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Abstract:
This paper contributes to a developing literature on the role of framing in organizational settings and in protracted environmental disputes in particular. The paper identifies four frame types (risk, conflict management, power, and views of nature frames) that can be used to understand how disputants make sense of environmental conflicts and offers predictions about differential use of these four frames by environmental disputants. Our results substantiate some differences in the frames utilized by different stakeholder groups - revealing predicable antagonisms as well as the presence of strange bedfellows. We link frame usage to the intractability of conflict and offer some recommendations for handling these frame-based disputes. Finally, our results suggest that greater insight into environmental conflicts may be derived from understanding the patterns of frames held by disputants rather than concentrating solely on interest-based stakeholder groupings.

Abstract:
In this paper I explore two connections between mediation and framing. First, mediators use framing as a technique to foster resolution by creating different social accounts of the conflict. I review several framing tasks include framing: the process and disputants' expectations, fairness and justice, the issues in contention, alternatives, and identity concerns. Thus, I pay particular attention to the mechanisms by which framing can transform disputes and disputants. Second, I explore how mediation itself is a frame within the larger constellation of frames disputants and third parties might evoke to view conflicts. Within this constellation of frames, mediation is positioned as one of several possible conflict handling frames that disputants could, but often don't, adopt. I explore several reasons why disputants' framing of the conflict makes them leery of mediation. Finally, I consider several alternatives that third parties can use to help maintain a civil dialogue among disputants when mediation is not an accepted option. These interventions focus on narration, perspective-taking, and acknowledgment of critical identities, and are intended to honor disputants' existing frames while at the same time promoting possible frame enlargement so that disputants can begin to understand each other better.

Framing, mediation, dispute interventions

Abstract:
This paper demonstrates that organizational anger contexts and the form of anger expression does impact positive and negative outcomes of anger. Anger context refers to an organization's normative rules governing anger expression, specifically defined as the extent to which organizational sanctions are likely to be experienced following an overt expression of anger. We examined 154 episodes of anger in three distinct anger contexts. We identified three forms of anger expression and four categories of anger outcomes. We found evidence of organizations that value the expression of anger and find it useful in accomplishing organizational goals. In these setting positive outcomes were associated with expressions of anger. In contrast, in organizations where anger is suppressed by managers and employees working to prevent expressions of anger, we found both positive and negative outcomes. Thus, organizational context does have an impact on the outcomes of anger episodes.

Anger, Emotions, Organizational Culture/Norms

Abstract:
Using a discourse approach to framing, we investigate the extent to which stakeholder groups cohere or differ in their framing of three environmental disputes. The results help us to better understand the nature of homogeneous or heterogeneous stakeholder groups and how their sensemaking patterns facilitate effective conflict management. Our approach offers a more fine-grained analysis of stakeholder framing than scholars have previously used. Our results reveal four distinct discourses at play in these conflicts: the traditional business discourse, an oppositional discourse expressed by environmentalists, a balance discourse espoused primarily by government agency officials, and a fourth, freedom discourse, espoused by other stakeholders. We show how stakeholders that espouse these different discourses construct their interactions to preserve their group identities, which, in turn, perpetuates the conflict. We consider how shifts in what constitutes the dominant discourse for a given dispute can move the disputes toward resolution. Finally, the results suggest that scholars can receive greater insights into environmental conflicts through examining the patterns of frames held by disputants rather than concentrating solely on interests or positions that stakeholders share. By analyzing environmental disputes from a framing perspective, we illuminate how framing contributes to the intractability of inter-organizational conflict. Overall, we conclude that discourse analysis of framing provides an instructive approach to management research and contributes to the ongoing discussion of discursive struggle and change within and among organizations.

Abstract:
This is a qualitative theory-building study that examines the relationship between organizational display rules and social norms (e.g. occupational, status and personal norms) and their influence on anger expressions in the workplace. The emotional labor literature has focused on the impact of organizational display rules which typically work to constrain anger expressions. This study extends this work by also examining how other social norms can impact anger expressions when display rules are weak or absent. Results show that organizational values and occupational, status, and personal norms each have influence depending upon the characteristics of the organizational context.

Abstract:
We draw on narratives of stakeholders in two different environmental disputes for our analysis. Our analysis of these tales explores the interplay between power and identity construction in these two underorganized interorganizational domains. There are four primary contributions of this paper. First, we extend extant work on underorganized interorganizational domains to the realm of protracted environmental conflicts. Second, using disputants' own narratives, we demonstrate how groups of disputants constructed and revealed their collective identities in the disputes. Third, we show how power dimensions and identity construction are interwoven in underorganized interorganizational domains and, in particular, determine if identities are constructed differently in different kinds of domains. Fourth, we show that through the process of constructing their identities, domain protagonists also construct the domains themselves and these constructions can either exacerbate or ameliorate the conflicts.

environmental disputes, narrative analysis, discourse, power, identity, underorganized, interorganizational domains

Abstract:
Using a sample of 90 US-China manufacturing joint ventures, this study empirically tested a grounded-theory model of the antecedents and the effects of the structure of parent management control in international joint ventures. The results suggest that competitive and cooperative dynamics occur simultaneously between joint venture partners. On one hand, the relative bargaining power between the partners, derived from the negotiation context and from contributing critical resources to the venture, respectively, is a determining factor in management control; and the level of operational control exercised by a partner over the venture has a positive effect on the extent to which this partner`s strategic objectives are achieved. On the other hand, the quality of the interpartner working relationship was found to have a strong, positive relationship with the achievement of strategic objectives for both partners.