Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Management
and War
How Organisations
Navigate Conflict and
Build Peace
Management and War
“This book focuses on three areas of conflict, two of which I have personally spent
many decades involved with. It examines conflict and peace building from the
ground up listening to those on all levels through bitter division and onto possible
grounds for establishing peace. Conflict is born out of circumstances not related to
logical analysis but events that are allowed to fester and then become unmanage-
able in a society. The book gives a rare account of the necessary skills of managing
strategic goals in dangerous and complex situations and brilliantly describes how
hardship must be managed to keep society and life moving forward.”
—Bertie Ahern, Former Taoiseach and signatory of the Belfast
(Good Friday) Agreement
“Murphy’s highly readable and insightful account articulates new lines of research
inquiry in the emerging field of management and peace building. She invites and
provokes in equal measure. A critical and accessible resource for all academics and
organisational actors interested in ‘managing conflict’.”
—Hastings Donnan, Director, Senator George J. Mitchell Institute
for Global Peace, Security and Justice
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For Conall
Preface
This work has had a long gestation. As an academic working in the field of
leadership and change in extreme environments, my research has tended
to focus on the impact of conflict and war on organisational activity, with
a particular emphasis on decision-making and transition. Some of it,
including a previous book, focused on security sector reform and the
change processes that bring aspirations of better policing to fruition. I
have been very fortunate to be able to do this. A background in political
science and an upbringing in Northern Ireland has certainly smoothed the
path. However, while I would like to consider this ‘back catalogue’ of
work as a contribution to the body of literature on conflict studies, none
of that work had conflict itself as a key focus. Rather, the ambition was to
highlight the behaviour of organisations and actors during conflict as a
distinct facet of organisational activity. Above all, I was interested in the
agency of individuals and organisations as peace-building entrepreneurs:
seeking to deliver their organisation’s mission in a way which did not just
‘do no harm’ but actively participated in resolving disputes. This interest
emerged from an understanding that ethno-political conflict and war are
organisational as well as a political processes, and that moving beyond
conflict cannot be successfully achieved without an understanding of
organisational actors as key to that resolution process. To date, much of
the work around conflict has focused on the political and the community
dimensions of what happens during ethno-political clashes. That is
extremely important, but I was also curious about the organisational scaf-
folding around communities and societies.
vii
viii PREFACE
always believed that organisations and those engaged within them are vital
to the building of lasting peace in places riven by conflict. The experience
of writing this book has only reinforced that conviction. All of us who
have lived in such societies owe them a great debt.
The subject matter contained within these pages is not always an easy read,
and this is not a straightforward book on organisations—if such a thing
even exists. Rather it is an attempt to fill a gap which I have been aware of
within both the theory and the practice of management for 20 years—
since I worked in the what is known as the ‘community relations’ sector in
Northern Ireland. At that time Northern Ireland was on the cusp of the
historic Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and those of us who had grown
up with ‘the Troubles’ were beginning to sense that perhaps change was
possible. Surrounded by people who were seeking to build peace, I had a
perfect opportunity to think about how peacebuilding translates to organ-
isations, to people and to process. The early and inspirational work of col-
leagues such as Will Glendinning, Tony Langlois and the late Maura
Crozier encouraged me to reflect on the structural and organisational
aspects of conflict, as well as the cultural. I also began to see through the
work of others that peacebuilding and creating change were complex
endeavours. Difficult but conceivable.
Since then, others have sustained and nurtured this work, including Dr.
Roz Goldie and Professor Hastings Donnan, who have both been con-
stant in their reassurance and useful advice. Dr. Sara McDowell, Professor
David Denyer and Dr. Jonathan Howarth have all assisted with the devel-
opment of this manuscript and the clarification of concepts within it, and
I remain eternally grateful. The seminal work of Professor Andrew
Pettigrew in setting out an agenda of context, process and time in man-
agement and organisational studies has been for me the key to unlocking
and understanding organisations now and in the future. My colleagues in
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
References237
Index249
About the Author
xv
Abbreviations
xvii
List of Figures
xix
CHAPTER 1
War and conflict are a reality of life throughout the world. While much is
written about the impact of violence and disorder, how people and organ-
isations adapt to these environments is poorly understood. This book tells
the often hidden story of organisational actors managing through and
beyond violent conflict. It is written for both general readers and academic
specialists, combining first-person interviews, insights from witness semi-
nars and informal conversations, with more scholarly research. In this
sense it often chooses to privilege the voices of organisational actors in the
frontline over more distant academic perspectives. However, I hope it still
provides a solid scholarly foundation and a lens of analysis with which to
better understand the core dynamics of how people manage through and
after conflict. The best way to do this seemed to be to focus on those with
decision-making authority within organisations, delivering services, build-
ing and maintaining businesses, overseeing community interfaces while
simultaneous facing ethno-political violence or handling the transition
beyond combat. The individuals and teams engaged in these endeavours
are often organisational managers and leaders at different levels of senior-
ity and with different skills and knowledge. Many of those I spoke to had
been with the same organisation for their entire careers and had grown up
through conflict and its shadow. Their experiences are key because many
As we move from the bipolarity of the Cold War, to a unipolar and now a
multipolar world, there are good reasons to fear the deterioration of global
peace. Conflict spikes in the Middle East and North Africa, the growth
and activity of internal terrorism and insurgency movements and a desta-
bilisation of what were regarded as previously established states, all con-
tribute to an international environment where old certainties have been
discarded (IEP 2018). The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 will no doubt
lead to even greater uncertainty and competition for scarce resources.
However, there is another story among these difficult images and broken
communities that can also be observed, if not yet fully understood. It is
the story of how people within organisations manage and lead during and
through periods of turbulence and what this experience tells us about
organisations who are able to persist in their purpose in extreme circum-
stances and contribute to conflict transformation. The aim of this book is
to relay some of those experiences and to provide an organisational per-
spective on conflict and peacebuilding processes. Within that central pur-
pose are two main objectives. The first is to establish a theoretical
framework for understanding how organisations, organisational life and
decision-making are impacted by violent conflict. The second is to explore
the empirical experience of organisational actors in such environments,
before drawing some conclusions about how to move forward this area of
research. It is important to define the scope of this work because while
significant scholarship exists on conflict processes, hardly any has looked at
how organisational actors, taking crucial mid-level decisions, navigate,
negotiate and influence the reality of conflict and political transitions to
stability. This emphasis emerged from an understanding that ethno-
political conflict and war are organisational as well as a political processes
and that moving beyond conflict cannot be successfully achieved without
a recognition of organisational actors as key to that resolution process.
Much of the work in the area of conflict studies has focused on the political
or the community dimensions of what happens during war and violence.
This perspective is incredibly important in its own right, but it is only part
of the story. Another facet is the organisational scaffolding around com-
munities and societies that sometimes reinforces partisan division and, at
other times, actively works against it. In reality, this framework consists of
people managing outside the realm of formal authority in a context of
extreme uncertainty. To do this, they must weigh the benefits of progress
against the risks of personal safety and organisational survival, and act stra-
tegically in relation to organisational partners, modes of delivery and even
4 J. MURPHY
legal and financial matters outside the official approval processes. This
book contains many examples of managers demonstrating that they have
had to be both accountable officers and peacebuilding entrepreneurs to
achieve strategic objectives in complex and challenging operational reali-
ties. These risks are often largely obscured by organisational structures and
processes and leave actors vulnerable professionally and personally to the
vicissitudes of political engagement. Some of these interactions occur at a
micro level, others are macro in their sweep and impact. The organisa-
tional dimensions of managing through and beyond entrenched political
conflict have to date been under analysed and as a consequence, little
understood. There is a gap in our knowledge academically and practically.
This should concern us for two reasons. Firstly, it would seem that the
distinct fields of management and organisation studies (MOS) and conflict
studies have an obvious area of overlap or subfield. This subfield can be
defined as an area of work that focuses on the environments, and practices,
of managing through conflict and transition. The second concern is that
unfortunately, the lived experience of organisational life within conflict
environments is an area of growth. Everywhere is increasing instability,
divergence and ethno-political unrest. Alongside though, we see individu-
als and organisations delivering services, managing businesses and binding
together communities. A clear-sighted understanding of how organisa-
tions can manage through violence and turbulence and also contribute to
building stability and peace has never been more vital. This book is an
attempt to fill that gap. To do that it focuses on the lived experiences of
organisational actors within three locations: Northern Ireland, the Basque
country and Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia). Each of these
areas has experience of ethno-political conflict at varying intensity, over
extended timescales. This allows the research to draw on a broad spectrum
of public, private and non-profit management experience of violent politi-
cal conflict and its legacy at community, organisational and political levels.
The data relied upon is drawn from over 60 interviews and witness semi-
nars with managers and leaders in the three central locations and addi-
tional interviews from other areas. Much use is made of existing research,
other primary data sources and some very interesting country- and con-
flict-specific reports produced by international agencies.
The book is structured to first provide a theoretical background to
the organisational dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding. Part I out-
lines a broad sweep of the insightful work which this study draws on. It
was important to provide a scholarly overview of the fields of managing
1 INTRODUCTION: WHY IT MATTERS 5
these subjects are directly engaged in what might be called conflict man-
agement especially through periods of conflict flares. Others deal with the
reality of conflict and its legacy tangentially and through the challenges of
delivering public services fairly or supporting economic regeneration
either as entrepreneurs or as governmental officials. The data includes a
diverse range of perspectives from those managing public services, engaged
in the third sector and in business and private sector organisations. It is
important to say that the research is not spread evenly across all chapters.
Readers will see that some parts emphasis one location, or one issue, more
than others. That is simply a reflection of the substance of interviews and
the inaccessibility of some sectors in some places. The themes themselves
are not exhaustive areas of interest but do largely reflect core consider-
ations of how society is organised and managed. I am conscious that taken
individually they also represent enormous areas of scholarship in their own
right and regret that this work cannot give them the ‘deep dive’ of policy-
focused analysis which they deserve. I have largely steered away from sub-
jects that deal directly with policing and security—either in relation to
security sector reform projects (as experienced in Northern Ireland and
Bosnia1) or in terms of policing’s engagement with insurgent and radical
movements (all of our cases), although a brief consideration of some of
these issues appears in Part III of the book. This omission is deliberate
because of the great deal of work which is already in the public domain
about these areas and a recognition that policing and security is generally
well considered in such contexts. The purpose of this book is to move
beyond orthodox approaches and to provide an understanding of the
other factors which are equally important within conflict and conflict
transformation. Again, I justify this through a willingness to be led by the
data and the voices of those engaged in such complex and nuanced activ-
ity. Many of the cases and experiences detailed in these chapters appear
along a broad spectrum, from the all-out warzone of Sarajevo under siege
to the day-to-day tensions of the flag protests in Belfast and the back-
ground rumble of the legacy of the civil war in the Basque country.
Through all of this I have tried to keep in mind the words of Scott Bollens
(Bollens 2011) and his own declaration that he has approached his
1
For a consideration of the policing change process in Northern Ireland, see my previous
book Murphy, J. (2013). Policing for Peace in Northern Ireland: Change, Conflict and
Community Confidence, Palgrave Macmillan.
1 INTRODUCTION: WHY IT MATTERS 7
References
Bollens, S. (2011). City and Soul in Divided Societies. Oxford and New York:
Routledge.
IEP. (2018). Global Peace Index. Sydney: Institute for Economics and Peace.
Levi, P. (1986). The Drowned and the Saved. London: Abacus.
Murphy, J. (2013). Policing for Peace in Northern Ireland:, Conflict and
Community ConfidenceChange. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
PART I
Introduction
In contested environments, organisational life and violent conflict inevita-
bility overlap, but very little work exists on how one affects the other.
There are a number of reasons why such scholarship is scare. Firstly, these
are two very different disciplines whose understanding of each other is
limited and where there sometimes exists an ideological and scholarly
scepticism about the other’s relevance and approach. This difference is
compounded by alternative positions on methods and what characterises
impactful research. As someone who works in both areas, I am familiar
with the quizzical looks of those in management and organisational stud-
ies (MOS) when conflict is mentioned, and with the raised eyebrows of
conflict specialists when asked about management and organisations.
Setting aside individual preferences over research decisions and a lack of
historic interaction, this distance seems unfortunate, since many of the
approaches in both research areas are similar and draw on comparable
methodological styles. Helpfully, there are now emerging areas of theo-
retical and empirical work that directly or indirectly go some way to build-
ing a bridge of understanding between the two disciplines. This chapter
draws together that bridging scholarship by doing three things. Firstly, it
provides an overview of the existing research on management within con-
texts of violence and transition and demarcates the boundaries and typolo-
gies within the wider literature. Secondly, it situates this work firmly within
the intellectual tradition of processual, context-orientated management
direct investment (Oetzel et al. 2009; Buckley and Ghauri 2004) as impor-
tant research themes. As Forrer and Katsos (2015: 439) comment “by
providing these basic inputs in conflict-sensitive regions, business helps
advance economic development and reduce prospects for violent conflict”.
Forrer and Katsos’ work is thought-provoking because they also
attempt to build some definition and conceptual clarity in what is recog-
nised as a nascent and emerging area. They and others rightly identify
important theoretical observations from the conflict literature, especially
the concept of ‘negative peace’ (Galtung 1969): an environment when
outright violence is reduced, but ‘structural’ violence remains and has the
potential to reignite or flare underlying, persistent contention. By drawing
attention to a dichotomy within the conflict literature referred to as a
‘dualistic’ or ‘conflict/post-conflict perspective’, they bring to light the
important consideration of time and process within studies of environ-
ments of volatility and define an interlocutor period—‘the buffer condi-
tion’—where “structural violence remains intense even when overt conflict
has ceased” (Forrer and Katsos 2015: 442). There is particular interest in
what the private sector can achieve in this ‘buffer period’ (Ford 2015) and
how direct engagement can not just ‘do no harm’ but actively assist con-
flict reduction endeavours (Fort 2015). Such a shift in terminology is
interesting and may be worthwhile for some studies. It certainly pinpoints
a temporal dynamic in which peace in its totality is rarely achieved.
However, shifting this terminology away from conflict and post conflict
altogether and focusing instead on ‘conflict transformation’ as a more use-
ful theoretical construct and one which will be employed in this work.
Undoubtedly, as Ford states, “any serious notion of ‘inclusivity’ in
peacebuilding … cannot omit the private sector” (Ford 2015: 140), but
the idea that business actors can play a positive (and active) role as peace-
builders, is relatively new (Katsos and Alkafaji 2019). Given the political
and social instability which pervades almost all continents, heightened
political skills and an awareness of potential volatility would seem like
good business practice as well as a recognition of the role of business in
impacting already volatile environments and the potential contribution of
‘corporate diplomacy’ (Kolk and Lenfant 2015). Ford reinforces his mes-
sage about the significance of business within conflict environments with
a differentiation between business conduct aimed at mitigating the risks of
triggering or exacerbating conflict (‘do no harm’) and conduct aimed at
contributing to short- or long-term conflict prevention and peacebuilding
goals where enterprise can ‘do some good’ (Fort and Schipani 2007).
2 FRAMING AN UNDERSTANDING OF MANAGEMENT AND WAR 15
Oetzel and Miklian (2017) take this further and contend that multina-
tional enterprises (MNEs) who incorporate peacebuilding frameworks
into their evaluations of complex environments have a better understand-
ing of how contested contexts affect firm operations and profitability, and
give them an advantage over MNEs that do not engage. The same argu-
ment in relation to the utility of peacebuilding partnerships is reinforced
by Idemudia (2018). Others also focus on the significance of the private
sector as an actor in the area of preventative diplomacy (Melin and
Koch 2010).