Triads of interorganisational conflict: Investigating asymmetries, disputes, and tensions

• Main Author: KIEU, Li Hao Edson
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Strategy; Network; Interorganisational Conflict; Interorganisational Collaboration; Strategic Alliances; Commercial Litigation; Strategic Management Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/355; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1356&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Interorganisational relations are critical resources that are enablers for organisations to achieve competitive advantage. Collaborative ties provide organisations access to new markets, distribution channels, information, and present opportunities to develop or enhance capabilities and competencies. However, interorganisational ties are dynamic and susceptible to relational tensions among collaborative, coordinative, and competitive elements. As such, primarily focusing on collaborative elements between organisations presents an incomplete representation. Social relations involve elements of collaboration and conflict that are not antithetical but dialectical determinants of one another. Despite these conjectures of dialectical tensions, the nature of interorganisational conflict remains elusive. Hence, this dissertation is devoted to: (i) explicating the conceptual underpinnings of interorganisational conflict, (ii) exploring conflict as an experience that develops organisations’ abilities to address interorganisational ties and brokerage and, (iii) examining the asymmetric role of conflict as opportunities for learning and strategic actions. In chapter two, the dissertation discusses various conceptualisations of interorganisational conflict and highlights conflict as a distinct construct involving relational tensions between interacting organisations. I present an exploratory framework to capture prior perspectives of interorganisational conflict and claim that redefining conceptualisations of interorganisational conflict will present new opportunities for management research. The following chapters in the dissertation highlight that our theoretical understanding of interorganisational relations and beyond can be extended by inculcating the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of interorganisational conflict as part of future research considerations. Chapter three focuses on firm-level triadic ego-network structures by examining firms’ ability to reside in brokerage positions based on their prior experiences with collaboration and conflict. The chapter develops on the basis that the dualistic experience of collaboration and conflict has implications for a firm’s ability to span structural holes. Empirical results indicate that ambidextrous experiences related to collaborative and conflictual experiences positively and significantly affect firms’ ability to reside in brokerage positions. However, such effects were found to be contingent on the levels of environmental volatility. It was found that environmental volatility reduced the learning effects of prior experiences on brokerage. This suggests that firm learning and the development of capabilities based on prior experiences are contingent on the magnitude of environmental shifts. Chapter four focuses specifically on the role of conflictual ties on a firm’s ability and strategic positioning to bridge structural holes with the goal of explicating a firm’s role as an initiator or target of conflictual ties. The paper posits that the directionality of conflict impacts a firm’s strategic choices to reside in brokerage positions. The results highlight a significant increase in the likelihood that both targets and initiators of conflict span structural holes. However, when firm performance was considered as a trigger for firm motivation and risk predilection to broker, the effects of directed conflictual ties on brokerage formation were diminished. The results indicate that firm learning is contingent on event-specific determinants as well as firm-related aspirations of motivation and risk partiality. Empirical chapters three and four are anchored by a 10-year longitudinal sample of contract litigation on breach of contracts supplemented by alliance and joint venture activities of publicly traded firms in the United States of America between 2009 to 2018.