Stakeholder Engagement and Conflict Resolution in the Global Environment: Strategies and Outcomes

• In Event: Relationship Management and Outcomes

Abstract

This study creates a theoretical model that links stakeholder engagement strategies to critical relational and conflict resolution outcomes. The model proposes that multinational companies’ (MNCs’) positive relationship cultivation and public relations strategies enhance local community members’ anxiety and uncertainty management (AUM) and the organization-public relationships (OPRs), which in turn, influence these community members’ conflict resolution strategies. A survey was conducted among 300 local community members in Cajamarca, Peru, where MNCs operate. Results indicate that among engagement strategies, assurance of legitimacy, symmetrical communication, and two-way communication were most essential in promoting OPRs. Assurance of legitimacy, openness, access, and symmetrical communication facilitated AUM. Among the proposed mediators, uncertainty reduction played a central role, enhancing OPRs and integrative conflict resolutions and decreasing distributive conflict resolutions; anxiety reduction decreased distributive resolutions; but OPRs were not significant mediators. Finally, interpersonal relationships promoted nonconfrontational resolutions, but the model explained little in the third-party conflict resolutions.

Authors

• Lan Ni, U of Houston

• Qi Wang, Villanova U

• Maria de la Flor, Communica PR Consulting

• Renato Penaflor, Porter Novelli