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Conflict and Strategic Choice: How Top Management Teams Disagree
Abstract
Substantive conflict is natural within top management teams as executives struggle with making high-stakes choices under conditions of ambiguity and uncertainty. Yet, many top management teams fail to sufficiently debate appropriate courses of action. This article reports on a field study of top management teams and examines four managerial levers that can help executives overcome the cognitive, emotional, and political barriers to engaging in conflict. These levers are: build a heterogeneous team; create frequent interactions within that team; cultivate a distinct symphony of roles such as Counselor, Futurist, and Ms. Action around fundamental tensions within managing; and use multiple-lens tactics such as competitor role playing and multiple alternatives to provide unexpected vantage points on key issues.
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“This is supported by studies that show that some successful firms actively seek tensions to improve decision making (Eisenhardt et al. 1997;Norman et al. 2004).”
From Stakeholder marketing: theoretical foundations and required capabilities (2015) · cites this paper as Eisenhardt et al. 1997
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Metadata
- Authors
- Eisenhardt, K. M., Kahwajy, J. L., & Bourgeois, L. J.
- Venue
- California Management Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1997-01
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 42-62
- ISSN
- 0008-1256 (ISSN-L)
- 2162-8564
- OpenAlex
- W2031754154
- Cited by
- 370
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 12
- FWCI
- 11.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- California Management Review (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Conflict Management and Negotiation
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Leadership, Behavior, and Decision-Making Studies
- Keywords
- top management teams, team conflict, strategic choice, decision making under uncertainty, team heterogeneity, team roles, role play, multiple alternatives, organizational politics
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