Decision-Specific Conflict in Organizational Buyer Behavior

Abstract

In a departure from the traditional examination of stress as a function of organizational and individual variables, conflict was hypothesized to vary across a number of decisions involving various aspects of the total consumption system. The approach has implications for planning systems-selling strategy via the use of conflict to segment consumption decisions. Using 17 purchasing decisions faced by industrial automobile fleet administrators, nomological validity was supported by an inverted U-shaped relationship between conflict and responsibility weighted by time.