsamenyi. 2010. A strategic perspective on security and naval issues in the South China Sea. Ocean Development and International Law 41 (4): 315–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/00908320.2010.499277 .

Ramirez R. 1999. Stakeholder analysis and conflict management. In Cultivating peace: Conflict and collaboration in natural resource management , ed. Daniel Buckles, 121-126. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre.  http://lib.icimod.org/record/10360/files/1344.pdf . Accessed Feb 2023

Reed, Mark S., Anil Graves, Norman Dandy, Helena Posthumus, et al. 2009. Who’s in and why? A typology of stakeholder analysis methods for natural resource management. Journal of Environmental Management 90 (5): 1933–1949. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2009.01.001 .

Refulio-Coronado, Sonia, Katherine Lacasse, Tracey Dalton, Austin Humphries, Suchandra Basu, Hirotsugu Uchida, and Emi Uchida. 2021. Coastal and marine socio-ecological systems: A systematic review of the literature. Frontiers in Marine Science 8: 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.648006 .

Rocheleau, Diane E. 1995. Gender and biodiversity: A feminist political ecology perspective. IDS Bulletin 26 (1): 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1759-5436.1995.mp26001002.x .

Saint-Paul, Ulrich. 2006. Interrelations among mangroves, the local economy and social sustainability: a review from a case study in North Brazil. In Environment and Livelihoods in Tropical Coastal Zones: Managing Agriculture-Fishery-Aquaculture Conflicts , ed. Hoanh et al., 154–162. Wallingford: CABI.

Sakuwa, Kentaro. 2017. The regional consequences of territorial disputes: An empirical analysis of the South China sea disputes. Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 4 (3): 316–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/2347797017732228 .

Sayles, J.S., M. Mancilla Garcia, M. Hamilton, S.M. Alexander, J.A. Baggio, A.P. Fischer, K. Ingold, G.R. Meredith, and J. Pittman. 2019. Social-ecological network analysis for sustainability sciences: a systematic review and innovative research agenda for the future. Environmental Research Letters 14 (9): 093003. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2619 .

Scheidel, Arnim, Daniela Del Bene, Juan Liu, Grettel Navas, Sara Mingorría, Federico Demaria, Sofía Avila, Brototi Roy, Irmak Ertör, Leah Temper, Joan Martínez-Alier. 2020. Environmental conflicts and defenders: a global overview. Global Environmental Change 63:102104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102104

Schill, Caroline, Nanda Wijermans, Maja Schlüter, and Therese Lindahl. 2016. Cooperation is not enough—exploring social-ecological micro-foundations for sustainable Common-Pool Resource Use. PLoS ONE 11 (8): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157796 .

Schulze, Jule, Birgit Müller, Jürgen Groeneveld, and Volker Grimm. 2017. Agent-based modelling of social-ecological systems: achievements, challenges, and a way forward. Jasss 20 (2) 8. https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.3423 .

Scobie, Matthew Russell, Markus J. Milne, and Tyron Rakeiora Love. 2020. Dissensus and Democratic accountability in a case of conflict. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 33 (5): 939–964. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-11-2016-2780 .

Seto, Katherine. L., Kelly J. Easterday, Denis W. Aheto, Godfred A. Asiedu, U. Rashid Sumaila and Kaitlyn M. Gaynor. 2023. Evidence of spatial competition, over resource scarcity, as a primary driver of conflicts between small-scale and industrial fishers. Ecology and Society 28(1):6. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13650-280106

Shackleton, Sheona, Joana Carlos Bezerra, Jessica Cockburn, Maureen G. Reed, and Razak Abu. 2022. Interviews and surveys. In The Routledge handbook of research methods for social-ecological systems , ed. Reinette Biggs, Alta de Vos, Rika Preiser, Hayley Clements, Kristine Maciejewski, and Maja Schlüter, 107–118. New York: Routledge.

Silver, Jennifer J., Noella J. Gray, Lisa M. Campbell, Luke W. Fairbanks, and Rebecca L. Gruby. 2015. Blue economy and competing discourses in international oceans governance. Journal of Environment and Development 24 (2): 135–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496515580797 .

Simmel, Georg. 1904. The sociology of conflict. I. American Journal of Sociology 9 (4): 490–525. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2762175

Simmel, Georg. 1904b. The sociology of conflict. II” American Journal Of Sociology , 672–89. https://doi.org/10.1086/211248 .

Spijkers, Jessica, and Wiebren J. Boonstra. 2017. Environmental change and social conflict: The Northeast Atlantic Mackerel dispute. Regional Environmental Change 17 (6): 1835–1851. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-017-1150-4 .

Spijkers, Jessica, Andrew Merrie, Colette C.C.. Wabnitz, Matthew Osborne, Malin Mobjörk, Örjan. Bodin, Elizabeth R. Selig, et al. 2021. Exploring the future of fishery conflict through narrative scenarios. One Earth 4 (3): 386–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.02.004 .

Spijkers, Jessica, Gerald Singh, Robert Blasiak, Tiffany H. Morrison, Philippe Le Billon, and Henrik Österblom. 2019. Global patterns of fisheries conflict: forty years of data. Global Environmental Change 57 (May). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.05.005 .

Stepanova, Olga, and Karl Bruckmeier. 2013. The relevance of environmental conflict research for coastal management. A review of concepts, approaches and methods with a focus on Europe. Ocean and Coastal Management 75: 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2013.01.007 .

Stocker, James. 2017. No EEZ solution: the politics of oil and gas in the Eastern Mediterranean. Middle East Journal 66 (4): 579–97 ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/23361618 ).

Stojanovic, Tim A., and Carson J. Farmer. 2013. The development of world oceans & coasts and concepts of sustainability. Marine Policy 42: 157–165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2013.02.005 .

Tafon, Ralph V. 2019. Small-scale fishers as allies or opponents? Unlocking looming tensions and potential exclusions in Poland’s marine spatial planning. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 21 (6): 637–648. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1661235 .

Tafon, Ralph, Bruce Glavovic, Fred Saunders, and Michael Gilek. 2021. Oceans of conflict: pathways to an ocean sustainability PACT. Planning Practice and Research 37 (2): 213–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2021.1918880

Tennant, Jonathan P. 2020. Web of Science and Scopus are not global databases of knowledge. European Science Editing 46: e51987. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2020.e51987 .

Thompson, Cameron, Teresa Johnson, and Samuel Hanes. 2016. Vulnerability of fishing communities undergoing gentrification. Journal of Rural Studies. 45: 165–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.03.008 .

Timans, Rob, Paul Wouters, and Johan Heilbron. 2019. Mixed methods research: What it is and what it could be. Theory and Society 48: 193–216. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09345-5 .

Turner, Jonathan H. 1975. Marx and Simmel revisited: Reassessing the foundations of conflict theory. Social Forces 53 (4): 618. https://doi.org/10.2307/2576477 .

Turner, Robert Kerry. 2000. Integrating natural and socio-economic science in coastal management. Journal of Marine Systems 3–4: 447–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0924-7963(00)00033-6 .

UNEP-WCMC, IUCN, and NGS. 2021. Protected Planet Report 2020. Cambridge, Gland.  https://livereport.protectedplanet.net/ . Accessed May 2022.

Usher, Lindsay E., and Edwin Gomez. 2017. Managing stoke: crowding, conflicts, and coping among virginia beach surfers. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration 35 (2): 9–24. https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2017-V35-I2-7596 .

Vos, De., Reinette Biggs Alta, and Rika Preiser. 2019. Methods for understanding social-ecological systems: A review of place-based studies. Ecology and Society 24 (4): 16. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11236-240416 .

Voyer, Michelle, Genevieve Quirk, Alistair McIlgorm, and Kamal Azmi. 2018. Shades of blue: What do competing interpretations of the blue economy mean for oceans governance? Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning 20 (5): 595–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2018.1473153 .

Warner, Michael. 2000. Conflict management in community-based natural resource projects: experiences from the Lakekamu Basin integrated conservation and development project, Papua New Guinea. In Biodiversity and Ecological Economics , ed. Luca Tacconi, 196–219. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315096308-12 .

Webel, Charles, and Johan Galtung, eds. 2007. Handbook of peace and conflict studies , 432. Routledge: London.

Wegge, Njord, and Kathrin Keil. 2018. Between classical and critical geopolitics in a changing arctic. Polar Geography 41 (2): 87–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/1088937X.2018.1455755 .

Wieviorka, Michel. 2013. Social conflict. Current Sociology Review 61 (5–6): 696–713. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392113499487 .

Wood, Louisa J., Lucy Fish, Josh Laughren, and Daniel Pauly. 2008. Assessing progress towards global marine protection targets: Shortfalls in information and action. Oryx 42 (3): 340–351. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003060530800046X .

Download references

Acknowledgements

LID is grateful to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) [Research Grants-Doctoral Programmes in Germany, 2021/22–57552340] for the doctoral scholarship granted. We would like to thank Marion Glaser, Nadine Heck, and Siddharth Narayan for their revision on an earlier version of this article. The authors thank Fred Saudners, Maaike Knol-Kauffman, and the anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments and suggestions which helped to improve this manuscript.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This work was elaborated in the frame of the Negotiating Ocean Conflicts among RIvals for Sustainable and Equitable Solutions (NoCRISES) project, funded by the Belmont Forum [Belmont No Crises 03F0845A].

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen, Germany

Lol Iana Dahlet & Samiya A. Selim

University of Bremen, Institute of Geography, Bremen, Germany

Lol Iana Dahlet

University of Liberal Arts, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Samiya A. Selim

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, Australia

Ingrid van Putten

Centre for Marine Socioecology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lol Iana Dahlet .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 27 KB)

Rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Dahlet, L.I., Selim, S.A. & van Putten, I. A review of how we study coastal and marine conflicts: is social science taking a broad enough view?. Maritime Studies 22 , 29 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-023-00319-z

Download citation

Received : 07 July 2022

Accepted : 05 June 2023

Published : 21 June 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-023-00319-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Empirical methods
• Social-ecological systems
• Systematic literature review
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Cases on Conflicts of Interest
• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
• Focus Areas
• Government Ethics
• Government Ethics Resources
• Government Ethics Cases

Local officials may sit on several bodies with conflicting priorities and constituencies.

A public agency CEO has a side consulting business that may create a conflict of interest.

Ethics case study focused on conflicts of interest and ethnicity in city government and development.

A former public works director and city engineer is back at his contractor job. Is his involvement with construction projects for the city a conflict of interest?

A city manager awards a construction contract for a new baseball field to a non-union company without allowing for a competitive bid process.

University leaders should have a plan and be prepared to manage conflict and controversy that lands on campus.

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by The San Francisco Standard.

John Pelissero, director, government ethics, quoted by This is Reno.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Throughline

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

The Great Textbook War

Ramtin Arablouei

Rund Abdelfatah

Lawrence Wu

Casey Miner

Julie Caine

Anya Steinberg

Devin Katayama

Cristina Kim

Peter Balonon-Rosen

Starting in the 1930s, Harold Rugg, the unofficial father of social studies, published a series of historical textbooks that encouraged students to confront the country's chronic problems of racism and class conflict. The textbooks set off a firestorm that echoes today's debates over what kids should and shouldn't learn in school. The push-and-pull fight over what should be taught — and what should be left out — is deeply woven into the fabric of our civic life. In this episode, we go back almost 100 years, to a battle over textbooks that was really about how kids see their history, their country, and themselves. And we ask the question: what should education do?

Charles Dorn, the Barry N. Wish Professor of Social Studies at Bowdoin College and co-author of Patriotic Education in a Global Age .

Adam Laats, professor of education at Binghamton University and author of The Other School Reformers.

To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline .

Wendy’s ‘surge pricing’ mess looks like a case study in stakeholder conflict

Associate Professor of Quantitative Marketing and Analytics, McGill University

Disclosure statement

Vivek Astvansh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA.

McGill University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.

View all partners

Just two words created a publicity nightmare for fast-food giant Wendy’s: dynamic pricing .

In late February 2024, news broke that the chain was considering charging different prices at different times of day — a tactic usually associated with airlines and ride-hailing companies. As headlines like “ Wendy’s to roll out Uber-style surge-pricing ” flooded the news, #BoycottWendys trended on social media. Wendy’s rival Burger King quickly took advantage of the news with a “ No urge to surge ” promotion.

The backlash put Wendy’s on the defensive.

Within days, Wendy’s said that it never intended to raise prices at times of peak demand, Instead, it only intended to lower prices when store traffic was slow. It also announced a monthlong $1 burger deal that observers were quick to connect to the pricing fiasco.

It looked like a classic PR disaster – and as a professor of marketing , I couldn’t turn away. How did this all go wrong?

Divergent stakeholder interests, with a side of fries

I suspect this burger brouhaha came down to a classic case of investors’ interests colliding with those of consumers.

The whole mess seems to have started on Feb. 15, 2024, when Wendy’s released its fourth-quarter earnings and held a conference call with investors .

That day, Wendy’s announced a multimillion-dollar investment to roll out digital menu boards across all its U.S. stores. This investment would support “dynamic pricing and menu offerings,” according to a slide from the conference call. While presenting the slides, Wendy’s chief executive officer said , “Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and day-part offerings along with AI-enabled dynamic pricing menu changes and suggestive selling.”

While some people argue that Wendy’s may have never meant to hike prices at all, I’m skeptical. Of course there’s nothing wrong with raising prices – companies would go out of business if they didn’t. The issue is how to frame the price hike. For example, Starbucks increased prices three times in just four months between October 2021 and February 2022. It blamed the hikes on inflation and didn’t face much of a backlash.

But no matter how you frame it, raising prices is a company action that benefits investors but not consumers. And while the dining public has been outraged by the whole affair, Wendy’s investors seem relatively unconcerned. Wendy’s stock price has remained relatively stable since Feb. 26, when the media picked up the story and boycott calls commenced.

This asymmetry makes sense and is well documented in academic research . On average, investors are motivated by a company’s profits. Moves to raise revenue, such as hiking prices, make them happy. That’s why companies often announce those increases well before they put them into effect – not for the customers’ sake, but for the investors’ .

Of course, higher prices feel different if you’re the one paying them. And consumers tend to believe sellers aren’t being fair when they set prices: They think sale prices are set much higher than fair prices , underestimate the impact of inflation , overattribute the cause of price increase to profit-seeking, and fail to consider company costs. Their backlash is both economically rational and predictable .

What also makes sense is Burger King trying to act like a typical rival – aiming to benefit from the backlash Wendy’s received.

A needless food fight

In my opinion, Wendy’s early announcement of its dynamic pricing was a serious mistake. Remember that its CEO said that Wendy’s would introduce dynamic pricing “as early as 2025.” That means it announced the news at least nine months before customers needed to hear about it. I assume Wendy’s did this because it wanted to impress its shareholders and boost its stock price.

In fact, the cynic in me wonders whether this incident was “staged” – that is, Wendy’s was testing the waters to see whether they could preannounce the price hike to impress shareholders, and then not actually implement the changes.

Indeed, research has shown that companies often preannounce price increases a few days to several months in advance, and may withdraw some of these preannouncements if they realize that the price hike may cause more damage than increase in revenue.

But either way, announcing a decision nine months in advance seems premature. And I haven’t seen any evidence that Wendy’s planned for customers to hear the news along with investors.

My advice is for executives to be astute in communicating price increases so consumers take the company’s perspective and don’t view the hike as unfair . That may mean avoiding terms that elicit hostile reactions, or providing explanations for their decisions, such as an increase in the cost of ingredients or employee salaries. Consumers who understand the reasons for a price hike may be more accommodating.

Interestingly, even after the Wendy’s wobble, other restaurants are reportedly considering increasing menu prices during hours of high demand. I hope they learn from Wendy’s error and frame their price increases strategically.

Otherwise, they shouldn’t be surprised when competitors eat their lunch.

• Surge pricing
• Dynamic pricing
• Burger King
• Stakeholder engagement

School of Social Sciences – Public Policy and International Relations opportunities

Partner, Senior Talent Acquisition

Deputy Editor - Technology

Sydney Horizon Educators (Identified)

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and Student Life)

• School of Arts & Sciences
• College of Arts & Sciences
• Graduate Division
• College of Liberal and Professional Studies

The Conflict Over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate While Finding Common Ground

Even before the Hamas attack on October 7, and Israel’s response, some campuses were seeing efforts from partisans on each side to vilify, and silence, partisans on the other. How do we understand the current moment?

This event will be held in person at Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, Orrery Pavilion, 6th Fl, 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.  Register

Penn Student Post-Dialogue Sessions

Join other Penn students for a light meal (Halal and Kosher) and a chance to share perspectives on the campus dialogue on the Israel/Palestine conflict in light of Ken Stern’s talk. The conversation will be facilitated by Penn students affiliated with the SNF Paideia Program. The dialogue will begin immediately after the talk in the 6thfloor classrooms of Van Pelt Library.

If you’re a Penn Student, registration  here  for the post-dialogue sessions.

About Kenneth S. Stern:

Kenneth S. Stern is the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate.

Mr. Stern is an award-winning author and attorney, and was most recently executive director of the Justus & Karin Rosenberg Foundation. Before that he was director of the division on antisemitism and extremism at the American Jewish Committee, where he worked for 25 years.

Mr. Stern’s op-eds and book reviews have appeared in the  New York Times , the  Washington Post ,  USA Today ,  The Boston Globe ,  the Guardian , the  Forward , the  Jewish Telegraphic Agency , and elsewhere. Mr. Stern has appeared on the  CBS Evening News ,  Dateline ,  Good Morning America ,  Face the Nation , the  History Channel,   NBC Nightly News, CNN, PBS , and many other television and radio programs, including National Public Radio’s  Fresh Air  and  All Things Considered , and WNYC’s  On the Media .

He has argued before the United States Supreme Court, testified before Congress (as well as before committees of parliamentarians in Canada and the U.K.), was an invited presenter at the White House Conference on Hate Crimes, and served as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Stockholm Forum on Combating Intolerance.

Mr. Stern’s report on the militia movement, released 10 days before the Oklahoma City bombing, predicted attacks on the government, and the covering memo to the report said such attacks might occur on April 19, 1995, the anniversary of the deaths of members of the Branch Davidian sect. Mr. Stern’s report was called “prescient,” and his resulting book— A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate —was nominated for the National Book Award.

Mr. Stern was the lead drafter of the “working definition” of antisemitism. He was also an integral part of the defense team in the historic London Holocaust denial case of David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt. Mr. Stern was also defense counsel for Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement (chronicled in his award-winning book  Loud Hawk: The United States vs. The American Indian Movement ). He has also written books on antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

His newest book,  The Conflict Over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debat e  (New Jewish Press, 2020), has been called a “must read,” “thoughtful and provocative,” a “gift,” a “rare and uncompromising testament to free expression” and a “blueprint for how to navigate the ‘conflict over the conflict’ on campus.” Its first chapter is entitled “Thinking about Thinking,” and draws from hate studies to explain how our thinking changes when our identity is tethered to an issue of perceived justice or injustice.

Organizers: College of Arts and Sciences Jewish Studies Program, and SNF Paideia Program

Sponsors: Living the Hard Promise Initiative in the School of Arts and Sciences, and Penn Libraries

Let your curiosity lead the way:

Apply Today

• Arts & Sciences
• Graduate Studies in A&S

Schnakenberg and Wayne published in APSR for "Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics"

Congratulations to Keith Schnakenberg and Carly Wayne for being published in the American Political Science Review for “Anger and Political Conflict Dynamics." The paper can be read here .

Abstract: Emotions shape strategic conflict dynamics. However, the precise way in which strategic and emotional concerns interact to affect international cooperation and contention are not well understood. We propose a model of intergroup conflict under incomplete information in which agents are sensitive to psychological motivations in the form of anger. Agents become angry in response to worse-than-expected outcomes due to actions of other players. Aggression may be motivated by anger or by beliefs about preferences of members of the other group. Increasing one group’s sensitivity to anger makes that group more aggressive but reduces learning about preferences, which makes the other group less aggressive in response to bad outcomes. Thus, anger has competing effects on the likelihood of conflict. The results have important implications for understanding the complex role of anger in international relations and, more generally, the interplay between psychological and material aims in both fomenting and ameliorating conflict.

in the news:

Carter's "Border Barriers and Illicit Trade Flows" accepted at International Studies Quarterly

Jacob Montgomery co-authors with Messi H. J. Lee and Calvin Lai in PNAS Nexus

Gibson published in the American Journal of Political Science for "Losing Legitimacy"

Aksoy, Enamorado, and Yang accepted in International Organization