Abstract What is the relation between conflict and organization studies? Is conflict theorized today and, if so, how? I look first at what students of management are taught about organizational conflict - the knowledge imparted to them, its assumptions and ethico-political consequences. By reactivating Mary Follett's insight of conflict as 'differences in the world' I consider more broadly how organization studies, with its different theoretical apparatuses, treats conflict and in so doing participates in the co-constitution of the social order: what it means to work, to organize and to live specific ways of life. Organization studies attempts to domesticate conflict by reference to a fundamental fantasy that modulates, controls and stabilizes differences. Harmonious fantasies in the 'functionalist perspective' and the 'behavioural theory of the firm' are discussed. Special attention is paid to the 'organizational economic perspective' with its economist fantasy for the part it has played in cementing our contemporary hegemonic market governance. At present, cracks in the market governance are becoming glaring and differences are emerging that the specific apparatus of conflict domestication is struggling to accommodate. I suggest that organizational theorists rethink the theorizing apparatus of organization studies, and consider taking on a form of theorizing called 'demiurgic theorizing'. This forwards a type of knowledge production that puts differences at centre stage and faces up to the contemporary conflict demands of our time with responsibility and accountability. Keywords alternative organizations, behavioural theory of the firm, demiurgic, economic institutionalism, economic theory of the firm, fantasy, organizational conflict, performativity Vignette 1 Working at Amazon Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that harmony is overvalued. Instead, Amazonians are instructed to disagree and commit (n.13 Amazon leadership principles) - to rip into colleagues' ideas before lining up behind a decision. In the annual 'rank and yank' managers learn 'to diplomatically throw people under the bus' (New York Times, 2015) as part of normal managerial prerogative. Vignette 2 Working in a British Business School Corresponding author: Alessia Contu, WBS, Coventry, CV325YS, UK. usiness schools prepare managers and legitimize business values, practices and ways of life. This process happens also behind closed doors as exemplified in this following real-life anecdote: 'The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor (VC) called me to our first meeting, as Business School Dean I attend: "Why all this teaching and research you are doing on climate change and sustainability? You need to concentrate on what is important. We need to go back to basics - the nuts and bolts of business." I am taken aback: "because we are a public university and we have a social mission; because businesses, governments, the UN, everyone today is grappling with these issues".' The two vignettes above give us a glimpse of conflict. As Follett (1925/2013) put it: 'At the outset I would like to ask you to agree to think of conflict as neither good nor bad'. Conflict, she says, is the appearance of difference in the world. Few organizations openly embrace conflict as a managerial tool in the way Amazon does. Yet, as Follett suggests, conflict is common, not only in the global political arena but also in the workplace. Conflict is rarely theorized as a key element of organization studies.1 For example, an analysis of leading journals shows that 'conflict', unlike 'performance' or 'strategy', is not the subject of much new theorizing.2 This essay explores the relation between conflict and organization studies by asking whether or not conflict has been theorized directly and, if so, how and with what assumptions and consequences? I first examine the received wisdom on organizational conflict theorizations, looking at the way they are taught to current and future practitioners in mainstream business school textbooks. Second, by following Follett's insight that conflict is indeed endemic to organizations as it is the 'emergence of difference in the world', I scrutinize three organizational perspectives: the 'functionalist perspective', the 'behavioural theory of the firm' and the 'organizational economics' perspective, to identify what happened to conflict in their respective theoretical edifices. The dominance of these three perspectives in organization studies and the shift in dominance from the functionalist perspective to the economic perspective that we have witnessed in the past 30 years (Pfeffer, 2015) guided the selection and focus of these perspectives. I show that conflict is domesticated in all of these perspectives as a way to check and contain the emergence of differences in the world in precise ways and with precise consequences. Why this return to conflict and organization studies? First, because conflict has been overlooked in our leading theory-oriented journals. Mannix (2003) invited more conflict theorizing since this has suffered an arrested (conceptual) development. Lately, Roche, Teague and Colvin (2015) confirmed that this is still the case. The field is growing but the knowledge base is unfocused, has an untested validity and is scattered in subspecialist areas. Mannix's (2003, p. 543) call for a 'return to theory' to develop new insights about conflict is still valid. Indeed, my return here to conflict and organization studies goes, as she suggests, beyond the contributions of mid-range theories to higher-level meta-theorization (Mannix, 2003, p. 544). This leads me to the second reason for my return to conflict. The 'meta-theorizations' Mannix refers to are defined as examinations of the epistemological and ontological standing of a specific knowledge, what purpose that knowledge has, its assumptions and its consequences (Knudsen & Tsoukas, 2005). This work produces new knowledge of an overlooked area. But it is significant also because its contribution is to provide organizational scholars and practitioners with insights on what our knowledge, in this case of conflict and organization studies, does with and in the world. This is accomplished by looking at what kind of 'world' this knowledge is proposing and legitimizing; and with what consequences. For example, the dominance of the 'organizational economic' perspective, which has conceived of 'emerging differences in the world', i.e. conflict, in interesting ways, has also been associated with the assurgency of values, skills and mindset of some of the maladies of contemporary capitalism (Lazonick, 2014). This at least partly accounts for why, as Pfeffer (2016) has colourfully put it, 'the assholes are Contu 1447 winning and money trumps all'. In other words, theories are not mere witnesses of organizations. They are performative, i.e. active co-participants in the co-constitutions of the processes, relations and objects and subjects of which they speak: 'rather than mirror reality, our theories help generate reality' (Van Maanen, 1995, p. 135). This is why it is important to consider, with 'meta-theorizations', how organization theorists have dealt with 'emerging difference in the world' theoretically. And also how organization theorists are responding to current conflicts, as I do in the discussion, i.e. the contemporary ways in which differences are concretely emerging in the world. I trace some potential paths for a scholarly practice of theorizing that is faithful to performativity and the responsibility it calls for, therefore posing organizational conflict management as a possibility and impossibility of organizing. I call this demiurgic theorizing. Organizational Conflict Theorizations Textbooks are an ideal resource to identify the development of a specific knowledge and its distillation into something worthy of being passed on to current and future practitioners (Tsoukas & Cummings, 1997). Conflict might be marginal in the leading journals staging the theoretical developments in organization studies, but a mise en scene of organizational conflict has prevailed in management textbooks, with a typology of the main organizational conflict theorizations. Robbins and Coulter (2012), for example, identify three organizational conflict perspectives - (i) the 'traditional', (ii) the 'human relations' (HR) and (iii) the 'interactionist'.3 This often-repeated narrative, with some modification of the labels,4 has become a traditional, sedimented narrative on the historical development and types of organizational conflict theorizations. The traditional/unitarist perspective, Robbins and Coulter (2012) suggest, sees conflict as a problem to be eliminated (Hatch, 2012; Huczynski & Buchanan, 2010; Mullens, 2013). This is traced back to the 'fathers' of organization studies (e.g. Taylor, Mayo and Fayol) for whom conflict was a negative interference; an aberration in otherwise stable collaborative relations that has to be contained because it disrupts organizational equilibrium and frustrates goal attainment (Pondy,1992, p. 257). Individuals are assumed to each accept its function gladly and follow one source of authority and appointed leadership (i.e. management). Management's prerogative is assured since management possesses the right knowledge to design the appropriate organizational systems (Fox, 1966). Aside from personal aberrations and errors, checked by control systems and training, with such knowledge it becomes possible to imagine and design a conflict-free organization. This perspective is the opposite of Bezos' organizational philosophy where conflict is instead a managerial tool for Amazon's success. The HR/pluralist perspective and the interactionist perspectives propose a more realistic view, suggesting that conflict is indeed natural in organizations. This traces back to the early insight of organization studies' 'mother', Mary Follett, for whom conflict is an endemic part of life. Later on, Coser (1956) developed the notion that conflict is functional to system maintenance and in organization studies conflict management became significant for organizational survival. The HR perspective is complex as it assumes that organizations harbour a plurality of goals, needs and wants and have 'rival sources of authority and leadership and attachments' (Fox, 1974, p. 249). This, as discussed later, also characterizes the behavioural theory of the firm. One of the key differences in organization is that between 'managers' and 'employees'. The field of industrial relations is, of course, predicated on such a difference. For the interactionist perspective, however, conflict is not only endemic. It is not only something that all different groups accept and mitigate by agreeing on individual and collective processes and procedures implemented by human resources and union officials (Roche et al., 2014, 1448 Organization Studies 40(10) p. 3). Conflict is necessary for better decisions, for creativity and to avoid stagnation, groupthink and, subsequently, low performance. This is the perspective currently taught to managers as the best way to conceive of conflict. The Amazon vignette is enlightening. Conflict is the engine of organizational innovation, and helps generate and develop the best ideas. Assumptions and Consequences of the Interactionist Perspective The interactionist perspective suggests that there is an optimum for conflict, i.e. too little or too much conflict is destructive. Some intensity and types of conflict are functional to organizational success. This functionalist knowledge is managerialist as it aims to explain to managers how to exploit conflict, especially by reducing negative conflict and favouring task-oriented or other functional conflict. For example, based on recent management interactionist research (O'Neill, McLarnon, Hoffart, Woodley, & Allen, 2015), the Association for Psychological Science (APS, 2015) castigates Bezos for having misunderstood conflict and reminds him, and us all, that not all conflict is created equal and that high intensity is detrimental to effective performance. A reverse-U curve links the level of conflict intensity to the level of organizational effectiveness (Hatch, 2012; Robbins & Coulter, 2012). This mathematical polish is not insignificant. Epistemologically, such theorizing is proposed as 'scientific' by claiming the same neutrality that reproduce the principles and processes of natural science (Miner, 2006) to identify, predict and control the right types and amounts of conflict. This is appealing as it promises the possibility of controlling and domesticating conflict to achieve a better organizational effectiveness. To date, however, there is no strong support for the validity of such a relation. Rahim (2010, p. 50) suggests that empirical evidence of the inverted-U function is limited. It is difficult to obtain measures of this correlation that are valid and reliable; and until now no study of this function has satisfied the requirements of scientific control (Rahim, 2010, p. 50). Robbins and Coulter (2012, p. 355) acknowledge that 'we do not yet have a sophisticated measuring instrument for assessing whether conflict level is too high'. Others, like Weingart, Behfar, Bendersky, Todorova and Jehn (2015), admit that it has been difficult to identify positive and negative results of conflict both theoretically and empirically. But rather than an utter rethinking of such knowledge, one notices a perseverance with its premises and foundations. The hope still remains that eventually all will be explained. For example, the reverse-U function is still reported in widely adopted management textbooks (e.g. Hatch, 2012; Huczynski & Buchanan, 2010) as if this was a solid and reliable piece of management knowledge on which management education and practice is to be based. What is happening with this knowledge? The interactionist perspective builds on Follett's original point that 'conflict is the appearance of differences in the world'. This shift is important because it opens up to a knowledge that starts to posit the significance of difference in interests and opinions. Reasonably, then, one would think that this appreciation would call for a philosophical and scientific investigation of the origin of such interests and opinions, their constitutions and reproduction. But this is not what has happened with the interactionist perspective which never addresses fully how or why such differences are 'in the world'. The interactionist perspective treats organizational conflict as if it was an internal differentiation of opinions on tasks, processes or individual dispositions that are treated as external to the social world rather than being 'in the world'. The 'world' is still only posited as an a priori defined set of features that are measured and measurable within given parameters (e.g. types of conflict, dispositions and satisfaction/dissatisfaction). Conflict is apprehended as a relational set of countable variations in order to work out what is functional to organizational success. Returning to our Amazon vignette, the notion of conflict that is supported is a limited one, i.e. the disagreement on ideas. Contu 1449 After the disagreement everyone has to fall in line and commit. Conflict is an instrument for organizational success. The coordinates of such success are clear, i.e. to retain the 'best' employees and constantly innovate. It is a specific type of innovation that characterizes this success, one that converts to increased sales and higher stock valuation. From within the interactionist perspective, as indicated earlier through the APS (2015), the concern is that Bezos and his senior managers must be careful to modulate conflict exploitation in order to keep it at the 'right' level, even if, as clarified, there is no consensus on what this 'level' is in practice, and no instruments to measure and achieve such control.

1. Use any of the theories discussed in the Power and Politics Frame to analyze and explain what is going on in your example from a power/politics viewpoint. Show us how you employ any of the ideas studied to understand the work situation. (conflict and power) use an example at work place