Stephanie Eckerd

Inter-organizational conflicts: Research overview, challenges, and opportunities

While inter-personal conflicts have attracted much attention from scholars and practitioners over the last two decades, our understanding of inter-organizational conflicts remains limited. This paper critically assesses current literature on inter-organizational conflicts. We first discuss the specific features of conflicts at the inter-organizational level. Second, we provide an overview of both qualitative and quantitative research conducted in the field. Third, we make suggestions for future research on inter-organizational conflicts. We specifically suggest opportunities to develop theoretical bridges with other streams of literature and to build multi-level models of conflict management. We then discuss important empirical issues associated with doing research on conflicts between organizations and provide recommendations to overcome these challenges.

Institutional Constraints, Managerial Choices, and Conflicts in Public Sector Supply Chains

ABSTRACT In this research, we compare the governance mechanisms that public sector managers and private sector managers leverage when responding to conflict in supply chain relationships. We find evidence that public sector managers are more likely than private sector managers to rely on written (formal) contract mechanisms, but that both public and private managers use relational (informal) governance mechanisms to similar extents. We also find that managers from both sectors perceive an improvement to the quality of the exchange relationship when a relational approach is emphasized in managing the conflict. Our research provides an important contribution to our understanding about the actions public managers take in dealing with supply chain conflicts and suggests potential policy alternatives to foster contracting efficiency and effectiveness.

Unilateral commitments: A prisoner's dilemma perspective

We explore factors that influence successful outcomes in exchange relationships in the presence of unilateral cooperative agreements through the lenses of game theory, Transaction Cost Economics, and Social Exchange Theory. We further investigate the impact of commitment length with regard to strategic cooperation. Based on the results of a modified prisoners dilemma experiment with 85 participants, we find that unilateral commitments of shorter duration successfully drive partner cooperative behavior both during the periods of commitment and after the unilateral commitment to cooperate has ended. However, when long-term commitments are made we find that there is a significant decrease in partner cooperation. Our findings provide guidance surrounding the risky decision to initiate a cooperative arrangement within an exchange. Based on the results we observed, it may be best for an organization to show good faith in initiating a commitment to cooperate, but to be conservative in doing so. Short duration commitments appear to achieve balance and promote optimal outcomes.