*2.2. Bottom-Up Influences*

Multiparty collaboration involves the exploration of various stakeholders' interests and working with the differences among the parties to identify or create common ground (Cur¸seu and Schruijer 2017; Schruijer and Vansina 2008). Collaboration does not imply the dissolution of stakeholders' boundaries, in other words, parties do not have to become the same, rather, they preserve their identity and find ways to achieve their own interests while working towards a joint goal. As parties develop relationships with other parties, they need to explore within their stakeholder party how to relate to the other stakeholder parties, where their points of connection are and where they could collaborate. Exploring possible collaboration with other parties is likely to stir up tensions within stakeholder parties as identities are challenged in confrontation with 'the other' and fears of being exploited, overruled or losing one's identity may be triggered. These tensions may result in frictions and conflict within the stakeholder parties. Relationship conflict refers to interpersonal frictions and has detrimental influences on group dynamics and group effectiveness while task conflict stands for addressing the different points of view openly and directly with the aim of arriving at a better way to deal with the task at hand based on an assessment and possible integration of these diverse views (Jehn 1995; Jehn et al. 1999; Cur¸seu and Schruijer 2017).

Bottom-up influences are the forces that originate in the relational dynamics experienced within the stakeholder parties while engaging in a collaborative process and have an impact on the intergroup dynamics at the multiparty system level. Conflict is a pervasive and multifaceted phenomenon in small groups (Jehn 1995), it is contagious and tends to spread among individuals and groups. For example, it has been shown that system-level conflicts around water use are often driven by social and cultural conflicts within stakeholder parties (Montaña et al. 2009). We therefore argue that changes in the relational frictions experienced within stakeholder parties tend to influence the conflictuality in the whole multiparty system. Likewise, changes in task conflict within stakeholder parties may have an impact on the collaborativeness in the whole system as positive experiences in constructively dealing with differences within one's stakeholder party may encourage representatives to engage in task conflict with representatives of the other stakeholder parties.

An illustrative example is presented in Bernard et al. (2014) related to sustainable agriculture. If farmers engage in continuous adaptation and change in order to meet their own needs they will be more likely to fulfil the expectations of their customers, investors and regulators and reduce the complaints of their neighbours. If, however farmers stick to the "old ways" of farming and resist change (lack of task conflict within the interest party) it is likely that their collaborativeness will decrease and the whole system will be composed of "loss-making investors, dissatisfied customers, angry neighbours and overacting regulators" (Bernard et al. 2014, p. 157). We posit a positive interplay between task conflict experienced within the stakeholder parties and the perceived collaborativeness of all other stakeholder parties in the multiparty system as a whole.

To summarize, we expect that the entwinement of positive and negative interdependence transfers from the individual stakeholder parties to the whole multiparty system (bottom-up influence). We therefore formulate the following specific hypotheses:

**Hypothesis 1.** *Changes from expected to experienced within-party relationship conflict lead to changes in the same direction from expected to experienced conflictuality among the parties in the system (bottom up transfer of negative interdependence entwinement)*.

**Hypothesis 2.** *Changes from expected to experienced task conflict within parties lead to changes in the same direction from expected to experienced collaborativeness of all the other parties in the system (bottom up transfer of positive interdependence entwinement)*.
