How to Resolve Conflict in Strategic Alliance: A Cognitive-Map-Based Approach

With the business environment become more complex and dynamic, organizations have been faced with more pressures of competition. Organizations are often compelled to form strategic alliances with other organizations to survive and prosper. The inter-organizational arrangement can become favorable seedbed for inter-organization conflict. The participants in the strategic alliance often spend a substantial proportion of time and energy to handle conflict situations and realize collaboration. The effectiveness of the efforts depends on their comprehension on the characteristics of conflict, but it is often difficult for relative participants in conflict to understand cognitively conflict situation and manage it efficiently. Cognitive map can represent conceptual causal relationships between different variables, so it can be used to describe the perceptions of participants about the subjective conflict situation. In this paper, we introduce a method based on NPN logic cognitive map to capture and resolve strategic alliance conflicts.