As we head into the new millennium, we are witnessing a growing and heightened interest among organizational scholars on the topics of conflict and negotiation. New research questions are being identified, while new theory is being applied to "old" questions. The result is exciting research that has organizational and social relevance. The papers in this volume, which grew out of the eighth biannual Conference on Negotiation in Organizations, are representative of the provocative and "cutting edge" theory and research emerging in the area of conflict and negotiation.

This fifth volume in the series discusses such topics as the effects of relationships and context among relative equals, paranoia and distrust in organizations, and perspective competition in a collaborative context.

As we head into the new millennium, we are witnessing a growing and heightened interest among organizational scholars on the topics of conflict and negotiation. New research questions are being identified, while new theory is being applied to "old" questions. The result is exciting research that has organizational and social relevance. The papers in this volume, which grew out of the eighth biannual Conference on Negotiation in Organizations, are representative of the provocative and "cutting edge" theory and research emerging in the area of conflict and negotiation.

This volume of Research on Negotiation in Organizations focuses on three new and emerging areas in the domain of negotiation and conflict within organizations. In the first section, the problem of "deviance" within organizations is approached from a conflict and justice perspective. Earlier research attention to these issues tended to treat deviance largely as a problem created by selected individuals who did not adapt to the organization, rather than as a systemic problem created by certain organizational conditions. By seeing deviant behavior in organizations as a possible response to unfair treatment, and by employing conflict management concepts to explain how individuals respond to organizational constraints and pressures, the papers in this section extend the work on conflict and justice to a new, rich, and largely unexplored domain.

The second section of this volume addresses an increasingly important challenge in our world - the effective management of environmental conflict; the authors demonstrate factors contributing to the intractability of environmental disputes, and the importance of perceptions of fairness in attaining conflict resolution.

The third and final section offers diverse but important papers in the application of conflict and negotiation to the international environment, including an examination of conflict in a Chinese cultural context, and commentary on the role of power differences in conflict management and negotiation.