What is “Business and Conflict” as an academic field?

John Katsos
Sep 5, 2018 · 6 min read
Conflict, sometimes. “people gathering on street during nighttime” by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

When I tell people that I study business and conflict, puzzlement is the best way to describe the look I usually receive. More than a few times people have actually said, “Wait, what?”. Even among academics many don’t even know that such a field exists.

And, I’ll admit, it’s very odd when you think of a “normal” business to ask how or why or whether it enhances peace, which are the central research questions of the field.

So here is my attempt at summarizing the field for those who aren’t in it, with many apologies to those few who are in it and feel like this isn’t technical enough…

Conflicts Are Often Violent, but Can Also be Non-Violent

“grayscale photo of soldier carrying pump-action rifle” by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

The first thing you have to wrap your head around is what we mean by “conflict”. As a practical matter, “conflict” is whatever certain indices define it as (like the Heidelberg Conflict Barometer). As a theoretical matter, you could think of “conflict” as a spectrum, with one end being war and the other end being non-violent disputes (think non-violent protests).

Another type of spectrum “multicolored rainbow artwork” by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

The spectrum idea is very important for two reasons. One it gives a much better sense of how a dispute can become violent and second it gives a sense of how a war can ebb and flow between being very violent and non-violent at different time intervals.

Studying business in conflict zones basically means NOT studying businesses during times of peace, right? Well, not quite. Most business research takes the context of peace vs. war for granted. The research assumes that the prevailing environment is peaceful. And that is helpful because so much fantastic work about businesses in peaceful contexts has been done already. That research is interesting insofar as it allows business and conflict researchers to figure out what factors are different in conflict zones, then work our way back.

A question to set the tone:

If businesses usually don’t pay bribes in peaceful places, why are the same businesses in the same industries paying bribes in conflict zones?

The simple answer is that something about the conflict requires bribes be paid to do business in the same way.

Now the second, more interesting follow-up: is the cause of the bribe the conflict or the business’ response to it? Are there ways that the business could operate differently in a conflict, still make money, and NOT pay that bribe? Or are the essential factors of a conflict so unchangeable that bribe paying is essential to continued operations?

You may now have reached the “who cares?” portion of your own feelings, but consider this: if a company from a peaceful country pays a bribe in a conflict zone, it is usually illegal in the peaceful country! That’s right — rules like the FCPA in the US and the UK Bribery Act ban the bribing of foreign government officials. These rules are enforced and their enforcement is an expensive requirement on international business.

A Word on Peace…

“long exposure photography of trees” by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Because when we think of “conflict” or “war”, we normally don’t think of business. Instead we think of three types of actors: individuals, governments, and international organizations. People who are a bit more attuned to what’s happening in the world might also be aware of the role non-governmental organizations play. This is partly because of what we imagine “peace” looks like.

We imagine “peace” as some sort of UN-initiated “process” for a country that at war. We usually don’t think of “peace” the way that it actually is: as the way human beings can sustainably live with one another and on our planet.

This misperception is partly rooted in our peace reference point, which isn’t really peace: it’s war! It is very hard to define peace at any level of specificity beyond a “negative peace” definition, that is, “peace” is definitely NOT war. We can rather easily say it is also not: genocide, torture, bombings, “boots on the ground”, missiles flying over head, etc. It is much harder for us to articulate however what “peace” looks like, rather than what “not war” looks like.

When I started research in this field in grad school, it struck me that I had been thinking about this all wrong.

Imagine a country “at peace”: because it is an easy reference point for Americans, Canada might come to mind, but there’s a whole lot of countries that fit the bill from Switzerland to Costa Rica to Japan to Finland. What do you imagine every day like to be like there (or, if you’ve been, what is everyday life like)? These people are by and large just going about their business. I don’t think of them as wealthy — Canada is not a country of billionaires jet-setting around the world’s second-largest country. My mental image is of middle and working class people involved in the “everyday
(i.e. fairly mundane) aspects of life. I imagine a place where people are waking up every morning and going to work and those who aren’t have a sufficient social safety net that they can live modestly, but decently.

When we think of countries “at peace”, the roles business plays is fairly predictable. We think of business as playing a central role in employment and government regulating business and taking care of those who don’t/can’t work. We think of business as a hub of innovation, a generator of employment, a taxpayer.

But businesses don’t just pop up and succeed — they need an entire physical, financial, and regulatory infrastructure to make it work (Obama’s famous 2012 statement “you didn’t build that” was a perhaps ineloquent but was trying to get at this point).

For instance, you can’t have large scale private businesses without financing of some kind, you can’t have financing without some form of banking, you can’t have banking without some form of regulation, and you can’t have regulation without effective government. So government plays what we might call a foundational role in peace. Think of it like a board game: government sets up the board (by building roads, ports, airports, etc.), creates the processes/rules (by writing regulations and laws) and monitors whether the rules of the game are being followed (through enforcement by police and courts). Businesses and private individuals then play the game if there are adequate incentives to do so: this is the incentive for government not to rig the game, at least not too much.

The difference in lots of places in the world, places lacking peace? The government can’t or won’t play those roles. Governments often can’t even set up the board for private actors to play so “no war” is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition.

What I care about is whether, how, and why business can play a role in the process of setting up the board, creating the rules, and monitoring the rules without taking over government’s role completely.

Can business help by self-imposing higher standards than governments?

Can business help by addressing the root causes of violence within company policies and culture?

Can business help by operating in a way that shows a fair and just “game” can be played and accessed by all?

That’s what the academic field of business and conflict is about.

John Katsos

Written by

Business Prof, Conflict & Sustainability Researcher, Lawyer, Runner. American, Greek, NY Rangers fan. Opinions my own. http://john-e-katsos.strikingly.com/

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade