Exploring international conflict : influence of experience and institutional strength on the relationship between diversity and conflict between MNEs and indigenous peoples

Exploring international conflict

Influence of experience and institutional strength on the relationship between

diversity and conflict between MNEs and indigenous peoples

Thijs Dekker 5982960 University of Amsterdam Faculty of Economics and Business Master Thesis MSc Business Administration International Management Dr. I. Haxhi January, 2016

Table of Contents

5.2 Theoretical and practical implications………...… 18

5.3 Limitations………...………. 19

5.4 Future research………...………. 20

Abstract

Indigenous peoples are a group in the world not receiving the attention from both practice and literature that they might deserve. They are often involved in conflicts with MNEs and have been studied very little. Based on existing literature on conflicts, we will try to see what the influence of cultural differences, international experience of MNE and institutional strength is on the duration of those conflicts. Based on a database constructed with conflict cases from secondary sources we test these variables. Results show that none of these variables

significantly influences conflict duration. However, we do get results that suggest that home country masculinity of the MNE does influence conflict duration. Implications of these results are discussed.

Key words: Conflict; cultural differences; international experience; institutional strength; indigenous peoples; MNE

Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Thijs Dekker who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

1. Introduction

Indigenous peoples are a vulnerable group in the society of the world which can quickly be overlooked, but deserves a place of their own in the current state of civilization (UN, 2009). Indigenous peoples are communities spread over the entire world who have lived at that place for huge amounts of time and in a traditional way. However, during the recent globalizational period, their status has been compromised more and more. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are entering their living areas, not having the interests of these original inhabitants as a priority (UN, 2009). Often, entry of an MNE into a country leads to the mistreatment of indigenous communities, which can eventually escalate into conflicts. Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are already in those areas and help and report on those conflicts.

Finding out more on these issues could help securing the rights and freedom of these communities, ensuring a ethical and just treatment for these vulnerable people.

While indigenous people have not been one of the main focus points in business literature until now, we will have to rely on more general knowledge on conflicts. Corwin (1969) shows us that in business situations heterogeneity, experience, close supervision and clear rules play important roles. These claims are substantiated by other literature which leads us to believe we should test these ideas on the conflict situations between indigenous

communities and MNEs. These tests could fill in the gap in literature on indigenous peoples and on the other hand be of practical use for governments, MNEs and NGOs in

understanding, preventing and handling conflict situations.

As we can see in literature, heterogeneity plays a direct role in conflict, whereas experience and close supervision and clear rules, or institutional strength, appear to play a more indirect role. Experience and institutional strength can be seen as the factors that inhibit or facilitate conflict. Conflict severity is a concept difficult to handle, as it is a nominal scale, as we cannot put the conflicts in a undebatable order, while all kinds of grey areas in conflict severity exist. Therefore, we will focus on conflict duration, as conflict duration reduction can be an honourable aim as well. The research question we will try to answer is: In what way do international experience in host country and institutional strength of host country influence the relationship between cultural distance and conflict duration?

In order to do so we will construct a dataset based on existing conflict cases and information from Worldwide governance indicators (2013) and a dataset on Hofstede (1994)’s

cultural dimensions. Using SPSS we will then perform a statistical analysis and test our hypotheses.

This paper will start off with an analysis of the literature available on the most important concepts. We will then propose a conceptual framework and the hypotheses associated with it. After that the methods of research will be presented and methodological choices will be justified. Then we will perform the statistical analysis and show the results. We will conclude with a discussion, wherein we will put the findings in perspective and where implications for practice and theory, limitations of the research and recommendation for future research will be examined.

2. Literature review

In this part existing literature will be examined to provide definitions on the most important concepts and to find the existing information that is available on them. Furthermore, relations that exist between them according to the literature will be discussed. Finally, hypotheses and a conceptual framework for this thesis will be proposed based on the information.

Even though conflict is a seemingly easy concept, it deserves a closer look. While all people experience conflict in their lives in one way or another and are able to recognize it clearly, the boundaries of conflict appear to be more ambiguous than one might think. Thinking about the term conflict other terms like disagreement, debate, argument, fight or war might spring to mind and the exact differences or overlap between these terms can be debatable.

In order to clarify the exact meaning of conflict, authors have proposed multiple definitions. As conflict can occur between all kinds of different entities, like animals, humans, organizations or countries, a variety of ideas about conflict exists. In the animal kingdom, conflict between two animals of the same species can be seen as a combat in which the winner gains mates, dominance rights, desirable territory or other advantages (Smith & Price, 1973). What we can see is that there are important payoffs at stake that are the basic reason for the conflict. Yet, the animals don’t use their most deadly weapons in conflict and try not to heavily injure the other (Smith & Price, 1973). Within humans, conflict exists as well (Botvinick et al., 2001). When two physical processes happen at the same time a conflict

between these two occur and a third party, in this case the brain, has to interfere in order to resolve this conflict. When looking at interactions between people, conflict can be categorized in two ways: task conflict and interpersonal relationship (Barki & Hartwick, 2004). In this definition, task conflict plays a when the goals of one person don’t match the goals of another, while interpersonal relationship involves situations in which differences between people negatively impacts the way in which they work together or the general work environment.

In a business context, these same problems occur as well. While some authors skip a definition of conflict and assume it to be known, others specifically point out the different ways in which the concept can be used. As Pondy (1967) mentions, conflict has been used in business literature to describe different states or actions, both between people as between organizations. It can be used as the conditions that are needed for conflicts, like scarce

resources, emotional states, like stress or hostility of people involved in the conflict, cognitive states, where people are aware of a conflict existing and conflictful behaviour, which can include actions like passive resistance to overt aggression. All these factors can be generally included when choosing between two main definitions, the first involving competitive intentions, such as deliberate interference with the other’s goals and the other which is more about the events prior to the choice of conflict-handling modes (Thomas, 1992). Thomas (1992, p. 265) than proposes his own definition: “The process which begins when one party perceives that another has frustrated, or is about to frustrate, some concern of his.” This definition involves the cognitive state of one of the parties when perceiving there to be a conflict (Pondy, 1967). This is the definition of conflict that will be used in this thesis, as it allows us to include any situation in which a party involved flags it as being a conflict.

Conflict shouldn’t be seen as solely a bad thing. In cases it can be functional and yield benefits of considerable value (Pondy, 1967; Baron, 1985; Rahim, 2002). However, benefits are regularly blocked as conflicts gets out of hand (Baron, 1985). In the case of international conflicts, local conflict seems to be positively related to both the international economy as vulnerable community distress (Axworthy, 2001). This may influence the motivation for MNEs to solve these conflicts, while a solution might be an obligation from an ethical point of view.

A lot of the literature on organizational conflict is aimed at the way to resolve business conflicts. Different authors have provided models on conflict resolvement. These include ideas about complying, avoiding, dominating or compromising in order to overcome the conflict (Thomas, 1992; Rahim, 1983). The similarity amongst them can be found in the fact

that the conflicts seem to be fixed by either accepting the idea or competing it, or finding a common ground and collaborate. Especially when there is no way of avoiding conflict, for instance because of being forced together due to physical location, these ways of resolvement could be useful. Moreover, because ending a conflict in a satisfactory matter is important, as conflicts may often rekindle and come back even more destructive, with important

consequences to the civilian population (Smith, 2004).

In the case of conflict between indigenous peoples and MNEs we can see that cultural and economic factors might be most important when assessing the direct reason for conflict (Stewart, 2002; Smith, 2004). Ethnic or religious group might fight for their cultural

autonomy and way of living when that is being compromised (Stewart, 2002). On the other hand, in case of loss of livelihood and economic downfall violent escalation is likely to occur as well (Smith, 2004). When an MNE enters a region inhibited by indigenous peoples it is very plausible that these factors might be contested. This can explain the basis on which most MNE-indigenous peoples conflicts start.

Other factors might influence the likelihood and escalation of conflict, though. In literature we can find other elements that influence the prevention and escalation of conflicts, be it in a more indirect way. There are different perspectives on conflict generation, which put forward the idea that conflict is more complex than we perceive it to be once again. A first method to review conflict generation is to look at other party motivation. When the other party is seemingly motivated by external factors, lower levels of anger and retaliation are found (Baron, 1985). In other words, when the other party acts because of factors out of their own control, like obligations to others or external bad conditions, the first party will feel less bitter about it. Similarly, internal causes like competitiveness or greed will enrage more.

A different perspective is being proposed by Falk et al. (2003). He believes that fairness, spite and reputation formation are the most important determinants of conflict. This view focusses more on the way the party that will protest feels about itself, the situation and the other party. When it feels like being treated unfairly a party will most likely act more extreme and destructive. A party that has a more spiteful nature will want to negatively influence the other party regardless of consequences for himself. Finally, reputation is important, as being viewed by the other to be a tough bargainer will help you get a stronger strategic position in future negotiations (Falk et al., 2003). Obviously, these things are

use in most research, as it requires information about the intentions and ideas of parties involved.

A third way of explaining conflict generation is the model presented by Corwin (1969). He introduces a framework of explaining organizational conflict that includes a variety of factors commonly used by other authors. He distinguishes group size,

specialization, hierarchy, complexity, staff additions and heterogeneity as being directly related to conflict generation. Furthermore, participation in the authority system and

cohesiveness of peer group relations seem to be facilitating conflict, whereas experience and close supervision will stop or prevent conflict. This study was conducted amongst students of public high schools, but looking at other literature we can see similar findings when looking at (international) conflict between organizations. Even though heterogeneity, or diversity, doesn’t seem to be a reason for conflict in itself, but needs an instigator, it does appear to have a direct connection to conflict and will intensify conflict and the boost the potential of

escalation (Jehn et al., 1999; Smith, 2004). This raises the idea that entities that are more culturally different from each other will have longer and more intense conflicts. Another variable proposed by Corwin (1969) that reappears in other literature is experience as a

inhibiting factor in organizational conflict (Rahim, 2002). Especially when organizations have mechanisms in place to encourage learning we see that experience has a deflating effect on organizational conflict (Rahim, 2002). The final variable we can find in other literature is close, reliable supervision and standardized rules, or institutional strength (Hendrix, 2010). A system with clear rules, where they are enforced correctly will set a background in which there is less room for conflict and more for stability (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009).

In order to be able to explain influences of diversity on conflict, we need to understand what cultural diversity actually is. Culture can be seen as one’s background that distinguishes him from people from other groups, so a diverse or heterogenic group is a group where we can find different people from distinctly different backgrounds (Hofstede, 1994). In a group consisting of only two parties diversity will be biggest when the two backgrounds, or cultures, differ the most that is possible from each other. A renowned way to assess cultural diversity or difference between two entities is by assessing their cultural distance (Hofstede, 1994). Hofstede (1994) identifies five dimensions of national culture in his model. Power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance and long term versus short term orientation explain cultural differences, or distance between two countries and the problems or advantages that are linked to those differences. Hofstede’s

model is not without critique, though. Claims are being made that the model doesn’t include the possibility that cultures may change over time and that it implies that all people in a nation have the same culture (McSweeney, 2002; Baskerville, 2003). On top of that, some scholars believe the model to be oversimplifying and overgeneralizing reality and think the methods Hofstede used allowed him to find prove for his preconceived ideas, instead of adjusting his ideas to the data he found (McSweeney, 2002; Baskerville, 2003). In the end, whether

Hofstede’s model is able to explain behaviour or help us understand culture remains debatable (McSweeney, 2002; Hofstede & McCrae, 2004), but it does allow for a broad assessment of cultural differences (Hofstede & McCrae, 2004).

International experience is a straight forward term to use. By counting up someone’s years abroad we can determine whether someone is experienced or not. As we’ve seen past experiences can provide an environment in which future conflicts can be coped with, especially when those experiences made the subject learn (Rahim, 2002). This can be explained at least partly by the fact that international experience helps to adjust to future international situations (Takeuchi et al., 2005). In relation to conflict, this means that previous experiences in international settings will help to have an idea how to deal with or avoid new conflicts related to the international setting. Another reason for companies to internationalize and pursue international experience is that it seems to be related to better performance in all commonly used measures (ROA, ROI and market-to-book ratio) (Daily et al., 2000). The distinction between the company and the employee in the case of international experience can be unclear, as companies with no international history can gain international experience by attracting internationally experienced employees (Daily et al., 2000). However, although there will be exceptions, generally speaking we can say that internationally active companies gain international experience.

As we’ve seen reliable authority and clear rules can create a system that will restrain the possibility for a conflict to start or intensify. In national governments, this system can be called the institutional strength (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009; Hendrix, 2010). Institutional strength can be divided in two parts, the quality of the rational-legal structure and the enforcement of that rational-legal structure (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009; Hendrix, 2010).

Quality of the structure in this case means that the system is stable on the one hand and able to process and improve itself on the other. The stability can be seen in the fact that over long periods of time the some structures have to make less big and significant changes than others, which makes them more stable (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009). Still, their information processing

ability is important as well, enabling it to apply the structure in reality and develop itself accordingly (Hendrix, 2010). The other important part of institutional strength is the way in which the state is enforcing the rational-legal structure. Enforcement is strong when all relevant actors will comply with the structure all the time (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009). When this doesn’t happen automatically, the state can use its monopoly on legitimate use of force to coerce actors in complying with the rules, the capacity they have to do so will increase

institutional strength as well (Hendrix, 2010). Because of the clear rules and the compliance with it in a place with strong institutions, this can decrease the options for conflict to begin or escalate (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009). However, when the authority is concentrated this can increase conflict potential and can be a source of conflict itself (Mansfield & Snyder, 2002).

Lastly, it might be a good idea to better explain the actors involved in the conflicts studied. We will focus on MNEs and indigenous peoples. MNEs will be defined as organizations that operate in countries other than their home country. This seems like a straight forward concept, but can be more difficult in practice. In reality all kinds of grey areas happen to exist, what makes it difficult to assess whether a company is an MNE or not. For example, there are subsidiaries that go under a different name from the parent and aren’t internationally active themselves, there are organizations that have splintered ownership amongst all kinds of different organizations and there are joint ventures with non-international companies or national governments. To overcome this problem, in case of doubt we will try to look at the most important parent entity and see whether that is performing international actions. As for indigenous peoples, this is a subject far less researched in a business context. As such, we cannot be sure whether our sources are applicable to them and this study should shed more light on that. As for a definition, we will regard a community as indigenous when they are regarded as such by third parties and when they have been residing in the land over a very long time (Wiessner, 1999).

2.1 Conceptual framework

Based on the available information we can now construct a conceptual framework in which we can embed our hypotheses. First of all we have seen a positive influence of diversity on conflict (Jehn et al., 1999; Smith, 2004). As we have connected international diversity to cultural distance between two entities, we can predict that cultural distance will be positively

linked to conflict (Hofstede, 1994). As severity or violence of conflict is a difficult concept to measure, as it has no unarbitrary ordinal scale, we will look at the period of conflict. The first hypothesis will than look like this.

Hypothesis 1: Cultural distance will be positively related to conflict length.

Additionally, we have distinguished factors that influence the potential of conflicts to occur and escalate. The first one in that category is international experience. As we presume that organizations learn from past conflict situations, that experience should enforce them to handle new conflicts better (Rahim, 2002; Takeuchi et al., 2005). This should create situations in which the potential for cultural differences to intensify conflicts is diminished. Therefore, international experience could have a moderating influence.

Hypothesis 2: International experience in host country will moderate the relationship between cultural differences and conflict length.

Finally, we have found that institutional strength of countries sets the background for conflict potential (Levitsky & Murillo, 2009). As it only has an indirect influence and reduces potential for conflict to occur (Corwin, 1969), we can say that institutional strength will have a moderating role as well.

Hypothesis 3: Institutional strength of country of conflict location will moderate the relationship between cultural differences and conflict length.

We can now construct the conceptual framework that will be tested in this paper. We can see this framework in Figure 1.

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3. Methods

In this part we will take a look at the design of the research and the choices that were made accordingly. Firstly we will take a look at the practical way in which the research will be conducted. We will then go through the layers of research design as proposed by Saunders et al. (2011)’s research onion. After that we will discuss the models that will be used to perform the research. Finally, a method for analysing the data will be proposed.

The research will take place by collecting individual cases of conflict between indigenous peoples and MNEs. The collection will be conducted by seven students who will try to find reliable examples by using renowned sources like United Nations-reports or established NGOs. With these cases we will construct a database consisting of the collected details of the conflict situations. This database should allow us all to perform our separate analysis and answer the research question that is applicable.

The first layer of the Saunders et al. (2011)’s research onion is the research philosophy. As we presume that we can compare the different situations where we find conflict we take on a positivistic approach. By trying to capture the conflicts in numbers and facts about them we enable ourselves to see the differences and similarities.

A lot of literature is available on conflict and the factors influencing it. Although a lot less is known about indigenous peoples as they are a more recent topic of studies in this

Cultural Distance Conflict Length

International Experience

Institutional Strength

context we believe that we can use existing literature to build a solid ground for this study. As such we create hypotheses based on the literature and test them in our database, that is filled with quantitative data about the conflicts. Accordingly, the research approach of this study is quantitative and deductive.

The research strategy adopted in this studies is database research conducted on a database consisting of information about cases from secondary sources. This approach can be risky, as it is prone to bias. As cases are being transformed into quantitative data we have to rely on the truthfulness of the author. Every author has a reason to write about the conflicts which can influence the objectivity of their perspective. However, by having seven different researchers which will all use their own sources we can gain a more objective view by combining all the different perspectives. Moreover, aiming for objective truth would be a misconception, as observations are subjective by definition. Simplifying the situation into numbers helps us to discover the facts, although this imposes its own restriction, as it has a great impact on details and nuances.

In regards to choices and time horizons we will conduct the research by comparing one time situations in a quantitative way based on qualitative observations as found in other studies. This will mean that there can be bias because of subjectivity of the original conductor of the studies, because of time diffences, because of location differences and all other case specific variations. By collecting enough cases from different settings in place or time we hope to reduce the significance of these biases on the end results.

Sampling will be done by using convenience and judgement sampling on secondary data. Convenience sampling is used because the cases will have to be used that are available, because time issues and the fact we need a lot of cases don’t allow to explore new cases. This will mean that we will progress on earlier choices made by other researchers. They will have made the call that certain projects deserve to be described, so those judgement decisions will lie at the basis of our database. Judgement sampling will be used as well, as the seven

researchers will decide what cases are useful and up to requirements as they will add those to the database. This method will be potentially biased as the selection of cases might be

arbitrary and well documented areas where people examining the conflict speak English will have a bigger chance of being added to the database.

In order to be able to determine length of conflict and international experience of MNE we will use the information from the cases that is available in the database. To find out

the cultural distance between MNE home country and host country we will use the five dimensions as proposed by Hofstede (1994) and available on the internet. Although this model has received some critiques it does allow us to get a general idea on cultural distance. This does force us to assume that indigenous peoples’ culture and the culture of the country in which they reside are associated. This might be a problem as indigenous peoples are almost by definition not that sensitive from outside forces. However, they are part of the history of the country and have had communications with others in most cases. On top of that, because they are a relatively badly researched group, another source of information on their culture is not available, so we will have to accept the assumption. For institutional strength we will use the worldwide governance indicators, which allow us to determine which countries have better quality of rule of law in place (Hendrix, 2010). This measurement scores countries in five categories of percentile rankings, over six dimensions, such voice and accountability, government effectiveness and control of corruption. This will enable us to calculate a total score that can tell us the quality of the institutions in any of the countries involved. The final data we will use are control variables, namely country inequality and poverty/development of country scores, which we take from the database.

As analytical method we will first filter the database for usable cases. Next we will distinguish some interesting results that we will find in the database. We will than compute reliability of the scales and compute the total variables. This allows us to draw a correlation matrix and perform a test for moderation. We will end with looking for the answers to our hypotheses.

4. Results

Here we will first discuss the dataset and the adaptions we had to make to make it applicable to our research. We will then show the main attributes of the dataset, show computations and perform our analysis. Finally we will show the outcomes of the results and unexpected findings.

The total database consists of the details from 351 cases. However not all of those cases are usable for our research. To start off with, some cases have host or home countries that aren’t

available in the Hofstede dataset. We need to take those out, as they will not allow us to compare home and host country variables, so we cannot describe diversity in those cases. Next, we have to take out cases that are ongoing. Although this will create bias, as really long conflict have a lesser chance of being researched, we will need to do this to make sure we know total conflict duration, and not just part of it. Lastly, we have to take out cases with missing values on MNE experience in country, as they will need that variable as well in order make our analysis. This will make the usable dataset complete, as information on institutional strength is available for all cases. Now the dataset has been filtered for usable cases, 106 of the 351 cases are left. We will use these cases for our analysis.

When we look at the final dataset we see two variables that bring up problems. Experience in country needs to be recoded into years and long term orientation can’t be used because of too many missing cases. Furthermore, an interesting fact is that we find that there are 16 companies operating in their home country. 44 cases find their origin in Canada and with 51 counts of MNE home country, Canada is the basis for most companies as well. We can see that conflict duration is between a minimum of 0 months and a maximum of 507 months, with an average of 65. MNE experience in country is between 0 and 203 years, with a mean of 37,3.

Next up we will analyse and cumpute the scale for institutional strength. As we can see in Table 1, the scale for institutional strength has high reliability, as the Cronbach’s Alpha score is .984. On top of that, all items have a correlation of over .8 with the total scale. None of the items would improve the reliability in a substantial way, so the total institutional strength scale can be computed.

Table 1: Cronbach’s Alphas for Institutional Strength Scale Mean if Item Deleted Scale Variance if Item Deleted Corrected Item-Total Correlation Cronbach's Alpha if Item Deleted Voice_acc 23.406 45.824 .977 .980 Political_stab 24.132 44.116 .884 .986 Govr_effectiveness 23.425 43.332 .949 .980 Reg_quality 23.462 43.546 .956 .979 Rule_law 23.575 40.647 .965 .979 Corruption_control 23.604 41.442 .972 .978

The scale for total cultural distance can just be computed, as the parts of it are already validated (Hofstede, 1994). We will keep the separate parts as well, though, to be able to test for correlations on the separate parts as well.

In Table 2 we can see the means, standard deviations and correlations for the most important variables. Surprisingly, we find that conflict duration is not correlated with total diversity, nor with any of the components of diversity. This seems to tell us that differences between home and host countries have no influence on conflict duration. The other (control) variables have no influence on conflict duration either, which suggests that conflict duration is influenced by other factors than available in this table. We do get some other interesting correlations, like between MNE experience and development of country (.27**) and

institutional strength (.24*). This suggests that MNEs are present longer in countries that are more developed and score higher on institutional strength. We find as well that development of country and institutional strength are strongly related (.83**). This shows us that

differences in development of a country can be predicted for a big part based on the strength of their institutions and the other way around.

Table 2: Means, Standard deviations, Correlations Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 1 Country inequality 40.19 7.77 - 2 Poverty/development of country .80 .15 -.51** - 3 Conflict duration 65.36 84.20 .10 .03 - 4 MNE Experience 37.3 37.30 -.15 .27** .07 - 5 Institutional Strength 4.72 1.31 -.57** .83** -.07 .24* - (.98) 6 Power distance difference 14.83 16.76 .34** -.52 .06 -.63** -.63** - 7 Individuality difference 37.12 27.73 .07 -.00** -.04 .00 -.10 .08 -

8 Masculinity difference 11.69 12.15 .14 -.17 .04 -.08 -.23* .25* .25** - -

9 Uncertainty avoidance difference 17.09 17.12 .10 -.16 .16 -.01 -.11 .09 .56** .25* - -

10 Total diversity 80.74 50.12 .22** -.27** .06 -.10 -.36** .47** .83** .55** .74** - - ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Because of the lack correlation between conflict duration and the other variables we are not able to perform a mediation test. When we take a look at the cultural indicators of home and host country, we do find a correlation with conflict duration, though. As Table 3 shows, MNE home country masculinity and conflict duration are related (.34**). This means an MNE for a country with a higher masculinity score will generally have longer conflicts.

Table 3: Means, Standard deviations, Correlations for Cultural indicators

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 9 10

1 Conflict duration 65.36 84.20 -

2 Host country power distance 53.53 19.00 .15 -

3 Host country individualism 44.23 30.07 .05 .01 -

4 Host country masculinity 52.03 11.66 .02 .16 .27** -

5 Host country uncertainty avoidance 60.44 18.81 .01 -.21* -.60** -.37** -

6 MNE power distance 45.66 15.45 .06 .27** .07 -.16 -.11 - 7 MNE individualism 73.05 21.00 -.02 -.29** .02 -.18 .12

-.88** -

8 MNE masculinity 53.81 11.26 .34** .03 .10 -.07 .13 .01 .18 - -

9 MNE uncertainty avoidance 52.00 13.28 .19 .07 -.00 .08 .03 .40** -.49** -.17 - - ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

When we perform a regression analysis on MNE masculinity and conflict duration, controlled for company industry, country inequality and country development we find that the control variables are not significant, but addition of MNE masculinity gives us a significant model with a significant model with an r2 _{of .14 (p<0.001). When we adjust for our control variables,}

we find an r2 _{of .10 (p<0.001), which shows us that MNE masculinity explains conflict}

duration for 10 %.

Now we found that MNE masculinity has a significant influence on conflict duration, we can take a look at the moderating abilities of MNE experience in country and institutional strength. However, when we run a moderation analysis, we find that both a model MNE experience and institutional strength as moderator are not significant (p=.329 and p=.315). This means that neither of them shows moderating properties on the connection between MNE home country masculinity and conflict duration.

When we take a look at our hypotheses, we can see that we have to dismiss all of them, as all rely on a connection between conflict duration and diversity. We did, however, find an unexpected relationship, namely that between conflict duration and MNE home country masculinity. Yet, our indirect variables did not moderate this relation either.

5. Discussion

5.1 Conclusion

The dataset used to perform our analysis on has shown us other results then we would have expected based on the literature. We will have to dismiss hypothesis 1, 2 and 3, as all of them rely on a correlation between conflict duration and cultural diversity, which we did not find in our dataset. We can explain this by re-evaluating our assumptions or by reassessing other influences from the literature.

Because of the lack of information on indigenous peoples, we had to assume that ideas from business literature would be applicable in conflict cases involving indigenous peoples as well. Maybe indigenous peoples are an exceptional group, though. As they are living (partly) outside our normal way of living by definition, it might well be that different rules and concepts apply to them.

Another way to interpret the results we found is by taking another look at the

literature. Although it seems to suggest that conflicts in situations with less differences, more experience and stronger institutions can be solved quicker, maybe the problem isn’t in being

able, but wanting to solve those differences. We have seen in literature that conflicts are not only a negative thing, but can be seen as functional tool and create value as well (Pondy, 1967; Baron, 1985; Rahim, 2002). It might even be related to a more flourishing economy (Axworthy, 2001). As an MNE is more likely to be the recipient of those positive aspects and might not be as sensitive to the negative ones and as there seem to be a big equality in power between MNE and indigenous community, the reason why our hypotheses had to be rejected might be MNE motivation to stop conflicts.

The result we did find was the fact that MNE home country masculinity seems to be related to longer conflicts. Looking at literature we see that masculinity is assessed by looking at preferences for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material rewards, or in total a more competitive attitude (Hofstede, 1994). In contrary, more feminine societies seem to rate factors like cooperation, caring for the weak and consensus more highly. This seems to suggest a logical explanation for seeing longer conflicts with MNEs from more competitive backgrounds.

5.2 Theoretical and practical implications

From a theoretical point of view, we need to reassess our knowledge of conflict situations, or actually in general for cases in which indigenous peoples play a role. This seems to be a group wherefore the normal rules don’t apply. As it are communities mostly closed off to our

normal lives, this might not be an unimaginable idea.

Another important implication for theory might be that international, complicated cases have forces playing a role that are different from the normal ones. A lot of the cases had a big number of stakeholders involved (the one with the most had 105 stakeholders involved), which might complicate the situation and reshuffle the cards. Another difference between the cases in this study and normal business situations is the huge difference in social and

economic power between indigenous communities and MNEs. This might explain an important part of the different results we acquired as well.

For practice this paper might influence organizations that want to stop conflict

situations in changing their tactics. As other rules seem to apply to these situations, they might try to persuade MNEs to change their mentality and act in a more feminine way, instead of

trying to control them or trying to reduce cultural differences. Hopefully this study can encourage NGOs, governments or even MNEs to take another good look at the way in which they are influencing conflict and suffering in the world.

5.3 Limitations

As information on indigenous peoples is less easily available as other information, we had to make some compromises in this study, which might influence the quality of the research, and put limitations on its practical applicability and generalizability.

First off, the cases collected were found in less diverse sources than initially

presumed. Instead of using a wide range of sources, in the end a big chunk of all cases were based on one specific source, which will hugely increase the influence of that specific source. Moreover, we can doubt the reliability of the sources, as all cases that were described were made for a reason. Be it in favour of or against MNEs, all actors involved in these conflicts play a role and have subjective ideas on it, the once sharing the information on them are not excluded from this. In the end we did have a database with 352 cases, unfortunately only 106 were suitable for the analysis conducted in this study. This might put a bias on better

documented countries and situations, which is even more so because we could only select cases in English, because of language barriers.

Another limitation is that we had to assume that the rules for normal business studies were applicable to these situations as well. This might have been a leap too big to take and the results show us that these situations might be different from the ones normal in business studies. However, the way of finding these things out is by trying to apply them. If normal theories don’t work, that is a result in itself.

The important influence of Canada might restrict the generalizable potential of this study. As 44 out of 106 cases took place in Canada and 51 cases involved an MNE with

Canadian roots the conclusions of this study might be mostly applicable to a Canadian setting. Companies who are less in the spotlight, share less information and try to hide

themselves from public might be another badly shown part of this study. As we required a lot of information on the companies, companies who didn’t share that information would have been more likely to be excluded, which means that their influence remains underexposed.

5.4 Future research

This paper shows that there is still a lot to be done in this area of business studies. Normal theories seems to apply badly and other forces play more important roles. Future research could step into this void and help understand these situations better. Explaining outcomes like these is at these moment more like an educated guess, where future research could provide more satisfactory explanations.

We hope that this paper can be a stepping stones for other scholars that want to

explore this research area. At the very least this paper can provide first idea and motivation to better map the areas not explained by current literature.

We believe that minority groups, in number or in power, deserve to get attention from scholars and researchers as well as any other group. Right now, still a lot is unknown or unsure on these entities and future research can help shed a better light.

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