Practitioners, scholars and institutional actors focus on the predatory aspects of business in fragile environments (“business and conflict”), as well as on the need for private-sector engagement for jobs and security (“business and peace”). They have over the last decade collectively generated an enormous body of normative advice for companies...Drawing on over 50 interviews with company representatives and their advisors, this paper attempts to make sense of the experience of managers struggling to put that advice into action. It concludes that increased attention to the individual skills, organisational capabilities and inter-organisational mechanisms that enable companies to act more constructively in conflict environments provides a complementary lever for conflict prevention. [refers to Talisman Energy, Tesco, Rio Tinto, AngloGold Ashanti]