How Political and Social Conflict Enter into the Corporate Realm

This chapter presents a discussion of moral outrage-inducing crises and the ways they affect relationships between organizations and their stakeholders. Through the lens of functional conflict theory, we critically examine two contemporary examples of crises characterized by strong perceptions of moral outrage. Moreover, the chapter examines how, in one case, a crisis response could be used to turn a disruptive conflict into one that is positive, as well as enhance value congruence between stakeholders and the organization in crisis. On the other hand, we also present how polarizing crises, which are characterized by lack of consensus and opposing views of the adversaries, create challenges for crisis managers. These situations pose special communicative and management-related demands, and no response can satisfy everyone. Our advice to managers is to manage polarizing conflicts by upholding their values, and the values of their customers, in order to enhance value congruence and limit desire for disidentification and disassociation.