Toward the Study of Organizational Coalitions: Participant Concerns and Activities in a Simulated Organizational Setting

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Abstract
A qualitative laboratory research design is used to study coalition formation within the simulated context of a formal organization. The scenario used focuses on an issue shown to produce political activity: executive succession. A content analytic approach was used to analyze the ideas, perceptions, and actions of the participants as reported by themselves. Results indicate that the process of coalition formation involves a much wider range of concerns, objectives, and interconnected behaviors than suggested by previous research on coalition formation. These are presented and implications for future research and theory building are discussed.