Towards managing diversity : cultural aspects of conflict management in organizations

Abstract

This study investigates cultural aspects of conflict perception and behavior in organizations.<br />Culture was assessed through independent (IN) and interdependent (INTER) self-construals, conflict perception through task- and relationship-orientation, and conflict behavior through eight conflict management styles: dominating, integrating, compromising, avoiding, obliging, emotion, neglect and third party help. Furthermore, drawing upon the face-negotiation theory (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998) it was tested, whether self-face, other-face and mutual-face concerns would explain cultural differences in conflict behavior.<br /><br />185 professionals with diverse cultural backgrounds completed an Internet questionnaire.<br />An exploratory factor analysis of the eight styles revealed three factors, which seem to describe direct, indirect and integrating plus compromising conflict behaviors.<br />Contrary to this study s predictions, results did not reveal IN to be associated with task- and INTER with relationship-orientation. Furthermore, these perception tendencies were not visible either in the definition of integrating and compromising. In line with this study s hypotheses, IN was linked to direct styles, as well as to integrating and INTER with indirect styles in addition to integrating and compromising.<br />Furthermore, a concern for self-face maintenance was related to direct conflict behavior, a concern for other-face maintenance to indirect and a concern for mutual-face maintenance to integrating and compromising.<br />However, IN was not connected to self-face maintenance, whereas INTER was associated with other- and mutual-face concerns. It was then concluded that face concerns play a crucial role mainly in explaining the conflict behavior of persons with an interdependent self-construal. This was supported by the fact that other-face concern mediated their tendency for conflict avoidance.<br />These results are discussed and implications for further research and practice are presented.