Conflict and Cooperation

Abstract

It’s a truism that we use negotiations to conclude conflicts in social life, albeit unconditional surrender is the rare exception to the rule. Consider the gamut, from marriages to wars. The potential for successful negotiations to end conflicts is often thought to hinge, in turn, entirely on bargaining over resources. Wars are seen to conclude with the redrawing of national boundaries, and marriages end with property settlements. But suggested here by example and theoretical explanation is the possibility that conflict resolution between organizations may depend at least as much on whether each organization’s ideological reality of the other(s) in the conflict is an accurate reflection of their resource disparity.