Abstract It is necessary to review the research about the cause of symbolic management. Following three levels of research as external force, organizational structure and cognitive aspect of decision maker, we dissected its logic relationship. By realizing that symbolic management is an approach for organizational decision maker to deal with perceived conflicts by applying symbolic resources, we bring in a twostage decision process framework which contains conflicts recognition stage and conflicts solving stage, to integrate different researches. Based on this framework，we have discussed some critical questions and shed lights on the future research direction.
2015, Vol. 12 
