The influence of conflict event strength on interorganizational cooperation: Moderating roles of contractual complexity and trust

Interorganizational conflicts are unavoidable in business management. Existing studies generally focus on the impact of conflict intensity and/or frequency. This strand simplifies conflict conceptualization and overlooks the rich meaning of conflict strength. Based on event system theory, this study takes an event-oriented perspective and explores the effects of conflict event strength (including novelty, criticality, and disruption) on interorganizational cooperation as well as the moderating impacts of contractual complexity and trust. Contractual complexity is classified into control and coordination, and trust into goodwill and competence trust. The results of the questionnaire survey reveal that the novelty of conflict events is negatively related to cooperation, while criticality and disruption exert a positive influence. Contractual control, goodwill trust, and competence trust weaken the positive impact of criticality/disruption on cooperation. This research enriches not only conflict research in business management but also event system theory, which is a meta-theory.