Chapter 3: An Organizational Justice Perspective on Conflict in Multipartner Public-Private Strategic Alliances

This chapter reports on an exploratory case study of a multipartner publicprivate strategic alliance (MPPSA) in the Dutch public health sector. Although MPPSAs—cross-sector collaborations with more than two partners—have become increasingly popular instruments for dealing with complex societal issues, they also represent inherently unstable alliance arrangements. Due to their unique properties, MPPSAs constitute a breeding ground for injustice perceptions and conflict. Guided by organizational justice theory and the findings, we develop a tentative model of conflict in MPPSAs. The proposed model explicates that injustice perceptions by one partner positively influence the occurrence of interpartner conflict, which in turn may destabilize the alliance relationship. The model also accounts for different types ofjustice and conflict as well as contextual factors, thus providing a detailed insight in the justice-conflict-instability relationship.