5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Empirical instances of competition or conflict in or among organizations can readily be observed. However, the differences between the two phenomena tend to be obscured. For example, there can be conflicts without any competition for desirable and scarce goods that instead focus on disagreements about values and morals. This session’s aim is therefore to investigate how competition or conflict emerge within and among organizations (Arora-Jonsson et al. 2021). Moreover, we would like to clarify the dis-/connections between organizational competition and conflict. For instance, should they be conceived as alternative, exclusionary, or successive types of relationships?

Therefore, conceptual or empirical presentations may address the following or similar questions:

• What institutions construct organizations as competitive or conflicting actors? Under what conditions do organizations view themselves and others either as competitors or conflict parties? What sustains organizational competition or conflict?

• What role do organizations play in the spread and/or prevention of competition or conflict? What types of organizations promote such relationships and how? Is such promotion an intentional or an inadvertent effect of organizing? How far does such influence stretch among different organizations (local, global, etc.)? Can organizations resist entering such relationships or revert to back to other types of relationships?

• What are the differences and similarities between organizational competition or conflict? Are such relationships mutually conducive or exclusionary to each other? What does this imply for organizations?

Arora-Jonsson, S., Brunsson, N., Hasse, R., & Lagerström, K. (Eds.) (2021). Competition: What it is and why it happens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.