Professor Michael Pratt, O’Connor Family Professor, Boston College, will present Managing Intractable Conflict: The Role of Multiple Identity Resourcing in a Hospital Merger. Co-author: Stephanie Creary (Wharton).
Abstract
Although past research on intergroup conflict management tends to focus on integrative solutions for promoting intergroup harmony, research suggests that such solutions are counterproductive when facing an intractable conflict: long-term, multi-issue intergroup disputes that have escalated over time. Through a qualitative single case study of two hospitals that legally merged in 1998, we reveal how these two hospitals transformed their non-productive and long-standing conflict into more productive cooperative and innovative behavior 16 years later. We propose a process model of multiple identity resourcing that shows: (a) how a conflict over scarce resources became entangled over time with issues of status, power, and identity to create an intractable conflict; (b) how this intractable conflict was managed first by managing identity; and (c) and how the consequences of managing identity opened the way for not only cooperative behavior, but the creation of new resources as well.
Biography
Michael Pratt is the O’Connor Family Professor at Boston College. He is an Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly. In 2016, he received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Management and Organizational Cognition Division of the Academy of Management. He has published in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Organization Science and others.