Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a substantial increase in the number of intrastate conflicts around the world. During the last two decades, there have been more than 125 violent conflicts resulting in 7 million deaths (Smith, 2003). Given the prevalence of these conflicts, the inability of some governments to resolve them, and the reluctance of multilateral institutions to intervene, multinational enterprises (MNEs) engaged in international ventures may find themselves in situations where they must respond to (...) violent conflict to minimize investment risk and to promote stability in countries where they operate. Research on business response to violent conflict has tended to treat conflict as a homogeneous problem, when in fact conflicts vary on several dimensions. The purpose of this article is to extend the research with a focus on how the characteristics of the conflict affect MNE intervention strategies. Drawing on insights from the research on conflict resolution and the risk that violent conflict poses to the firm, we develop a framework and propositions that provide guidance to MNEs confronting violent conflict with respect to existing projects or facilities. (shrink)

In recent years, the model of shared decision-making has become increasingly promoted as the preferred standard in doctor-patient communication. As the model considers doctor and patient as coe-qual partners that negotiate their preferred treatment options in order to reach a shared decision, shared de-cision-making notably leaves room for the usage of argumentation in the context of medical consultation. A paradigm example of argumentative conflict in consultation is the discussion that emerges between doctors and their patients concerning antibiotics as a (...) method of treatment for what is presumed to be a viral infec-tion. In this paper, a case of such argumentative conflict is studied, using the extended pragma-dialectical theory to argumentation. It is examined how a patient and her physician manoeuvre strategically in order to maintain a balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, as well as an equilibri-um between patient participation and evidence-based medication, while arguing their case for and against antibiotics respectively. (shrink)

Is there a strategic mechanism that explains role-contingent differences in conflict behavior? I sketch a theory in which differences in optimal behavior for attackers and defenders arise under initially symmetric conditions through the dynamic accumulation of differences in the distributions of traits in the subpopulations of potential opponents.

The dissertation deals with the questions surrounding the legal, ethical and strategic aspects of armed drones in warfare. This is a vast and complex field, however, one where there remains more conflict and debate than actual consensus. -/- One of the many themes addressed during the course of this research was an examination of the evolution of modern asymmetric transnational armed conflict. It is the opinion of the author that this phenomenon represents a “grey-zone”; an entirely new (...) paradigm of warfare. International terrorism has not been dealt with in a cohesive fashion. Any international prosecution of terrorism which has been conducted has been either “sectoral” adopting a piecemeal typological approach or has been carried out at the domestic level. -/- A novel approach to the problem, of sub-national actors with transnational reach, was proposed, by attributing certain groups with a new legal personality, that of “Stateless International Entities”, or “SIEs”. Those groups who possess, for all intents and purposes, the same attributes as those of States, could then be judged for their behavior before an international tribunal. Other important topics addressed in this research include an examination of important case law, targeted killing, autonomy, preemption versus prevention, imminence versus intent, the find, fix and finish paradigm, the impact of the media, and the role of the CIA, and finally, the flawed reasoning which adopts technology as a form of strategy. (shrink)

The present debate over the creation and potential deployment of lethal autonomous weapons, or ‘killer robots’, is garnering more and more attention. Much of the argument revolves around whether such machines would be able to uphold the principle of noncombatant immunity. However, much of the present debate fails to take into consideration the practical realties of contemporary armed conflict, particularly generating military objectives and the adherence to a targeting process. This paper argues that we must look to the targeting (...) process if we are to gain a fuller picture of the consequences of creating or fielding lethal autonomous robots. This paper argues that once we look to how militaries actually create military objectives, and thus identify potential targets, we face an additional problem: the Strategic Robot Problem. The ability to create targeting lists using military doctrine and targeting processes is inherently strategic, and handing this capability over to a machine undermines existing comman.. (shrink)

The book offers insights on whether international law can shape the politics of the Security Council and, conversely, the extent to which the latter contribute to the development of international law. By providing a systematic analysis of the quantity and quality of international legal instruments referred to in the text of resolutions, the book reconstructs patterns of the Security Council's behavioural regularities and assesses them against the provisions of the United Nations Charter, which establishes its mandate. The analysis is divided (...) into three periods - the origins and Cold War period, post-Cold War period and the twenty-first century - and assesses the resolutions passed in each period by thematic category. The book argues that while international law plays an important role in shaping the politics of the Security Council, the Council's resolutions do not contribute significantly to the development of international law. (shrink)

In this article we examined the ways in which strategic ambiguity in the use of keywords served an enabling function within a discourse marked by conflict and ideological divisions. Our analysis focused on the intertextual relationships between five documents intended by the government to guide the development of biotechnology in New Zealand. Through our analysis we identified ‘sustainability’ as a keyword and three major roles for the deployment of the discourse strategy of strategic ambiguity in the use (...) of this keyword. First, strategic ambiguity lent an internal and intertextual coherence to the texts. Second, it allowed multiple perspectives and objectives to co-exist. Third, strategic ambiguity facilitated the participation of discourse actors who subscribed to ideologies that were more or less incommensurable. (shrink)

The article analyzes strategic manoeuvring within the pragmadialectical framework with respect to the selection of starting points in the opening stage to frame the arguments. The Terri Schiavo case is presented, which can provide interesting insights concerning this issue. I would like to show that resolution of the difference of opinion requires the resolution of a subordinate difference of opinion concerning how to label her medical state, and why discussants were not able to resolve this subordinate difference of opinion. (...) After, the conflict that arises between critical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness is examined and how strategic manoeuvring aims to resolve this conflict. In the final part of the paper I argue that the problems raised can be dealt with within the framework of pragma-dialectics. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of ‘strategic identity’ as a bridge between the indigenous peoples’ struggle for self-determination and their search for solidarity in the context of globalization, with a focus on the Lumads, or indigenous peoples in southern Philippines. The paper begins with an encounter with a global actor affecting a local community. We realize the impact of powerful, well-networked forces that challenge even the operation of the state. Without trivializing the threats associated with this model of globalization, (...) we also insist that a realistic and hopeful approach may emerge if we acknowledge the many ‘selves’ in the indigenous peoples’ self-determination. At the heart of this proposal is a matrix that unpacks the complex ways that local, national, sectoral, and global actors can engage in conflict or solidarity with these strategic identity assertions. Solidarity work, then, becomes diversified and strategized in response to the evolving multiple indigenous identities that modernity paradoxically both endangers and engenders. (shrink)

This essay responds to four critical essays by Rosemary Kellison, Ebrahim Moosa, Joseph Winters, and Martin Kavka on the author’s recent book, Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society: From Enemy to Adversary (Cambridge, 2018). Parts I and II work in tandem to further develop my accounts of strategic empathy and agonistic political friendship. I defend against criticisms that my argument for moral imagination obligates oppressed people to empathize with their oppressors. I argue, further, that healthy conflict can (...) be motivated by a kind of “secular” love. This enables my position to immanently criticize and mediate the claims that one must either love (agapically) one’s opponent in order to engage them in “healthy conflict,” on one hand, or that one must vanquish, exclude, or “cancel” one’s opponent, on the other. In Part III, I demonstrate how my account mediates the challenge of an alleged standing opposition between moral imagination and socio-theoretical critique. I defend a methodologically pragmatist account of immanent prophetic criticism, resistance, and conflict transformation. Finally, I respond to one critic’s vindication of a strong enemy/adversary opposition that takes up the case of white supremacist violence in the U.S. I argue that the time horizon for healthy conflict must be simultaneously immediate and also long-term, provided that such engagements remain socio-critically self-reflexive and seek to cultivate transformational responses. (shrink)

Crucial components of strategic communication include the audience, which plays a decisive role in how any conflict plays out. Strategic narratives are seen as means by which political actors attempt to construct a shared meaning of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors. The article analyzes the news discourse of the Russian media sources RT, Pervyj Kanal, and NTV on Russia’s coronavirus aid to Italy in spring 2020. In the context of media coverage, (...) some methodological questions arise: How should the intentional structuring of narratives, targeting of audiences, and the manipulative intentions of the strategic actor be studied? For this purpose, the article combines strategic narrative theory with Umberto Eco’s concepts of the Model Reader and the Model Author. Analysing the aims and intentionality of the strategic narratives, we postulate the Model Reader as an analytical category that organizes the study of the audience’s interpretation process. The function of the Model Reader is to actualize the codes and intertextual references that the author has strategically planned in the news message, in order to achieve the geopolitical aims of the strategic narratives in question. The analysis of constructing the Model Reader and the Model Author of strategic narratives is complemented by Greimas’ semiotic theory of the narrative and the composition principles of Lotman’s discrete/non-discrete texts. (shrink)

According to Steven Pinker and his associates the cooperative model of human communication fails, because evolutionary biology teaches us that most social relationships, including talk-exchange, involve combinations of cooperation and conflict. In particular, the phenomenon of the strategic speaker who uses indirect speech in order to be able to deny what he meant by a speech act (deniability of conversational implicatures) challenges the model. In reply I point out that interlocutors can aim at understanding each other (cooperation), while (...) being in conflict. Furthermore, Pinker’s strategic speaker relies on the Cooperative Principle when conveying a conversational implicature, and so non-cooperative behaviour (denial) only emerges as a response to a negative reaction from the audience. It is also doubtful in the cases Pinker presents whether a denial will successfully cancel the conversational implicature –change the audience’s interpretation of speaker’s meaning. I also argue that a strategic speaker might choose indirect speech due to the ignorability of conversational implicatures, in which case the strategic speaker can be highly cooperative. (shrink)

The study explores communication strategies of ethno-nationalist terrorists with respect to their framing and identity building. Strategies of eight ethno-nationalist terrorist groups were analyzed using 70 articles published on the groups’ websites. Three cluster-analytic procedures and a correlational analysis were applied to strategies of problem definition, cause and responsibility attribution, treatment recommendations, and identity building. The analysis revealed various dimensions on which terrorists frame their content. No group-specific strategies of framing and identity building have been found yet, suggesting that the (...) strategies were universal across terrorist groups, and they were applied on a case-by-case basis. Knowledge about these strategies should advance counter-terrorism efforts, and assist in development of alternative identities among ethnic groups at risk of conflict. (shrink)

A consensus has emerged among many normative theorists of cultural pluralism that dialogue is the key to securing just relations among ethnic or cultural groups. However, few normative theorists have explored the conditions or incentives that enable inter-group dialogue versus those that encourage inter-group conflict. To address this problem, I use Habermas’s distinction between communicative and strategic action, since many models of inter-group dialogue implicitly rely upon communicative action, while many accounts of inter-group conflict rest upon (...) class='Hi'>strategic action. Drawing on explanatory accounts of inter-group conflict, I outline five strategic logics of group conflict, what I call the resource, political, information, positional, and security logics. I then argue that these strategic logics cannot be overcome by three motivations commonly thought to support communicative action: moral-cognitive consistency, the normative characteristics of modernity, and publicity constraints. At this point, I turn to an empirical case, the reception of African-American concerns within the Jewish public sphere prior to the Second World War, in order to suggest that, although strategic incentives might hinder inter-group dialogue, they may also encourage it. In conclusion, I provide three recommendations for how theorists might utilize strategic incentives in order to recognize which actors, policies, or institutions can encourage inter-group dialogue. (shrink)

This special issue gathers together a selection of papers presented by international experts during a workshop entitled ‘Ethics of Cyber-Conflicts’, which was devoted to fostering interdisciplinary debate on the ethical and legal problems and the regulatory gap concerning cyber conflicts. The workshop was held in 2013 at the Centro Alti Studi Difesa in Rome under the auspices of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence . This NATO-accredited international military organisation that has always placed a high value on an (...) interdisciplinary approach to cyber defence, uniting as it does perspectives from technical, policy, legal, and strategic domains. The Centre’s mission is to enhance capability, cooperation, and information-sharing between NATO, its member states, and partner countries in the area of cyber defence by virtue of research, education, and consultation. The workshop was one of the projects supported by the Centre to achieve this mission.Readers may .. (shrink)

SummaryThe practice of counterintelligence traditionally lies in its application to the function of catching spies, stopping espionage and protecting national security and the national interest. More recently though counterintelligence has matured and is frequently being deployed into fields such as counter-terrorism, however it still remains that counterintelligence is often poorly understood, and the practice of counterintelligence operations in the counter-terrorism space presents new challenges as well as conflicts of purpose with the contemporary partners of intelligence and security services such as (...) law enforcement and the military. This article, the first in a series, will discuss issues surrounding the common understanding of counterintelligence, the development and practice of offensive missions, and its role in counter-terrorism from its current functions across intelligence, military and law enforcement spheres, as well as its potential to realize new outcomes. (shrink)

According to Steven Pinker and his associates the cooperative model of human communication fails, because evolutionary biology teaches us that most social relationships, including talk-exchange, involve combinations of cooperation and conflict. In particular, the phenomenon of the strategic speaker who uses indirect speech in order to be able to deny what he meant by a speech act (deniability of conversational implicatures) challenges the model. In reply I point out that interlocutors can aim at understanding each other (cooperation), while (...) being in conflict. Furthermore, Pinker’s strategic speaker relies on the Cooperative Principle when conveying a conversational implicature, and so non-cooperative behaviour (denial) only emerges as a response to a negative reaction from the audience. It is also doubtful in the cases Pinker presents whether a denial will successfully cancel the conversational implicature –change the audience’s interpretation of speaker’s meaning. I also argue that a strategic speaker might choose indirect speech due to the ignorability of conversational implicatures, in which case the strategic speaker can be highly cooperative. (shrink)

Drawing on calls by researchers to examine corporate scandals involving potential conflicts of interest or compromise to professional independence involving the actuarial profession, this article outlines one such case. The consulting actuaries – to a large Australian listed company, James Hardie Industries Limited – found themselves advising two parties in a corporate restructuring where the interests of each were sometimes competing and the interests of the public appeared to be ignored. The James Hardie case is instructive in a number of (...) ways: first, it demonstrates the subtlety with which conflicts of interest or pressures on professional independence can arise; second, it demonstrates how important professional issues can be obfuscated by more obvious and pressing financial and strategic issues; and finally it demonstrates that adherence to professional codes of conduct and the ease with which professional ethics can be compromised when those codes are vague and transgressions are rarely actionable. The James Hardie case highlights structural issues in the employment of consulting actuaries which presents risks to the profession. It demonstrates that the combination of an aggressive corporate management with a strategic agenda reliant on consulting actuaries that have a vested interest in promoting and maintaining valuable relationships, both financially and professionally, results in ethical challenges. (shrink)

Drawing on calls by researchers to examine corporate scandals involving potential conflicts of interest or compromise to professional independence involving the actuarial profession, this article outlines one such case. The consulting actuaries – to a large Australian listed company, James Hardie Industries Limited – found themselves advising two parties in a corporate restructuring where the interests of each were sometimes competing and the interests of the public appeared to be ignored. The James Hardie case is instructive in a number of (...) ways: first, it demonstrates the subtlety with which conflicts of interest or pressures on professional independence can arise; second, it demonstrates how important professional issues can be obfuscated by more obvious and pressing financial and strategic issues; and finally it demonstrates that adherence to professional codes of conduct and the ease with which professional ethics can be compromised when those codes are vague and transgressions are rarely actionable. The James Hardie case highlights structural issues in the employment of consulting actuaries which presents risks to the profession. It demonstrates that the combination of an aggressive corporate management with a strategic agenda reliant on consulting actuaries that have a vested interest in promoting and maintaining valuable relationships, both financially and professionally, results in ethical challenges. (shrink)

A consensus has emerged among many normative theorists of cultural pluralism that dialogue is the key to securing just relations among ethnic or cultural groups. However, few normative theorists have explored the conditions or incentives that enable inter-group dialogue versus those that encourage inter-group conflict. To address this problem, I use Habermas’s distinction between communicative and strategic action, since many models of inter-group dialogue implicitly rely upon communicative action, while many accounts of inter-group conflict rest upon (...) class='Hi'>strategic action. Drawing on explanatory accounts of inter-group conflict, I outline five strategic logics of group conflict, what I call the resource, political, information, positional, and security logics. I then argue that these strategic logics cannot be overcome by three motivations commonly thought to support communicative action: moral-cognitive consistency, the normative characteristics of modernity, and publicity constraints. At this point, I turn to an empirical case, the reception of African-American concerns within the Jewish public sphere prior to the Second World War, in order to suggest that, although strategic incentives might hinder inter-group dialogue, they may also encourage it. In conclusion, I provide three recommendations for how theorists might utilize strategic incentives in order to recognize which actors, policies, or institutions can encourage inter-group dialogue. (shrink)

We develop a framework for understanding how lack of clarity in business press coverage of corporate social responsibility functions as a mediated and emergent form of strategic ambiguity. Many stakeholders expect CSR to exhibit clarity, consistency, and discursive closure. But stakeholders also expect CSR to conform to varying degrees of both formal and substantive rationality. These diverse expectations conflict with each other and change over time. A content analysis of press coverage in Denmark suggests that the business media (...) reflect and amplify the ambiguity generated by these shifting demands. We propose that this very public lack of discursive closure provides strategic advantages to CSR stakeholders by rendering the concept of CSR adaptable, resilient, and meaningful to diverse interests. From this perspective, strategic ambiguity emerges from a relational and mediated process, not from the direct intentions of individual stakeholders. Our framework suggests that CSR is best understood not as a clear or consistent agenda, but rather as a forum for sensemaking, diversity of opinion, and debate over the conflicting social norms and expectations attached to corporate activity. (shrink)

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as (...) games of strategy and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste. (shrink)

The question that this paper sets out to answer is: How do political processes within the firm structure corporate political strategy? In answering this question thepaper starts to address the research problem of the congruence between processes of consensus building and conflict resolution within the firm and on the other hand corporate attempts to influence political processes taking place outside the firm. The paper argues that power-dependence relations between firm-internal stakeholders are an explanatory factor in examining empirical variation in (...) corporate political behavior. (shrink)

One of the fundamental principles of good corporate governance is transparency, i.e., the disclosure of private information to external stakeholders, so that they may make judgments and decisions relating to the corporation. Equally important, but less discussed, is the competing value that corporations need to protect legitimate secrets. Corporations thus need a communication strategy for dealing with external stakeholders which addresses the conflict between disclosure and secrecy. This article focuses on an important element of that communication strategy in the (...) context of financial reporting: the possibility that corporate insiders may consider it in their interest, or in the interest of specific stakeholders, to alter or manipulate the financial information that it discloses publicly. Using concepts from the corporate governance and financial reporting literatures, it addresses the ethical question of who (management or the board of directors) should be responsible for making the fundamental strategic choices whether and (if so) how the corporation alters or manipulates the financial information. This article argues that the board of directors is responsible for formulating (and monitoring) the corporation's communication strategy, and that management is responsible for carrying it out. (shrink)

The Baptism of the Bomb Here is a two-step plan to rescue nuclear war from immorality. First, the United States should build the most moral offensive nuclear weapons that money can buy and bring nuclear warfare into compliance with the principle of noncombatant immunity. Then it should build a defensive “shield” that will make offensive nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” and take the world “beyond deterrence.” In this second stage, called the “Strategic Defense Initiative” by believers and “Star Wars” (...) by doubters, antimissile technology will confront missile technology like a Hegelian antithesis confronting its thesis, and we will all be lifted up out of the age of nuclear war into a realm made safe for conventional war. 1 Even according to believers in the SDI, however, intermediate deployment, not to mention full deployment, of a strategic defense is some time away, pending breakthroughs on technological problems at which public money is now being thrown. (shrink)

While the notion that CEOs have a general influence over their firms’ stakeholder strategies is well accepted, little attention has been given to how CEOs can actively and performatively manage social activism in and around their firms. I seek to develop an initial understanding of this phenomenon by examining some of the critical consequences of CEOs’ public responses to social activist challenges. Drawing on instrumental stakeholder theory and social movement theory, I recognize the dualistic nature of CEOs’ public responses to (...) social activist challenges; that is, a single response can influence both the direct pressure received from the focal social activists confronting the firm as well as the potential pressure the firm could face in the form of additional challenges. I argue that a CEO’s accommodative public response—seen by social activists as a sign that the CEO and firm are aligned with their beliefs, values, and motivations—will be negatively associated with the focal social activists’ willingness to punish the firm. At the same time, however, a CEO’s accommodative public response sends a broader signal—reflective of the CEO and firm’s relative openness to social activism and social issues—that will be positively associated with the perceived attractiveness of the firm’s corporate opportunity structure for social activism, increasing the potential for the firm to receive additional social activist challenges. I conduct a laboratory experiment based on a real-life case and find support for my arguments. The results yield important implications for research on strategic leadership, stakeholder strategy, and social movements. (shrink)

A hybrid preference framework is proposed for strategic conflict analysis to integrate preference strength and preference uncertainty into the paradigm of the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) under multiple decision makers. This structure offers decision makers a more flexible mechanism for preference expression, which can include strong or mild preference of one state or scenario over another, as well as equal preference. In addition, preference between two states can be uncertain. The result is a preference framework (...) that is more general than existing models which consider preference strength and preference uncertainty separately. Within the hybrid preference structure, four kinds of stability are defined as solution concepts and a post-stability analysis, called status quo analysis, which can be used to track the evolution of a given conflict. Algorithms are provided for implementing the key inputs of stability analysis and status quo analysis within the extended preference structure. The new stability concepts under the hybrid preference structure can be used to model complex strategic conflicts arising in practical applications, and can provide new insights for the conflicts. The method is illustrated using the conflict over proposed bulk water exports from Lake Gisborne in Newfoundland, Canada. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple (...) pillars of sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)

This book presents the concept of ‘unstaging’ war as a strategic response to the failure of the discourse and institutions of peace. This failure is explained by exploring the changing character of conflict in current and emergent global circumstances, such as asymmetrical conflicts, insurgencies, and terrorism. Fry argues that this pluralisation of war has broken the binary relation between war and peace: conflict is no longer self-evident, and consequentially the changes in the conditions, nature, systems, philosophies and (...) technologies of war must be addressed. Through a deep understanding of contemporary war, Fry explains why peace fails as both idea and process, before presenting ‘Unstaging War’ as a concept and nascent practice that acknowledges conflict as structurally present, and so is not able to be dealt with by attempts to create peace. Against a backdrop of increasingly tense relations between global power blocs, the beginnings of a new nuclear arms race, and the ever-increasing human and environmental impacts of climate change, a more viable alternative to war is urgently needed. Unstaging War is not claimed as a solution, but rather as an exploration of critical problems and an opening into the means of engaging with them. (shrink)

A new approach to policy analysis is formulated within the framework of the graph model for conflict resolution. A policy is defined as a plan of action for a decision maker (DM) that specifies the DM’s intended action starting at every possible state in a graph model of a conflict. Given a profile of policies, a Policy Stable State (PSS) is a state that no DM moves away from (according to its policy), and such that no DM would (...) prefer to change its policy given the policies of the other DMs. The profile of policies associated to a PSS is called a Policy Equilibrium. Properties of PSSs are developed, and a refinement is suggested that restricts DMs to policies that are credible in that they are in the DM’s immediate interest. Relationships with existing stability definitions in the graph model for conflict resolution are then explored. (shrink)

The article presents an in-depth analysis of epistemic cultures in conflict by exemplifying the epistemic conflict between high energy physics and astronomy which emerged after the discovery of “dark energy” and the accelerating expansion of the universe. It suggests a theoretical framework combining Knorr-Cetina’s concept of epistemic cultures with Whitley’s theory of dependencies in the sciences system, which explains that epistemic conflicts occur, if the strategic and functional dependency of two incommensurable epistemic cultures is suddenly growing. The (...) pre-history of the conflict is discussed on a micro-level for the two research groups involved in the breakthrough. The analysis of the consequent epistemic conflict on a macro-level reveals that it embraces the preferred epistemic strategy, the collaboration style, the instrumental concepts and the question how social legitimacy can be generated. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Many companies engage in dialogue with nongovernmental organizations about societal issues. The question is what a regulative ideal for such dialogues should be. In the literature on corporate social responsibility, the Habermasian notion of communicative action is often presented as a regulative ideal for stakeholder dialogue, implying that actors should aim at consensus and set strategic considerations aside. In this article, we argue that in many cases, communicative action is not a suitable regulative ideal for dialogue between companies and (...) NGOs. We contend that there is often an adversarial element in the relation between companies and NGOs, and that an orientation towards consensus can be in tension with this adversarial relation. We develop an alternative approach to stakeholder dialogue called ‘agonistic deliberation.’ In this approach, conflict and strategic considerations play a legitimate and, up to a certain point, desirable role. (shrink)

When women won the vote in the United States in 1920 they were still routinely barred from serving as jurors, but some began vigorous campaigns for a place in the jury box. This book tells the story of how women mobilized in fifteen states to change jury laws so that women could gain this additional right of citizenship. Some campaigns quickly succeeded; others took substantially longer. The book reveals that when women strategically adapted their tactics to the broader political environment, (...) they were able to speed up the pace of jury reform, while less strategic movements took longer. A comparison of the more strategic women's jury movements with those that were less strategic shows that the former built coalitions with other women's groups, took advantage of political opportunities, had past experience in seeking legal reforms and confronted tensions and even conflict within their ranks in ways that bolstered their action. (shrink)

Despite decades of struggle against the industrial food system, academics still question the impact of the alternative food movement. We consider what food movement leaders themselves say about their motivation to act and their capacity to scale up their impact. Based on semi-structured interviews with 27 food movement leaders in Michigan, our findings complicate the established academic narratives that revolve around notions of prefigurative and oppositional politics, and suggest pragmatic strategies that could scale up the pace and scope of food (...) movement impacts. In contrast to the apolitical perspective some scholars see guiding alternative food movements, local leaders we interviewed see the food system from a structural-political lens. Though some see strength in fragmentation, most are not under the illusion that they can work alone and aspire to build their collective strength further. Concerns about organizational survival and conflicting views about the goals of the food movement, however, present ongoing challenges. Ultimately, we argue that there is a middle ground food movement leaders can walk between prefigurative and oppositional politics, one that still attempts to intentionally change the state, while also maintaining the inventiveness that can come from autonomous, grassroots initiatives. Specifically, interviewees suggested that increased strategic capacity around policy advocacy, critical food systems education, and negotiation could help them extend cross-movement networks and mainstream more equitable food policies, while continuing to experiment with customized solutions. (shrink)

We examine the role of religious identity in promoting strategic renewal in privately held founder family firms. Religious identity in these firms refers to their collective sense of being that reflects their founders’ and owner family members’ espoused religious values and beliefs, thereby distinguishing themselves from others in what is central, distinct, and enduring about their organization. We propose that such a religious identity determines family firms’ spiritual capital, which influences strategic renewal activities such as conflict resolution (...) and resource allocation. Specifically, we argue that spiritual capital can be a double-edged sword when family firms pursue strategic renewal. We discuss the implications of our work for future research. (shrink)

We examine the role of religious identity in promoting strategic renewal in privately held founder family firms. Religious identity in these firms refers to their collective sense of being that reflects their founders’ and owner family members’ espoused religious values and beliefs, thereby distinguishing themselves from others in what is central, distinct, and enduring about their organization. We propose that such a religious identity determines family firms’ spiritual capital, which influences strategic renewal activities such as conflict resolution (...) and resource allocation. Specifically, we argue that spiritual capital can be a double-edged sword when family firms pursue strategic renewal. We discuss the implications of our work for future research. (shrink)

The present research was guided by the important need for a diversion from an economistic to a humanistic management perspective of sustainability. It concentrates on the current importance of digital strategic communication, particularly regarding the concept of corporate sustainability in the context of the conflict arena of the oil industry. The focus is on the comparison of the persuasive effectiveness of the framings of corporate versus activist NGO website communications and their impacts on the perception of the triple (...) pillars of sustainability and, corporate greenwashing with respect to a proposed bituminous oil pipeline in Canada. The results of these pro and con messages were analyzed within the Elaboration Likelihood Model demonstrating a “non expert” peripheral route to a positive persuasion from exposure to the corporate communication versus an “expert” central route to a negative persuasion from the activist NGO communication. Subsequent exposure to the opposite website communication further emphasized the predominance of a negative persuasion based on both groups now being motivated as “expert” viewers of these strategic communications, leading to an important perception of greenwashing by participants resulting from vague claims, visual and linguistic contents of the corporate communication versus the mainly verifiable factual ones in that of the activist NGO. (shrink)

This article approaches the relationship of normative argumentation studies and descriptive persuasion effects research by pointing to several empirical findings that raise questions or puzzles about normatively-proper argumentative conduct. These findings indicate some complications in the analysis of normatively desirable argumentative conduct – including some ways in which practical persuasive success may not be entirely compatible with normatively-desirable advocacy practices.

This article analyzes the operations of the French group Lafarge in Syria during the civil war between 2011 and 2014, to understand the conflict-sensitive practices of a multinational company (MNC) in an area of limited statehood (ALS). We examine how and why the company decided to continue operating its plant in Syria during this intrastate conflict, resulting in financing terrorist groups like ISIS. We highlight the key operational and managerial decisions made by headquarters and local operations and relate (...) them to the conflict situation in the ALS in question. We contribute, with the idea of the firm’s “organization of short-sightedness,” to the understanding of how strategic decisions may lead to a structural inability to fully comprehend the local dangers and the implications for the employees, and how this may lead to a redefinition of legitimate and illegitimate stakeholders in conflict zones. A drawn-out process, stemming from a willingness to stay at all cost in an ALS environment, leads to misinterpretation of the danger and an acute dependency on local stakeholders. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that religious ethics, complemented by a nationalist principle, can play in a sustained exercise of strategic leadership, hypothesizing a positive association with a societal reputation for credibility or integrity. The key to this relation is the constraining effect on strategic or financial pressures, even if there is coherence in the long-term. J. N. Tata, the founder of Tata Industries who lived in British India, was a Parsee priest and an advocate for Indian national (...) self-reliance and ultimately independence. Even as Tata's two ethics dovetailed with his business interests in the long-term, they conflicted sufficiently with the business calculus of some of his immediate and intermediate strategic interests such that he could enjoy a sterling societal reputation in India, his credibility transcending that of a businessman. (shrink)

Emergent structural approaches to institutional complexity tend to inhibit the role of agency in addressing logic multiplicity scenarios. Prior studies of logic multiplicity have documented a diverse set of outcomes, ranging from domination through hybridization, and characterized by various levels of conflict. A new stream of research has emerged that seeks to explain this heterogeneity through the structural components of complexity. These studies tend to minimize the role of agency in institutional complexity scenarios, positing that outcome diversity, and the (...) organization’s ability to exert agency, can be accounted for by the interaction of exogenously determined parameters, such as centrality, compatibility, prioritization, and jurisdictional overlap. This article revisits the role of agency in these models, suggesting that agency is not only framed by, but may itself shape, structure. The article draws on a comparative case study in five Israeli nonprofit organizations, focusing on the introduction of the business logic through a strategic planning process, and the challenge that this represents for the legacy social logic. The case studies demonstrate that organizations regularly use a set of distinctive mechanisms to manipulate the structural components of complexity, and, in so doing, agentically regulate logic multiplicity outcomes. (shrink)

This paper is about rewilding and the tensions it involves. Rewilding is a relatively novel approach to nature conservation, which seeks to be proactive and ambitious in the face of continuing environmental decline. Whilst definitions of rewilding place a strong emphasis on non-human agency, it is an inescapably human aspiration resulting in a range of social conflicts. The paper focuses on the case study of the Cambrian Wildwood project in Mid Wales (UK), evaluating the ways in which debate and (...) class='Hi'>strategic action to advance rewilding is proceeding, assessing the extent to which compromise and learning has occurred amongst advocates. As such, we provide an important addition to the field, by detailing how conflicts play out over time and how actors' positioning and approach shifts, and why. In this case, tempers have flared around the threat that rewilding is seen to pose to resident farming communities. Tensions discussed include the differing social constructions of landscape and nature involved; the distribution of impacts on different stakeholders; and the relative power of different actors to make decisions and gain representation. Responding to these, the paper outlines how rewilding advocates have sought to advance a more peopled and culturally responsive vision, which seeks to champion sustainable livelihood strategies. The changes in approach detailed demonstrate a reflexive stance from rewilders, which suggests that learning and adaptation can occur. Nonetheless, caution is expressed regarding the extent to which rewilding can truly advance inclusive opportunities for rural change, given a continued return amongst stakeholders to exclusionary narratives of belonging and authenticity, suggesting substantive difficulty in moving beyond longstanding concerns over identity and the re-imagination of place. Rewilding, it would seem, is about who we think we are and how we co-constitute our sense of self. We, therefore, close by arguing that tactics and politicking can only have so much bearing, tensions over rewilding are unavoidably emotional. (shrink)

Since the establishment of International Relations as an academic discipline in 1918, it has undergone great transformations. The end of World War-II with devastated nuclear technology brought forth national security perspectives impacting the study of IR and giving birth to strategic and security studies as specialized sub-disciplines. Presently the discipline of IR has very distinct and specialized sub-disciplines such as Strategic Studies, Security Studies, Peace and Conflict Resolution and Area Studies. In Pakistan, the first institute dealing with (...) international affairs was established in 1947 and the first teaching department at Karachi University was formed in 1958. However, it suffered due to general apathy by the governments and public alike. In 1970s, Pakistan’s security matrix compelled to create Area Study Centers and Strategic Studies departments. Later, in early 2000s, electronic media played an important role in popularizing these disciplines. Lately, the HEC has established a Consortium of Social Sciences Universities in Pakistan to elevate the status of Social Sciences and launched various scholarship schemes to meet the challenge of qualified human resource. However, there is a need to establish an Academy of Social Sciences and a National Society of International Relations to promote these disciplines on strong financial and institutional footings. (shrink)

This paper examines a struggle over the future use of Nordic forests, which took place from 2009 to 2012 within a major research program, Future Forests—Sustainable Strategies under Uncertainty and Risk, organized and funded by Mistra, The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research. We explore the role of strategic environmental research in societal constructions of long-term challenges and future risks. Specifically, we draw attention to the role played by environmental research in the creation of future images that become (...) dominant for how societies structure action for the long term. We also show that this process is on several accounts problematic. Research labeled “strategic” or “relevant” is intended to manage long-term risks and challenges in a sustainable way, by taking into account the “open” and “plural” nature of the future. The case of Future Forests suggests, rather, that by contributing to the emergence of dominant future images, environmental research is entangled with a process of gradual consensus creation around what may be highly selective or biased narratives of the long term, which may conceal or postpone key forms of future conflict. (shrink)

Literature on attitude similarity suggests that sharing similar attitudes enhances interpersonal liking, but it remains unanswered whether this effect also holds for ambivalent attitudes. In the present research, we shed light on the role attitudinal ambivalence plays in interpersonal liking. Specifically, we examine whether people express ambivalence strategically to generate a positive or negative social image, and whether this is dependent on the attitudinal ambivalence of their perceiver. We test two alternative hypotheses. In line with the attitude-similarity effect, people should (...) express ambivalence towards ambivalent others to enhance interpersonal liking, as sharing ambivalence might socially validate the latter’s experience of attitudinal conflict. On the other hand, people might express more univalence, as ambivalence may drive ambivalent others towards the resolution of their attitudinal conflict and univalent stances could help to achieve that goal. In two studies (N = 449, 149), people expressed similar attitudes to those of their perceivers, even when the latter experienced attitudinal conflict (Study 1 and 2). Moreover, they composed an essay, the message of which validated their perceiver’s attitudinal conflict (Study 2). In line with these results, we further observe that the more people experienced their ambivalence as conflicting, the more they liked others who similarly experienced attitudinal conflict (Study 1). These findings suggest that the expression of ambivalence can have important interpersonal functions, as it might lead to an enhanced social image when interacting with those coping with attitudinal conflict. (shrink)