The Machiavellian politics of the modern MNC

Organizational Studies perspectives on intra-organizational conflict are plentiful but attention to psycho-cultural diversity issues has been weak and international business literature on MNC conflict offers little help when theorising intra-organizational MNC political conflict across geo-cultural fault lines. This theoretical paper contributes to both literatures by highlighting important psycho-cultural dimensions within such conflicts. We model precipitant affective and cognitive states and resulting conflict behaviours using two basic patterns likely to cluster on different sides of geo-cultural fault lines which commonly divide MNC political actors. Machiavelli has become an influential guide to intra-organizational power play. He theorised the conflict postures of two animal spirits (lions or foxes) as giving conflict behaviours their basic natures and transmissible meanings (force or fraud). Burgeoning conservatism-authoritarianism and narcissism-Machiavellianism-psychopathy literatures today highlight the complexity of each pattern. It also seems Machiavelli was right to view each pattern as fitting certain background social conditions that activate it from latency within human nature. Taking stock, we present Machiavelli’s animal spirits as modelling devices for the warts-and-all behavioural reality of MNC political conflict.