Interorganizational task and emotional conflict with international channels of distribution

Abstract

Recent conceptualizations of conflict have proposed a two-dimensional structure where emotional conflict is personal and dysfunctional and task conflict is issue-oriented and functional. Empirical studies of these two types of conflict, however, have focused on intraorganizational conflict, where frequent, personal and on-going contact between parties is high. This study builds on this literature by examining the antecedents and consequences of task and emotional conflict in an interorganizational context between manufacturers and their international channels of distribution. Contrary to the findings in previous intraorganizational research, both task and emotional conflict reduce the quality of strategy employed, reducing performance.