The purpose of this paper is to examine the social conflict in a sight of the public, not of conflict subjects. Specifically, it focuses on the institutional and actional legitimacy of organizations, and the conflict management strategy and communicat...
The purpose of this paper is to examine the social conflict in a sight of the public, not of conflict subjects. Specifically, it focuses on the institutional and actional legitimacy of organizations, and the conflict management strategy and communication, which the public perceive as features of conflict subjects. For this purpose, four main research questions were developed on how these variables are related to each other.
Each variable is distinguished into several factors or dimensions. Both institutional and actional legitimacy are distinguished into normative, pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy; the conflict management strategy is distinguished into integrative, distributive and avoidance strategy; the organizational character of communication is classified into symmetrical and asymmetrical communication; and the public support toward organizations is divided into passive and active support according to an actional tendency or its degree.
This paper chose a case of conflict caused by selecting the place for the radioactive waste in Buan region, 2003 in order to verify questions above. The conflict in Buan between the governmental institutes and regional residents and non-governmental organizations took place at the policy-making and its process. ‘Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy’ and ‘Korean Federation for Environmental Movement’ are selected as representatives of the governmental institutes and NGOs respectively. In order to measure cognition of the public, a survey is undertaken with 378 male and female who are above 20 years old and reside in Seoul and Kyungki Province. ANOVA and multiple regression were mainly employed to analyze collected data using SPSS/PC. There are valuable findings from analysis are following.
First, it is shown that the institutional legitimacy positively affects to the public assessments on the conflict management strategy and communication. Especially, the institutional legitimacy has the strongest effect on the integrative strategy and symmetrical communication. In other words, if the public assess that organizations’ institutional legitimacy is higher, they would be aware of that conflict management strategy of organization is more integrative as well as communication of is more symmetrical. The reason for that could be found in the characteristic of the institutional legitimacy because the legitimacy is functional to make the public ensure that organizations are of utility, responsible and believable. Therefore, their communication or message carried on under the conflict situation can be positively perceived by the public. Aspects of public awareness and their emotional are more stressed in cognitive legitimacy rather than in normative or pragmatic legitimacy. Therefore, trust or truth to organizations can be significant factors to affect to cognition on the conflict management strategy.
Second, the significant relation and interaction between the conflict management strategy and communication, and actional legitimacy are found out. The influence of integrative strategy is the strongest among the three conflict management strategies. The public tend to consider that organization’s policy is more legitimate as the strategy of subjects is more integrative. In terms of distributive strategy, it has positive effect on KFEM’s actional legitimacy although it has been discussed partly as a negative strategy in previous study. The result of KFEM’s, a positive assessment on distributive strategy, could be explained in two ways. Firstly, it can be said that the characteristic of NGOs affect to the public’s awareness. NGO is generally regarded as a social weaker when a NGO is confront with the government, therefore its distributive strategy is more likely to be widely accepted by the public. Secondly, the result can be clarified in the strategy itself. Although the distributive strategy is typically used aiming at strengthening organization’s claims and making sure their benefits, the public would accept the use of distributive strategy because reckon that is not irrational or against legitimacy.
The effectiveness of symmetrical communication is similar to the integrative strategy according to the findings from analysis. The respondents’ assessment on the legitimacy of each organization’s policy is higher when the communication between Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy and KFEM is symmetrical. However, the asymmetrical communication tends to bring the most negative influence on organization’s legitimacy among all approach of conflict management strategy and communication. As a result of the analysis in an interaction between conflict management strategy and communication, the actional legitimacy is highly evaluated as the public are aware of that the communication is more symmetrical regardless types of conflict management strategy. In nut shell, which conflict management strategy could be used would not as important as which way of communication is applied. In other words, how to carry on a specific strategy with which kind of communication (among symmetrical or asymmetrical communication) is directly connected to strengthening or weakening legitimacy.
Third, the finding describes that actional legitimacy significantly affects on public support. The respondents of the survey would be more likely to be supportive to the organization if they consider that its policy is legitimate. That means this study actually provide an evidence of the pre-existed argument as testing hypothesis, which the legitimacy of the organization would guarantee the persistence social support and could make the public reasonably understand organizational orders of requirements.
This paper could be significant as the conflict is analyzed in a perspective of the general public which could be influential on the further direction of the conflict. In addition, it could be a meaningful study because verifies the pre-existed argument about the distinction between institutional and actional legitimacy, and the relation between the conflict management strategy and communication. In practical sphere, the organization can clarify its substantial type of legitimacy regarding its character and main feature for improve its legitimacy. Indeed, this research would be helpful to prepare practically appropriate strategy based on the analysis of the conflict management strategy, its characteristics, strength and weakness on communication.