Arguments that are ignored escalate into conflicts between and among internal and external organizational stakeholders. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy exemplifies this escalation, where a narrative of profit eclipsed a commitment to safety. Georg Simmel1 considers conflict to be a unifying communicative force. He argues that conflict is “designed to resolve divergent dualisms; it is a way of achieving some kind of unity” (Simmel 1955, p. 13). Conflict can unify various perspectives that emerge within the marketplace. For Heath (2000), the marketplace is not simply a place of argument, but a context for a “rhetorical battleground” replete with ongoing conflicts. Conflict within and between organizations and stakeholders defines and redefines shared interests, values, and obligations. Conflict is a clarifying tool responsive to problems and opportunities, and it is the final step before a full-blown crisis. This chapter develops three major sections on the centrality of conflict clarity:
1. Performative Content: Conflict Definition;
2. Theory and Strategy: Conflict Discernment; and
3. Leadership: Conflict Responsiveness.
Argument escalation leading to conflict is an inevitable reality in a time of the multiplicity of voices, positions, and standpoints. Sellnow, Ulmer, and Snider (1998) contend that conflict is necessary as organizations “maintain their social legitimacy” in the marketplace. Social norms, expectations, and perspectives clash, each expecting to be given a hearing, seeking legitimacy within an organization. The authors contend that the reality of numerous contentious perspectives in the marketplace keeps organizational values in a responsive mode. Stakeholders must coconstruct meaning in the midst of conflicts that identify prominent stakeholder concerns and call for attention lest they morph into an all-out crisis.
Performative Content: Conflict Definition
Conflict clarity and definition provide communicative insight into the significant interpretive meaning and understanding of relevant disputes. Internal and external stakeholders challenge, question, and consider/reconsider decisions; such conflict engagement is significantly enhanced in its speed and intensity through communication technologies that have instantaneous reach to a wide audience. Heath (1973, p. 168) understands conflict and confrontation as a positive communicative tool that purifies “the priority of values, ideology, and definitions within the society” with the hope of generating new insights for all interested and vested parties. Conflict engages a multiplicity of positions because it is a communicative tool that depends on constructive dispute.
This section underscores the importance of conflict clarity and definition through three key components: (1) context, (2) unity, and (3) sensitivity. These considerations elucidate the importance of understanding conflict as a positive and constructive communication strategy in a public sphere composed of a multitude of voices.
Conflict Clarity: Context
Conflict emerges within particularities—of time, resources, and perceptions embraced by different internal and external stakeholders. Particularity of context makes conflict distinctive, specific, and of crucial informational value. Arnett, McManus, and McKendree2 (2014) understand context as the “dwelling where ideas and actions are tested” (p. 32). The particulars of the context in the conflict require attentiveness to the question(s) announced in a given historical moment. The terms “particular,” “context,” and “situated question” all define the importance of the background that illuminates and clarifies a given foreground conflict. Arnett, McManus, and McKendree reject a rationalism that assumes a “universal truth” because such rationalism disregards the “local context” and insists upon “inflicting” an “abstract idea,” imposing upon local custom and tradition. Lack of regard for the local, the context, and the particular not only results in further conflict escalation but also severely limits one’s ability to learn anything from the conflict.
Putnam (1988) concurs with this privileged role for context in forging conflict clarity. Understanding conflict within its organizational particularities “serves vital needs in facilitating change and in adapting to dynamic organizational environments” (p. 293) She contends that communication is the constructive social link between conflict and context, and she maintains that it is possible and important to communicatively learn about “the formation of issues, the emotional climate of conflicts, and the cyclical development of interaction” (p. 293). Putnam reiterates that context constructs and shapes stakeholder responses to issues of dispute. Putnam, like Arnett, McManus, and McKendree, understand context, locality, and particularity as holding informational currency for the why and the how of navigating a foreground conflict.
Conflict Clarity: Unity
Clash, contention, and anger characterize common notions of conflict. While sometimes correct, this conception of conflict can miss the positive, constructive, and growth-centered results of engaging in conflict. According to Arnett et al. (2014), conflict is not “propelled by evidence alone,” and it involves all “our senses,” including emotions, backgrounds, beliefs, and attitudes. The goal of conflict is learning in the midst of disharmony and discord; conflict is an ongoing form of intelligence gathering.
Simmel (1904, p. 490) contends that conflict can invite unity when there is “resolution of the tension between the contraries.” Differences may not dissipate, but constructive negotiation can yield an enlarged picture composed of multiple thoughts and opinions that together can enhance an organization. For Simmel, this is an “agreement of [multiple] individual minds” (p. 493). Such temporal agreement is not totalizing; the objective is to learn from difference, yielding creative insight through competing communicative viewpoints. Conflict engages a contrarian perspective that fuels creativity through listening and attending to vocalized opposition. Simmel’s creative understanding of conflict assumes a willingness to understand and learn from viewpoints other than one’s own.
Conflict Clarity: Sensitivity
Clarifying conflict requires thoughtful attentiveness to internal and external stakeholders, changing contexts to understand divergent perspectives and interests. Arnett et al. (2014, p. 51) articulate that we invite problematic and potentially destructive conflict when we fail to “sense what matters within a given place and among a group of people.” They suggest the pragmatic importance of sensitivity to difference, whether persons or ideas. Such sensitivity has the practical purpose of respecting and responding to difference with the objective of pursuing excellence.
Similar to the perspective of this book, Joep Cornelissen3 situates conflict between issue and crisis. He characterizes conflict as a linkage between and among organizations and their constituencies. Conflict functions as a pragmatic—though often unwanted—wake-up call to differences in “the context of a complex commercial, economic, political, technological, social and cultural world” (p. 183). The complexity of informational environments demands sensitivity to contending issues and unexpected emerging consequences. Cornelissen further argues that such “variables” create inevitable challenges and conflicts that constitute the circumstances for both potential organizational threats and opportunities. Sensitivity to circumstances permits learning through appropriate responsiveness to conflicts.
The clashing over internal and external stakeholders’ positions and standpoints is a natural occurrence in the marketplace. Conflict clarity seeks to learn through contrasting viewpoints, illustrated through the interplay of three key considerations:
1. Context—conflicts are shaped, molded, and interpreted through the particularities of questions, place, and context;
2. Unity—conflicts can be healthy formative communicative functions when the goal is to learn from the unity of contraries; and
3. Sensitivity—conflicts emerge in the particular, demanding a sensitivity to distinct and contrasting perspectives.
Conflict clarity demands internal and external stakeholder sensitivity to historical, environmental, political, and social contexts in order to locate temporal ways to unify differing viewpoints. The theoretical and practical underpinnings of conflict illuminate the necessity of learning from difference. Conflict discernment is a pragmatic organizational necessity.
Theory and Strategy: Conflict Discernment
Conflict discernment requires a praxis orientation that integrates theory and action, guiding an organizational responsiveness capable of curtailing escalation into crisis. Theory-informed action is similar to Heath’s (2000, p. 70) call for communication theory that can “underpin the values of public relations” that assist a good organization in “communicating well.” This praxis orientation that combines theory and action, according to Heath, assumes that reality is “subject to advocacy” and that multiple perspectives assist the achievement of “better visions of reality.” Conflict discernment involves the strategic interplay of theory and action, multiplicity of perspectives, advocacy, and constructive engagement with conflict between and among internal and external stakeholders. A similar approach is found in the Arthur W. Page Society’s series of white papers on corporate communication, particularly Building Belief: A New Model for Activating Corporate Character (2007), which presents a model built in four concepts around corporate character: a shared belief system, action, confidence, and advocacy “to scale” (see Figure 7.1).
Figure 7.1 The four major concepts of corporate character
This section considers the unification of theory and action in perceiving and defining conflict through three major considerations: (1) social construction, (2) interspaces, and (3) communicative gestalt. Theory that undergirds action brings forward strategic and pragmatic communicative responses to conflict development.
Conflict Discernment: Social Construction
Contrasting viewpoints generate conflict, making up an integral part of the public sphere of a given organization. Social norms and practices compose the public sphere and influence the marketplace. Berger and Luckmann4 (1966) consider social construction to be a basic presupposition of social interaction, as humans create, shape, and negotiate meaning from positions that they have inherited from previous social interactions. Berger and Luckmann assert that the social nature of the person and individual identity arise via unending social construction. They acknowledge that human interaction begins in social interactions with co-constructive implications. Organizations within the marketplace engage their work within these same parameters.
For Berger and Luckmann, social construction influences knowledge, conflict, and reality, with a major manifestation of this reality institutionalized in the marketplace. Institutions, they contend historically, “control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns,” with the contemporary marketplace assuming that conflict discernment is a central pattern in the meeting of the multiplicity of voices and standpoints (p. 52). Conflict emerges when internal and external stakeholders embrace contending positions of particularity and importance. Arnett, McManus, and McKendree (2014, p. 15) underscore Berger and Luckmann’s theoretical contribution as the starting point for action, understanding that the “communicative reality of difference” “generate[s]” conflict. Conflict discernment results in social construction when positions are propelled into action. Constructive and necessary social interaction in conflict dwells in the interspaces between and among internal and external stakeholders. Contrary to popular opinion, distance in the public domain is essential for clarity and discernment (see Figure 7.2).
Conflict Discernment: Interspaces
Social norms and behaviors guide communicative interaction in the public sphere, composed of multiple and contrasting opinions. The public sphere is not uniform; it yields differing positions that require discernment when conflict between opinions arises. An author who describes the linkage of public sphere and opinion is Arendt (1955/1983); she offers practical political advice for navigating a public sphere composed of multiple opinions.5 The notion of interspaces is her conception of distance “between opinions and persons,” which permits conflict discernment to occur (Arnett, McManus, and McKendree 2014, p. 13). For Arendt, interspaces of distance enhance our clarity of vision and understanding; put simply, placing one’s hand unduly close to one’s face precludes clarity. We need some distance in order to envision thoughtfully and carefully what is before us.
Figure 7.2 Berger and Luckmann’s theoretical conception of the Social Construction of Reality (1966)
Arendt considers the protection and promotion of interspaces to be a fundamental public responsibility. Differing opinions in the public arena, for Arendt, constitute the human world; without these differences and necessary interspaces that allow for an infinite “plurality,” the world as we understand it would vanish. The marketplace is a public domain where the multiplicity of voices and contrasting opinions supported by interspaces acknowledge both contrasting stakeholder viewpoints and the reality of creativity emerging through conflict discernment. Distance nourishes ideas, viewpoints, and policies, yielding clarity and creativity. However, without interspaces between persons and opinions, such differences morph from conflict discernment to acts more akin to violence.
Conflict Discernment: Communicative Gestalt
Interspaces that nourish differing opinions constitute narrative background commitments that permit foreground conflicts to constructively mature. Arnett, McManus, and McKendree (2014) discuss “communicative gestalt” as a narrative background composed of protected interspaces, conflict discernment, and negotiation that continually give rise to social construction. Responses to foreground situations require background context in order to shape their direction and meet the goal of public clarity. Conflict discernment rests upon the recognition that conflicts emerge between and among perspectives grounded within differing narrative traditions. Understanding contrasting backgrounds permits conflict discernment to move from being a difficulty into being a creative opportunity.
Arnett, McManus, and McKendree turn to Max Wertheimer6 and John Stuart Mill7 to further explicate gestalt theory, which emerged in the twentieth century development of psychology. They note that both scholars stress that “foreground perception depends upon a background or context for comprehensibility” (p. 4). Background incorporates narrative composed of practices and characters that give rise to ideas and stories that structure agreement and support within a given social group of a public domain.8 Recognition of the multiplicity of narratives in the marketplace illuminates conflicts, and gestalt theory reminds us that background assumptions impact and influence foreground assertions. Creativity in conflict is enacted through recognition of the interplay of background and foreground in a continual support of the interspaces and distance that enable the process of judgment.
Conflict discernment is a communicative action responsive to a multiplicity of perspectives guided by a pragmatic hope that clashing opinions negotiated well enhance stakeholder options. This section expanded the theoretical frameworks for conflict engagement through three key considerations:
1. Social Construction—the public sphere constituted by multiple opinions and perspectives informs and shapes the possibility of learning with and from conflict;
2. Interspaces—the distance between persons and opinions in the public sphere gives rise to clarity of ideas and permits creative construction of the unexpected; and
3. Communicative Gestalt—the interplay of foreground behaviors with background narratives yields insight into the nature of conflict between and among constituencies.
The theoretical underpinnings of communicative action in the marketplace produce praxis implications of theory and action that exemplify the importance of conflict discernment in leadership. Conflict responsiveness between and among stakeholders can avoid the unnecessary escalation of problems and is a defining characteristic of leadership.
Leadership: Conflict Responsiveness
Leadership must respond to conflict and escalating disputes, clarifying and discerning prominent stakeholder positions and viewpoints. Leadership must seek a convergence of competing viewpoints for the sake of organizational success. Risk and crisis communication practices demand leaders’ understanding, attentiveness, and consideration of stakeholder concerns and opinions, with the objective of enhancing organizational decision making. Heath and Bowen (2002) argue that leadership must be “savvy” in response to a multiplicity of divergent stakeholder positions and avoid taking “stakeholders for granted.” Leaders must search for ways to identify and unite mutual interests. Responding to conflict and attending to a multiplicity of viewpoints creates space for public recognition of shared positions between and among internal and external stakeholders. Conflict responsiveness is a fundamental communicative tool for leaders in the contemporary marketplace, where mutual interests and agreements must be discerned, not merely expected.
This section identifies attentive leadership conflict practices through three significant considerations: (1) emotional intelligence, (2) authenticity, and (3) transformation. These key concepts elucidate leadership’s vital connection to conflict as the final stage prior to crisis escalation.
Leadership and Conflict Responsiveness: Emotional Intelligence
Leadership communication, as an area of academic inquiry, acknowledges the role of emotions in conflict management. Leadership must respond to the emotional nature of conflict within the marketplace. This chapter argues that conflict engages dispute in relationship to narrative, context, and questions relevant to the historical moment. In addition, emotions are central to the clashing of perspectives and positions. Goleman (1995),9 a prominent scholar in emotional intelligence in leadership communication literature, contends that failure to consider emotional significance and depth makes escalation of a problem inevitable.
In Emotional Intelligence (1995), Goleman frames leadership as the interaction of self-awareness and other-awareness, and in each case, there is an integral link to emotional intelligence. Awareness of self and other is the first step in emotional intelligence and effective conflict discernment as a leader. Goleman’s work inspired other scholars such as Burtis and Turman10 (2010) to connect leadership communication to an organizational citizenship that requires an emotional “resilience” in the engaging of problems and, at times, problematic persons. Emotional intelligence privileges conflict responsiveness, attending to the emotions of self and other with the goal of understanding, and thereby lessening unnecessary escalation. In order for emotional intelligence in leadership and conflict responsiveness to effectively impact organizational decision making, authenticity of engagement with problems and others is crucial.
Leadership and Conflict Responsiveness: Authenticity
Leadership within the public sphere begins with responsiveness to internal and external stakeholder concerns and considerations. Authentic leadership theory, as articulated by Avolio et al. (2004), commenced with a response to a publication by former CEO of Medtronic, Bill George.11 Avolio et al. connect theory to George’s practical telling of a leadership story. They suggest that an authentic leader is steadfast in identity, perspective, and standpoint, providing consistency and clarity for others. Authentic leadership, when negotiating divergent positions, concerns itself with authentic emotional attentiveness as a basic ethical stance.
Authentic leadership engages communication through narratives steeped in values that have been established within the opinions of the public sphere. Arnett, McManus, and McKendree (2014, p. 52) contend that conflict can “unmask the reality of a given place—its identity.” Conflict responsiveness is a primary function of an authentic leader, one capable of inviting appropriate transparency and the constructive engagement of contrasting ideas and directions. Authentic leadership engages social construction, context, and narrative by pursuing excellence in the meeting and creative use of conflicting standpoints. Such creative leadership attends to both short- and long-term goals, to foreground and background, and to the reality of conflict being potentially constructive and otherwise dependent upon leadership response.
Leadership and Conflict Responsiveness: Transformation
Leadership is responsible for setting immediate and prospective goals for stakeholders. Leadership establishes goals and must generate enthusiastic response to their engagement. Transformation moves goals from written statements of mission, vision, and values to an everyday part of organizational mission and success. According to Humphrey (2014, pp. 404–405), transformational leaders “need to make sense of changes in the external environment and understand how these changes impact their organization.” Arnett et al. (2014) add that transformational leaders use conflict to interrupt “thoughtless routine”; they model and demand adaptiveness. Transformational leadership begins with the meeting of conflict and is tested with response.
Humphrey12 contends that transformational leadership requires four “Is” of organizational direction:
1. Idealized influence,
2. Inspirational motivation,
3. Intellectual stimulation, and
4. Individualized consideration.
Idealized influence refers to the leadership’s commitment to serve as “role models” in the engagement of organizational behavior and conflict management. Inspirational motivation asks leaders to provide meaning to and for organizational life, seeking divergent viewpoints with one objective: assisting the larger good of the unit. Intellectual stimulation considers conflict, challenge, and dispute as sources of “creativity” and “innovation” that influence stakeholders to “question assumptions,” learn from contrasting “perspectives and approaches,” and remember that their primary task is to assist the good of the organization. Finally, individualized consideration permits leaders to acknowledge individual stakeholder perspectives as formative for organizational growth and “achievement.” The four “Is” of transformational leadership depend upon conflict responsiveness, the conceptualizing of dispute as a formative opportunity for growth and ongoing learning between and among internal and external stakeholders.
Summary
Leadership must respond to conflict as a constructive force in organizational life. Disregard of conflict permits crisis to manifest itself and then permeate an entire organization. This section illustrates the role of conflict attentiveness through three major considerations:
1. Emotional Intelligence—leadership must be self- and others-aware, thoughtfully discerning and clarifying conflict between and among constituencies;
2. Authenticity—leadership must remain steadfast in identity and position and, when change is present, clarify the why and the how of such movement; and
3. Transformation—leadership must engage in communication that moves from mere information to embodied inspiration within an organization.
Chapter Summary
Conflict clarity is a corporate communication practice that should be deployed through short-term and long-term opportunities for growth, change, and achievement within the public sphere. Sellnow, Veil, and Streifel (2010) argue that organizations function as a “catalyst” for stimulating issue movement from argument to conflict to crisis. Organizational and leadership standpoints, positions, and narratives inform corporate communication practices that demand conflict discernment as vital resistance to crisis escalation. Sellnow, Veil, and Streifel insist on the importance of the credibility of leadership position as constructed through authenticity, emotional intelligence, narrative responsiveness, and the ongoing effort to learn and discern creative possibilities with and from conflict.
Conflict clarity requires knowledge of emotional intelligence, conflict styles and context, and the importance of transformational leadership. This theoretical conceptualization is tested further in Chapter 8, “Conflict and Stakeholder Influence,” as we examine the interplay and often messy relationship between and among stakeholders engaged in conflicts that announce disputes over what matters for the direction of a given corporate entity.
1 Georg Simmel was born in 1858 and died in 1918. He is a renowned sociologist, best known for his work in social interaction.
2 Ronald C. Arnett, Leeanne M. Bell McManus, and Amanda McKendree are scholars in the field of communication whose work, Conflict Between Persons: The Origins of Leadership, differentiates between conflict and argument, and lays the theoretical foundations for tying leadership practices to constructive understandings of conflict.
3 Joep Cornelissen provides an in-depth analysis of the connection between issue, argument, and crisis in his work Corporate Communication: A Guide to Theory & Practice, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014). He is a leading scholar in corporate communication and management. He has authored/coauthored over 11 scholarly works.
4 Peter Berger was born in 1929. Thomas Luckmann was born in 1927 and died in 2016. Berger and Luckmann are sociologists and philosophers renowned for their theory of social construction.
5 Arnett links Hannah Arendt to communication ethics in his work, Communication Ethics in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt’s Rhetoric of Warning and Hope (Carbonale, IL: Southern University Press, 2013).
6 Max Wertheimer was born in 1880 and died in 1943. He was a philosopher who is best known for his work in Gestalt psychology.
7 John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 and died in 1873. He was a philosopher who is best known for his work on utilitarianism.
8 See Fisher W.R. 1984. “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs 51, pp. 1–22.; and Arnett, R.C., and P. Arneson. Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships. Albany NY: SUNY Press.
9 Daniel Goleman is a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence. His work, Emotional Intelligence, was published in 1995 and sold more than five million copies worldwide. He is cofounder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at the Yale Child Studies Center.
(See Daniel, G. 1995. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. New York City, NY: Bantam Books.)
10 John O. Burtis is professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Iowa, with scholarly interests in leadership communication, argumentation, and persuasion. He has served as a director of the Concordia Leadership Center and the West Central Minnesota Leadership Program. Paul D. Turman publishes and researches in the fields of leadership communication, family communication, and communication studies. He is currently vice president for research & economic development for the South Dakota Board of Regents.
11 Bill George is a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and former CEO of Medtronic.
12 Ronald H. Humphrey researches and publishes on leadership communication, with over 15 authored and coauthored scholarly articles. His textbook, Effective Leadership: Theory, Cases, and Applications, was published in 2014.