Conflict: Organizational
after Buchanan and Badham (1999), as developing
‘power-assisted steering.’
Essential to these competencies is the ability to be
able to creatively improvise around organizational
conflicts, through developing a diverse repertoire.
This includes: image building; selective information
release and dissemination; scapegoating of conflictual
others; building formal alliances with potential allies;
networking with friends and enemies of enemies;
striking up appropriate compromises where necessary;
being able to manipulate rules, and being ruthlessly
pragmatic. Such tactics require deployment in specific
organizational contexts, characterized by diverse
stakeholders and variable political entrepreneurship.
The exercise of power, in ongoing action, will be
accomplished through the production of plausible
accounts, the creation of viable reputations for poli-
tical operators, and the achievement of outcomes
regarded as ‘wins’ (Buchanan and Badham 1999).
Essential to these capabilities is a capacity to analyze
strategies of power discursively. Those who would be
players need to be able to ask questions about the
extent to which their power games—actual or pro-
jected—will be characterized as ethically acceptable,
contextually reasonable, and plausibly accountable?
What will the consequences be for those whose
reputations are involved in the stakes: who will be
weakened, strengthened, or unchanged?
Organizational life involves developing and deploy-
ing political competence. (The theoretical derivation
of this view of organizations are elaborated in Clegg
[1989] and Buchanan and Badham [1999].) Sometimes
the skill will be in containing conflict or nipping it in
the bud, other times ensuring where and when it flares,
in what arenas, and with what participants. Conflicts
represent opportunities for honing the skills of poli-
tical competence in whatever normative order the
organization constitutes. Clearly, these are highly
variable—but even the most sacred may be as readily
characterized in these terms as may be the most
profane—as any reader of Trollope’s ‘Barchester’
novels could attest. Political strategy does not depend
on the normative environment in which it is lodged so
much as the strategic capabilities deployed. On this
reading, Machiavellian skills are appropriate in any
organizational context.
See also: Administration in Organizations; Conflict
and Conflict Resolution, Social Psychology of; Con-
flict: Anthropological Aspects; Conflict Sociology;
Darwinism: Social; Organization: Overview; Organi-
zational Behavior, Psychology of; Organizations:
Authority and Power
Bibliography
Barley S R 1991 Contextualizing conflict: Notes on the anthro-
pology of disputes and negotiations. Research on Negotiation
in Organizations 3: 165–99
2554
Buchanan D A, Badham R 1999 Power, Politics and
Organizational Change: Winning the Turf Game. Sage, London
Buss D M 1995 Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for
social science. Psychological Inquiry 6: 1–30
Clegg S R 1989 Frameworks of Power. Sage, London
de Jong H L, van der Steen W J 1998 Biological thinking in
evolutionary psychology: Rockbottom or quicksand. Philo-
sophical Psychology 11: 183–205
Ehin C 1995 The quest for empowering organizations: Some
lessons from our foraging past. Organization Science 6: 666–71
Flyvbjerg B 1998 Rationality & Power: Democracy in Practice.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Fukuyama F 1999 The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the
Reconstitution of the Social Order. Free Press, New York
Gray B 1989 Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for
Multiparty Problems. Jossey Bass, San Francisco
Law J 1994 Organizing Modernity. Blackwell, Oxford, UK
Nicholson N 1997 Evolutionary psychology: Toward a new view
of human nature and organizational society. Human Relations
50: 1053–78
Sarat A, Felstiner W L F 1995 Di
orce Lawyers and their Clients:
Power and Meaning in the Legal Process. Oxford University
Press, Oxford, UK
Thomas K W 1976 Conflict and conflict management. In:
Dunnette M (ed.) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational
Psychology. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA
pp. 889–936
Thomas K W 1994 Conflict and negotiation processes in
organizations. In: Dunnette M, Hough L M (eds.) Handbook
of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2nd edn. Consult-
ing Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, Vol. 3, pp. 651–717
Tolbert P S 1991 Negotiations in organizations: A sociological
perspective. Research on Negotiation in Organizations
3: 99–117
S. Clegg and G. Sewell
Conflict Sociology
When two or more social actors pursue incompatible
interests they may be said to be in a relationship of
conflict; such conflicts may remain potential, or they
may result in various kinds of overt behavior. The
sociological study of conflict is concerned with all
these possibilities, though the study of the most
extreme form of conflict—actual war—is usually the
province of political science and international rela-
tions. The subject has been treated in diverse ways in
sociological theory. These will be analyzed in terms of
two sets of variables: conflict as exceptional or
endemic; and as momentous or mundane.
1. Major Axes in the Analysis of Conflict
There are two central choices for sociological theory in
the treatment of conflict. First, should it be treated as
exceptional or as endemic? In the former case, the

theory assumes that normally social life will proceed
without conflict, or at least without its overt expression
in hostile actions. If conflict becomes evident, this is a
sign that some or other institution is not functioning
properly. Conflict is therefore seen as pathological.
Alternatively, a theory may assume that social rela-
tions are likely to exhibit conflict at many points, and
its expression will be expected to be frequent. In some
cases the absence of conflict might be seen as patho-
logical.
A second choice is whether, when conflict does
occur, it should be regarded as of momentous im-
portance, likely to result in major upheaval and
possibly radical change; or whether it should be
treated as mundane, that is, merely part of the events
of everyday life, without particular moment.
These are by no means the only issues which have to
be addressed by theories of conflict, but the two-by-
two matrix which they form provides a useful heuristic
for studying the position of different schools of
thought (see Fig. 1).
2. Conflict as Momentous—Whether Exceptional
or Endemic
The following discussion is organized in terms of the
momentous versus mundane dimension, the second
dimension being examined within this one. This is
purely for convenience of presentation and does not
imply any priority of importance.
2.1 Conflict as Momentous and Exceptional:
Functionalist Approaches
Functionalist theories, particularly in the structural
functionalist form which dominated US and much
other sociology in the first two postwar decades, are
clear and strong examples of the treatment of conflict
as momentous and exceptional (see Functionalism in
Sociology). These theories, particularly those of Tal-
cott Parsons (in particular, Parsons 1964), have often
been accused of an incapacity to analyze conflict. This
is not true. As Parsons once remarked, he was aware of
the enormous capacity for conflict in social relations
and was surprised that so much cooperation in fact
took place. The purpose of his theories was therefore
to demonstrate how it was that, in practice, conflict
did not overwhelm social relations. As a result, the
emphasis of the theoretical tradition he launched was
on how conflict was rendered exceptional.
Functionalism views social institutions as over-
whelmingly interconnected and equipped with in-
tegration mechanisms. While for most of the time
conflict does not occur, social relations are highly
vulnerable should it do so. It is a sign that something
is malfunctioning, that something pathological is
Conflict Sociology
I II
Structural Marxism
Momentous functionalism
Critical
III Institutionalization applied IV
of conflict theories sociology
Functions of conflict
approaches
Mundane Micro-functionalism;
much applied sociology
Neo-Weberian
sociology
Exceptional Endemic
Figure 1
The main axes of sociological theories of conflict
occurring, and major disorder, possibly leading to
change, can be expected (Cohen 1966). Structural
functionalism fits box I of Fig. 1.
2.2 Conflict as Momentous and Endemic: Marxist
Approaches
During the 1960s and 1970s there was a major
polemical confrontation between structural function-
alist and Marxist theorists, in both western Europe
and the USA (see Marxism in Contemporary Socio-
logy). For Marxists, conflict is endemic to all sig-
nificant social relations, because these embody in
various ways the class relations that are fundamental
to social life and that are based on opposed interests.
Marxist writers have therefore been unhappy with
behaviorist approaches to social conflict, which regard
a conflict as existing only when it is openly manifest.
According to Marxists and other critical sociologists
(see Critical Theory: Contemporary), this conceals
from view conflicts of interest which the weaker parties
to a relationship are powerless or fearful to express.
Convinced that the conflict will in principle be
there, such sociologists search for subtle and implicit
expressions of it (Lukes 1974).
To take a simple example, a functionalist sociologist
carrying out research on a factory or office would
regard evidence of conflict between management and
workers as evidence that something was wrong, that
institutions governing social relations in the workplace
were not operating correctly. A Marxist sociologist,
on the other hand, would regard such instances of
conflict as evidence that the reality of the relationship
between management and workers was revealing
itself; it would be the absence of conflict in such a
2555
Conflict Sociology
relationship that would require explanation as some-
thing denying that fundamental reality.
However, opposed as functionalism and Marxism
might be, they are in fact agreed on the momentous–
mundane dimension. For Marxist sociology as much
as for functionalist, conflict is likely to be momentous
in its consequences, bringing widespread and un-
containable disorder before it ushers in social change.
This is because for Marxists conflict is the way in
which the underlying contradictions of the class
relations on which the social order rests are finally and
catastrophically resolved. Marxism occupies box II in
the matrix.
Therefore, contrary to initial appearances, struc-
tural functionalism and Marxism are not diametrically
opposed in their treatment of conflict. One ironic
consequence of this has been the way in which Marxist
accounts of an ongoing social order—one in which the
fundamental flaws have not yet been revealed—
sometimes resemble functionalist ones. For both
schools all social institutions are interconnected and,
to the extent that (for Marxists) class domination is
operating effectively, all institutions tend towards
maintenance of the stability of the existing order. This
inherent functionalism of much Marxist theory be-
came particularly evident in the structural Marxism
which developed in France during the 1970s, exempli-
fied by such writers as Althusser (1968) and Poulantzas
(1968). These depicted the totality of capitalist domi-
nation in such a way that social conflict seemed almost
impossible.
3. Conflict as Mundane—Whether Exceptional or
Endemic
An important development in the study of social
conflict emerged during the 1950s with the idea of the
institutionalization of conflict (e.g., Harbison 1954).
This involved the hypothesis that, if mechanisms
existed which separated different institutional areas
from each other, conflicts appearing in one would be
prevented from spreading into others, and conflict
would therefore be limited. The idea can best be
understood through an analogy with insulation or
isolation in electricity. The cable wrapped around an
electrified wire prevents the current from jumping
from the wire to objects alongside it, which it might
damage. Interest then focuses on what kinds of social
mechanisms might serve as isolators separating one
social area from another. If such isolators exist, then
individual outbreaks of conflict are unlikely to have
momentous implications for the wider society.
Interest in institutionalization developed from the
turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century, which
had seen considerable disruption caused by two
political forces—communism and nazism–fascism—
which owed their success, in part, to a capacity to
amalgamate disparate issues into totalities that pitched
2556
whole groups of populations against each other. There
was particular interest in mechanisms which might
separate political from industrial conflict, this com-
bination being seen as crucial to the success of
communism.
In a closely related development, political sociolo-
gists were interested in ways in which different con-
flictual identities might either run together or cross-cut
one another (Lipset 1964). In the former case conflicts
might be expected to spread across whole institutional
areas and to be intense. In the latter, conflicts between
groups defined according to a particular characteristic
would be offset and thereby contained and diminished
by cross-cutting identities. For example, a society in
which most blacks were Roman Catholics and also
manual workers, while most whites were Protestants
and bourgeois, would be expected to generate deeper
and more intransigent conflicts than one in which
ethnicity, religion and class divide the population in
different ways.
These approaches made it possible to conceive of
conflict of no major macro-social importance as
mundane.
3.1 Conflict as Mundane and Exceptional: Micro-
functionalism and Applied Sociology
Theories of conflict institutionalization often over-
lapped with the functionalist approach to conflict as
pathological, and many writers in that school were
concerned, both intellectually and in practice, to
combat Marxism. The idea of institutional isolators
was also quite compatible with the functionalist
approach, such mechanisms being among the devices
by which social integration was ensured. On the other
hand, a stress on institutional separateness could lead
theorists away from the emphasis on the overall
interconnectedness of social institutions which was
distinctive of structural functionalism.
As sociology expanded from the 1970s onwards,
and spread into a large number of specialized sub-
sectors, many practitioners of the discipline lost a
sense of connecting their work to an overall per-
spective on society, not necessarily because they did
not believe in such a perspective, but because the need
to develop knowledge within specialisms required its
neglect. Institutional separateness was pragmatically
reinforced, even among those who maintained an
essentially functionalist standpoint. Their theoretical
stance becomes one of micro-functionalism. Function-
alism’s sense of conflict as exceptional and patho-
logical is therefore not necessarily lost. These
approaches therefore occupy box III in Fig. 1. The
occurrence of strikes, divorces, crime, outbursts of
violence and terrorism, can still be seen as empirical
indicators of malfunctioning; but it is malfunctioning
of a mundane kind. This is particularly likely to be the
case with applied sociology, designed to be used for

the study of perceived social problems, in such areas
as the sociologies of working life, ethnic relations, the
family and marriage, poverty, social movements,
crime and deviance.
3.2 Conflict as Mundane and Endemic: From
Critical Sociology to the Normalization of Conflict
By no means all students of specialized fields in which
conflicts may occur necessarily share a view of it as
pathological. Some may be close to a Marxist or other
radical position, likely to see expressions of conflict as
demonstrating the realization of certain fundamental
contradictions within institutions. This is, for example,
likely to be the perspective of feminist sociologists on
family conflict, or of observers from a number of
perspectives on ethnic conflict. Work of this kind
therefore marks a movement towards box IV (Fig. 1):
conflict perceived as normal and mundane. However,
to the extent that these approaches retain something of
a Marxist or more generally ‘critical’ idea of conflict
revealing inherent contradictions, they are unlikely to
remain fully at the level of the mundane; conflicts will
be expected to involve major disruption and possibly
change. For example, if growing family conflict (both
divorce and difficult intergenerational relationships)
are seen as evidence of challenges to patriarchy, they
are unlikely to be mundane conflicts that just rumble
along without coming to some kind of crisis.
These differences in the extent to which conflict
could be regarded as fully mundane and containable
can be seen from contributions made to the study of
industrial conflict by British sociologists. These
have contrasted a unitary approach to industrial
relations, characterized by implicit functionalist
assumptions, with a pluralist one (Clegg 1975, Fox
1973). Under the former it was assumed that manage-
ment and employees shared interests; as a result
conflict was treated as pathological, something that
should always be prevented. Under the latter, it was
taken for granted that employers and employees had
partially opposed interests; as a result conflict between
them was endemic, and its occasional manifestation
should be regarded as normal. There is then however
disagreement among those who regarded such conflict
as thoroughly containable and who belong fully to box
IV in Fig. 1 (Clegg 1975), and those who took a more
Marxist position and saw potentially momentous
possibilities (Fox 1973, Hyman 1975).
More abstract theories and approaches to conflict
belong fully to box IV (Fig. 1). As the Conclusion
below will suggest, pursuing this path leads eventually
to the disappearance of conflict sociology as such.
However, the journey towards that position has
involved some important contributions to the study of
conflict.
Already in the late nineteenth century, Georg
Simmel had pointed to a paradoxical way in which
Conflict Sociology
conflict might actually strengthen social ties: parties
to a conflict had a stronger relationship than total
strangers (see Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)). Many
conflicts, even full-scale wars, were governed by
minimal sets of rules and mutual understandings.
From these insights developed the idea that conflict
might be functional to social relationships. In the
1950s, Lewis Coser (1956, 1965) developed from
Simmel a general theory of the functions of social
conflict. At the macro-theoretical level, this was a
direct challenge to the dominant view of conflict as
pathological, while remaining within a broadly func-
tionalist approach. More generally, it contributed
to the perception of conflict as both endemic and
mundane.
Also starting in the 1950s was a series of major
contributions by Ralf Dahrendorf (1957, 1972), which
took theory a significant step further. Not only could
conflict be functional, but perhaps social order was
actually sustained by conflict. Such an approach first
required the concept discussed above of the institu-
tionalization of conflict. Provided individual conflict
zones could be mutually segregated in the way this
concept anticipated, the open expression and working
out of differences, difficulties and contradictions was
the way in which people innovated, developed insti-
tutions and actually sustained social relations. If
conflict was bottled up, there were no possibilities for
doing this, relations would fail to be open and honest,
and innovation would not take place. In radical
contradiction with structural functionalism, this ap-
proach contended that it was the endemic and mun-
dane character of conflict which ensured social order.
Dahrendorf was writing with the tragic history of
his native Germany in the first half of the twentieth
century very much in mind (Dahrendorf 1966). To
that extent, his work can be seen as part of a more
general tendency in postwar German sociology to
stress open dialogue and communication, which neces-
sarily implies the working out of conflicts (Habermas
1981). Conflict became normalized further by develop-
ments in the 1960s and 1970s which drew on the legacy
of Max Weber (see Weber, Max (1864–1920)). There
was for a long time a struggle between functionalists
and others over who were the true heirs of Weber’s
approach, particularly in the English-speaking world
where Parsons had been influential in the translation
and interpretation of the German scholar’s work
Parsons 1937, Weber 1947).
As more thinkers came to read the original, as
German sociology re-emerged during the post-war
era, and as more neutral translations appeared, so
Weber’s legacy was prised away from functionalism.
Weber had neither ignored conflict nor had a special
theory of it. Conflict was there as an integral part of
the collection of social phenomena that resulted from
different actors pursuing their own interests as they
defined them. Weber had not taken the functionalist
step of trying to find overall integration processes that
2557
Conflict Sociology
would somehow bind these conflicting interests into a
wider whole. Conflicts could rumble on indefinitely. If
order was achieved, it was most likely to result from
one group being able to impose its interests on others
through the exercise of Herrschaft. This word trans-
lates easily as ‘domination,’ though Parsons had
preferred the circumlocutory ‘imperative co-ordi-
nation.’
Weber had also differed from Marxists in that he did
not reduce social relations—including their conflictual
aspects—to those of material class interests, nor
indeed of any other essentialist forms. Conflict might
be about class interest, but might also be about
idealistic beliefs and symbolic orders. None were
treated as ontologically privileged.
This interpretation of Weber became increasingly
useful to those trying to avoid the hegemonic tenden-
cies of grand theory. A good example is the work of
John Rex (1961, 1981). Of political leanings which led
him towards Marxism, Rex had been born in
Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), and was pre-
occupied with racial and ethnic conflict. He spent most
of his career in the British midlands, also a region of
considerable ethnic complexity and, sometimes, ten-
sion. Marxist insistence on reducing all conflicts to
class did not appear to him to cope with the indepen-
dent reality of these issues. He found Weber’s ideas
of variously rooted status groups, and their use of a
diversity of means to maximize their interests, far
more useful. Ethnic relations, and by derivation many
others, could therefore be seen as incorporating
conflict as an intrinsic and normal aspect of attempts
at interest definition and maximization.
4. Conclusion: The Disappearance of a
Distincti
e Conflict Sociology
Now that the great edifices of structural functionalism
and Marxism seem finally to have collapsed, the
agnostic, non-essentialist approach implied by the
idea of conflict as endemic but mundane has probably
become the dominant one in Western sociology. Yes,
conflict is always likely to be a part of human relations;
it can be ‘about’ almost anything; it does not neces-
sarily have to be absorbed and tamed for some kind
of social order to survive; it is not a special aspect of
social life, but just a part of it. Research and theory
based on assumptions of this kind cluster around the
bottom right-hand corner of box IV (Fig. 1). Weber,
perhaps along with Simmel, is probably the founding
father whose approach to conflict appears most
comfortable to contemporary sociologists. As heirs to
the Marxist tradition seek to salvage something while
dropping the dogmatism and historical certainty, they
reach similar conclusions.
The more normal that conflict is seen, the more a
specific conflict sociology will cease to exist. This
2558
becomes particularly true as sociological theory turns
increasingly to theories based on models of rational
action by calculating actors—approaches which are
also found in Weber and Simmel (see Rational Choice
Theory in Sociology). In these models actors are always
depicted as having interests; and where there are
interests, conflicts among them are normal and taken
for granted (for example, Knight 1992).
For conflict sociology to continue to exist, the
various specialisms of the discipline would need to
draw on similar ideas and hypotheses when they come
to instances of conflict within their particular area.
This does happen to a limited extent. For example,
studies of how protest groups engaged in difficult
conflicts sustain their morale and endurance can be
extended across from ethnic to industrial or environ-
mental movements. Studies of the role of violence and
the effect of violence on perpetrators, victims and
outsiders may also be able to share knowledge across
conflicts concerning very different issues. Beyond this
however not much survives.
It has been noted at several points above how
sociological approaches to conflict have often reflected
developments in the world at large: obsession with
society’s capacity for upheaval after the first half of
the twentieth century; Dahrendorf’s concern to treat
conflict as normal in the light of the German past;
Rex’s African concern to study racial conflict. Today’s
postmodern, post-Cold War world presents a scene in
which conflict seems at once endemic but directionless,
and sociological theory is reflecting that. Were the
heartland of theoretical development to lie, not in the
so-called ‘advanced’ societies, but in parts of the world
where religious and ethnic struggles are fundamental
to social life, the situation would probably be rather
different (Ratcliffe 1994, Venkateswarlu 1992). And
since it must not be expected that social change in the
advanced societies has come to an end, it may well be
that after a number of years the emphasis of the above
account will appear very dated.
See also: Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Social
Psychology of; Conflict and War, Archaeology of;
Conflict: Anthropological Aspects; Conflict\Con-
sensus; Conflict: Organizational; Cooperation and
Competition, Psychology of; Ethnic Conflicts; Geo-
politics; Race and Gender Intersections; Violence,
History of; War: Causes and Patterns; War, Sociology
of
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Coser L 1956 The Functions of Social Conflict. Free Press,
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Dahrendorf R 1957 Soziale Klassen and Klassenkonflikte in der
industriellen Gesellschaft. Enke, Stuttgart, Germany
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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Conformity: Sociological Aspects
Conformity is a central pattern of social life since it
appears that individuals often behave in a similar way
in similar circumstances. Why do they do so? Is it
because there is some social force acting behind them,
or is it because they can be seen as rational, this
rationality being linked to some common tendency to
act in a definite way in given situations?
1. Conformity, Similarity, and Dissimilarity
Conformity depends directly on the degree of simi-
larity between an individual action and another, those
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Conformity: Sociological Aspects
actions being more or less frequent in a group. Tarde
(1962) tries to stress the importance of imitation to
explain such similar behaviors in social life. Imitation
appears to him as a constant attitude which explains
all social phenomena: all fields of action are involved,
and innovation, or dissent, depends always on pre-
vious imitations. But imitation has such general
contents that it is not very useful to explain the
peculiarities of different situations. Durkheim (1982)
does not accept this rather general idea of imitation.
But for him, there is a similar strong social tendency
toward the building of common patterns of behavior:
moral, religious, linguistic, or esthetic rules express in
a common way the fact that society is built up on the
necessity of integration of individuals throughout
shared values. Despite any subsequent difference of
attitudes, conformity is an essential feature of society.
More or less supported by explicit values, or norms,
conformity is strengthened by unequally strong
rewards and sanctions. From death penalty to intel-
lectual dissatisfaction, from imprisonment to snob-
bery, conformity is most often reinforced by social
actions in different ways. But it is also observable that
conformity can occur when no sanction at all is
observable, for instance, people’s breakfast habits,
which differ from one society to another, this difference
being related to a group attitude.
Moreover, when there is a claim to conformity, and
sanctions (or rewards) towards potential conformists
or deviants, the size of the reference group can have a
variable extension (Mead 1962): for a Catholic, or a
believer in human rights, humanity as such should
comply with some specific norms, whereas the follower
of an elitist fashion will stop liking it when the number
of followers has reached a certain size (Coleman 1990).
Conformity is related to beliefs and to justifications:
people are conformist or deviant because they believe
they should be so, and others are asked to behave in
the same manner when they are thought to belong to
the relevant group to which the norm that introduces
conformity should apply. Therefore, a study of the
conformity problem must include the motives for
which a justification is accepted or rejected. People can
obey a norm because they believe the norm is valid, or
because they are forced to comply with it. But they
can refuse to obey a norm not because they do not
acknowledge the validity of the norm, but because
they have a stronger interest against conformity. On
the other hand, people can refuse to obey a norm
because they believe it is unfair, or useless, or un-
necessary, or inadequate.
Compliance with similar patterns of behavior can
be related to personal or group circumstances: people
may think that a norm is illegitimate from the point of
view of their position in society. For instance, those
who cannot through their personal effort achieve a
social promotion, will tend to believe that, since they
do not have such opportunity, they cannot have any
faith in a social order that builds its legitimacy on this
2559
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