Conflict Escalation in Inter-Organizational Virtual Communication

Conflict appears to inherently exist in inter-organizational business collaborations often because the organizations involved operate with different processes, norms and goals. Further, in dispersed inter-organizational collaborations, the challenges tend to be even more due to the prevalence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in business interactions. This study investigates two cases of such inter-organizational collaborations and studied evidence of conflict, conflict escalation and transformation in their computer-mediated interactions. It was found that though email was the preferred communication media this in itself did not contribute to, though it signaled, conflict escalation. The study has shown that conflict was transformed differently in the two cases and this was facilitated by the strategies adopted and the language used in the communication media chosen