"Do as I say, not as I do": the emergence of a peacebuilding organization and its struggle with conflicts

Résumé En

The development of social capabilities to prevent conflicts is more than ever needed. In line with such interest, emerging initiatives for peacebuilding have multiplied in the latest years. However, organizational emergence in relation to peacebuilding remains an overlooked topic in management. Both professionals and scholars lack feedback regarding the chances of survival of this type of initiative, as well as how to support it. This research in progress relies on a "reflection-in-action" longitudinal design and employs collaborative autoethnography practices to understand the dynamics inherent to organizational emergence in relation to peace building. Our analysis reveals the conflictual nature of the emergence of an organization devoted to the conception and production of a game aiming at promoting peaceful resolution of conflicts. More specifically, it identifies three major vectors of peacebuilding organizational emergence, namely 'affective ties', 'pragmatic bounds' and existential meaning'. Each of these vectors has been playing a significant role into the development of the properties of the peacebuilding organization, but also generated important conflicts between the organization and its environment. We discuss how this inherent paradox should be taken into account in peacebuilding policy as well as the benefit from a "reflection-in-action" approach to peacebuilding.