Inter-organizational conflict in the construction industry: a systematic review integrating multiple perspectives and future research directions

Inter-organizational conflict (IOC) is the topic attracting both practitioners and academics. Although existing bibliometric and narrative reviews have revealed the overall evolving trends of this area, a nuanced, deep, and comprehensive understanding of IOC from the past two decades is still lacking. Against this background, a systematic literature review covering 82 peer-reviewed journal articles (2000–2024) was conducted. Searches targeted leading construction management and conflict management outlets, followed by snowball sampling. Each study was coded for conflict definition, theoretical lens, methodology, and principal findings. It is revealed that four common perspectives have been adopted to explore IOC, including the perceptual, behavioral, event, and dynamic process. Limitations of studies adopting these perspectives are noted, respectively, and future research directions potentially remedying these current drawbacks are proposed, including furthering process mechanisms, clarifying conflict boundaries, and broadening analytical approaches. This review contributes to the current literature by integrating disparate streams into a coherent framework that links specific limitations of extant studies to actionable, method-informed research paths.