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Good and Bad Conflict in Strategic Decision Making

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Strategic Decisions

Abstract

Strategic decision making is a complex and ambiguous process yielding several outcomes, such as decision quality, consensus, and affective acceptance. Because of its complexity and ambiguity, the strategic decision making process often involves conflict. The problem with this is that, while conflict can enhance decision quality, it can also impede consensus and affective acceptance, giving the appearance that conflict is simultaneously both helpful and harmful to strategic decision making. In this chapter I address this conundrum by showing that the problem is not with conflict but with our understanding of it. Strategic decisions are less affected by how much conflict is present than by what type of conflict is present. Cognitive conflict is good; affective conflict is bad. Thus, to the extent that strategic decision making teams can encourage the good cognitive conflict yet discourage the bad affective conflict, they can produce better overall strategic decisions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Georgia, USA

    Allen C. Amason

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  1. Allen C. Amason
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Business School, UK

    Vassilis Papadakis  & Patrick Barwise  & 

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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Amason, A.C. (1997). Good and Bad Conflict in Strategic Decision Making. In: Papadakis, V., Barwise, P. (eds) Strategic Decisions. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6195-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6195-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-7840-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-6195-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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