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Diverse and often unacknowledged assumptions underlie organizational conflict research. In this essay, we identify distinct ways of conceptualizing conflict in the theoretical domain of organizational conflict with the aim of setting a new critical agenda for reflexivity in conflict research. In doing so, we first apply a genealogical approach to study conceptions of conflict, and we find that three distinct and essentially contested conceptions frame studies of conflict at work. Second, we employ two empirical examples of conflict to illustrate how organizational conflict research can benefit from a more reflexive approach and advance our understanding of conflict. In this essay, we emphasize how philosophical and political assumptions about conflict frame knowledge production within the field and we encourage future theory development to build on different notions of conflict to become better at coping with the complex and dynamic nature of conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this conceptual essay, we review the field of organizational conflict to unpack how it has been constructed genealogically and with what consequences by investigating three major shifts in theorization that have occurred over the past six decades. First, a move away from viewing conflict as dysfunctional to viewing it as constructive. Second, a shift from normative prescriptions to descriptions of what disputants do in conflict. Third, a shift from psychological functional analyses to studying conflict as an organizational phenomenon. We find that three distinct and essentially contested conceptions frame studies of conflict at work: conflict as a distinct behavioral phenomenon, conflict as an instrumental means of achieving something else, and conflict as a social construction contingent on how reality is perceived. This conceptual essay adds to current thinking in organizational conflict research by emphasizing how philosophical and political assumptions about conflict can be seen to have framed knowledge production within the field when it is viewed historically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to display and critically reflect upon how field experiences in the research process interacted with the author's subjectivity and shaped her construction of knowledge about organisational conflict. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Weick's theoretical framework of sensemaking and the notion of reflexivity as a resource for dealing with research experiences, the paper presents empirical narratives that explore how research experiences of negotiating access to information and emic categories of conflict in the field, analysing events and morally deciding which stories from the field are conflict stories, and dealing with ethical dilemmas in the process of doing research about conflict constitute common factors that influenced the author's construction of knowledge about organisational conflict. Findings – The paper shows that the way we organise and make sense of research experiences shapes our process of theorising and the actual production of knowledge in a research field. Research limitations/implications – We should document and display the process of theorising in our research and thoroughly pursue what we experienced in the field, because this will create thoroughness to our research and add to, not devalue, the knowledge we produce. Originality/value – This paper highlights the process of theorising in organisational research. The empirical narratives presented in the paper contribute to the narrow display within the field of how we, as organisational researchers, mobilise our theorising and construct knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]