Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively

Stella Ting-Toomey, John G. Oetzel

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780803948433
• eBook ISBN: 9781506320267
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In this volume, Ting-Toomey and Oetzel accomplish two objectives: to explain the culture-based situational conflict model, including the relationship among conflict, ethnicity, and culture; and, second, integrate theory and practice in the discussion of interpersonal conflict in culture, ethnic, and gender contexts. While the book is theoretically directed, it is also a down-to-earth practical book that contains ample examples, conflict dialogues, and critical incidents. Managing Intercultural Conflict Effectively helps to illustrate the complexity of intercultural conflict interactions and readers will gain a broad yet integrative perspective in assessing intercultural conflict situations. The book is a multidisciplinary text that draws from the research work of a variety of disciplines such as cross-cultural psychology, social psychology, sociology, marital and family studies, international management, and communication.

1

INTERCULTURAL CONFLICT

An Introduction

When people from different cultures engage in conflict, they often have different expectations of how the conflict should be handled. The underlying values and norms of a culture often frame conflict expectations. How we define the conflict problem, how we “punctuate” the differing triggering event that leads to the conflict problem, and how we view the goals for satisfactory conflict resolution are all likely to vary across cultures, situations, and individuals.

Intercultural conflict often starts with different expectations concerning appropriate or inappropriate conflict behavior in a conflict scene. If the different cultural members continue to engage in inappropriate or ineffective conflict behaviors, the miscommunication can easily spiral into a complex, polarized conflict situation. In a polarized conflict, trust and respect are often threatened, and distorted perceptions and biased attributions are likely to emerge.

As we enter the 21st century, direct contact with culturally different people in our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces is an inescapable part of life. With immigrants and minority group members representing nearly 30% of the present workforce in the United States, an understanding of competent conflict management is especially critical in today’s society. Managing intercultural conflict competently means managing conflict appropriately, effectively, satisfactorily, and productively.

Although everyday intercultural conflicts are often based on cultural ignorance or misunderstanding, it is obvious that not all intercultural conflicts are based on miscommunication. Some intercultural conflicts are based on a deep-seated hatred and a centuries-old antagonism, often arising from long-standing historical grievances (e.g., as in Northern Ireland and the Middle East). However, a majority of everyday conflicts that we encounter in the workplace or interpersonal relationships can be traced to cultural misunderstanding or ignorance.

This chapter examines the reasons why we should understand intercultural conflict from a competence-based approach. This approach is developed in three sections. First, we offer several practical reasons why we should pay special attention to competent conflict management across cultures. Second, we emphasize the central role that culture plays in destructive versus constructive conflict. Third, we discuss the basic assumptions of intercultural conflict.

PRACTICAL REASONS

With rapid changes in the global economy, technology, transportation, and immigration policies, the world is becoming a small, intersecting community. We find ourselves in increased contact with people who are culturally different. In a global workforce, people bring with them different work habits and cultural practices. For example, cultural strangers may approach teamwork and problem-solving tasks differently. They may develop friendships and romantic relationships differently. They may also have different conflict needs, wants, and expectations.

The study of intercultural conflict is about the study of conflict that evolves, at least in part, because of cultural group membership differences. It is about acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills to manage such differences constructively and creatively. There are indeed many practical reasons for studying intercultural conflict management. We offer four reasons here: interpersonal relationship satisfaction, creative problem solving, the growth of the global workforce, and domestic workplace diversity.

Interpersonal Relationship Satisfaction

Conflict provides a testing ground for the resilience of our everyday relationships. According to researchers in interpersonal conflict (e.g., Cupach & Canary, 1997), it is not the frequency of conflict that determines whether we have a satisfying or dissatisfying relationship. Rather, it is the competencies that we apply in managing our conflicts that will move the relationship along a constructive or destructive path.

Conflict, when managed competently, can bring about positive changes in a relationship. It allows the conflict partners to use the conflict opportunity to reassess the state of the relationship. It opens doors for the individuals in conflict to discuss in depth their wants and needs in a relationship. It clarifies misunderstandings and strengthens common interests and goals. It also promotes individual and relationship growth.

On the other hand, incompetent conflict management affects physical and mental health. According to recent conflict research (Gottman, 1999; Siegman, 1994), negative conflict behaviors (e.g., verbal criticisms, defensiveness, anger explosion, or suppression) in marital relationships evoke hypertension and produce ulcers. Prolonged negative conflict spirals prompt poor physical and mental health. Dysfunctional conflict patterns in our intimate relationships also affect our everyday work performance.

Thus, competent conflict management is a life skill; it helps us to be in sync with others and ourselves. Competent conflict practice brings out vulnerable feelings and at the same time creates an opening for further dialogue and mutual responsiveness. Effective conflict negotiation serves as a buffer to psychological and emotional strain. It promotes an occasion for renewed connection and a quality relationship. In intercultural conflict negotiation, both cultural and interpersonal relationship factors often come into juxtaposition. Behavioral flexibility and adaptability are needed to resolve conflicts that occur, in part, because of cultural differences.

Creative Problem Solving

Competent intercultural conflict management enriches our creative problem-solving abilities. Whether we are involved in solving a multiethnic community problem, a school-based intergroup problem, or an international workplace problem, no single individual possesses the breadth and depth of knowledge to resolve an entangled conflict issue. Our ability to value different approaches to problem solving and mindfully move away from traditional either/or thinking can create and expand diverse options in managing a conflict dilemma.

According to creativity research (Sternberg, 1999; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995), we learn more from people who are different from us than from those who are similar to us. At the individual level, creativity involves a process of taking in new ideas and of being thrown into uncertainty. If the chaos or crisis is managed productively, members are often able to come up with a synergistic perspective that involves the best of all viewpoints. The word crisis in Chinese connotes danger and opportunity. Although a crisis creates a dangerous situation, it also develops an opportunity for reassessment and innovative planning.

At the small group research level, results indicate that although the quantity of ideas has remained the same in homogeneous and ethnically heterogeneous groups (e.g., in brainstorming solutions to a creative task), the quality of ideas has been evaluated differently. Ideas produced by ethnically diverse teams, for example, have been rated an average of 11% higher than those of homogeneous teams (McLeod, Lobel, & Cox, 1996). Furthermore, findings also indicate that highly innovative companies in the United States have taken “deliberate steps to create heterogeneous work teams with the objective of bringing different points of view to bear on problems” (Cox & Beale, 1997, p. 38). Culturally and ethnically diverse teams have the potential to solve problems creatively because of several factors. Some of these factors include a greater variety of viewpoints brought to bear on the issue, a higher level of critical analysis of alternatives, and a lower probability of group-think due to the heterogeneous composition of the group.

Multicultural teams often benefit from different cultural responses to questions such as “What is the context that frames the conflict?” “What is the nature of the problem?” “How can we address the problem from the local culture standpoint and from the global culture framework?” “What are the viable goals and strategies in resolving this conflict from multiple cultural perspectives?” Using divergent problem-solving approaches, often, collaborative multicultural teams, with sustained commitment, can develop synergistic approaches to resolve their problems.

A cultural synergistic approach is about managing the dialectic of change and stability in a system. The synergistic approach to problem solving involves three steps: cross-cultural description, cultural interpretation, and cultural creativity. Adler (1997) explains:

Global managers first define problems from the perspectives of all cultures involved. Second, they analyze the patterns that make each culture’s behavior logical from within its own perspective. Third, they create solutions that foster the organization’s effectiveness and productivity without violating the norms of any culture involved. (p. 118)

A cultural synergistic approach requires a fresh mind-set to build on commonalities and fuse differences resulting in more effective and more satisfactory outcomes. Through combined creativity and collaborative problem-solving processes, individuals expand their outlook and options in generating solutions to a conflict problem. Local product development teams, customer service groups, marketing and sales teams, human resource groups, nonprofit organizations, and global managers and employees can all benefit from using diversity as a creative resource in solving problems.

A cultural synergistic approach, however, takes time, patience, training, and commitment to implement and develop. It involves a systematic yet creative approach to deal with hidden cultural assumptions, values, and expectations. It demands a systematic discovery of comparative perceptions and comparative intentions that underlie the problematic conflict issue (Clarke & Lipp, 1998). It is also one of many approaches that deals with diverse culture–based conflict situations. By learning about the recent advances in intercultural conflict management research, individuals can incorporate new scripts and synergistic thinking in dealing with culturally dissimilar others. Knowledge, together with competent practice on a daily basis, can help individuals in diverse groups and relationships to become constructive conflict bridge-builders across cultures.

Global Workplace

Workplace diversity on the global level represents both opportunities and challenges to individuals and organizations. Individuals in the forefront of workplace diversity must rise to the challenge of serving as global leaders to manage diversity with skill and cultural sensitivity. According to a recent Training and Development trend report (Training and Development, 1999), three competencies critical in the global workplace are communication skills, problem solving, and global leadership.

Factors that contribute to the diversity of the workforce on the global level include but are not limited to the development of communication technology (e.g., fax, e-mail, the Internet), regional trading blocs (e.g., the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]), and immigrant worker and guest worker policies (e.g., Turkish migrant workers in Germany). A recent Office Team survey of 1,400 chief information officers indicates that 77% of respondents think that increased use of technology will require workers to communicate more effectively and articulately on the global level (Training and Development, 1999). In this era of global economy, it is inevitable that employees and customers from dissimilar cultures are in constant contact with one another, whether it is through face-to-face or mediated contacts. Thus, intercultural communication skills remain vitally important to success in the global work environment.

In addition, a recent Workforce 2020 trend report shows that four of every five new jobs in the United States are generated as a direct result of international business. Furthermore, 33% of U.S. corporate profits are derived via import-export trade (Judy & D’Amico, 1997). Even if we do not venture out of our national borders, global economy and, hence, global contact become crucial parts of our everyday work lives. Beyond global business, increased numbers of individuals are working in overseas assignments, such as government service, humanitarian service, and international education. At home and abroad, acquiring the competencies of intercultural conflict management is a necessary first step in becoming a global citizen of the 21st century.

After surveying 75 CEOs in 28 countries in a landmark 4-year study, Rosen et al. (Rosen, Digh, Singer, & Phillips, 2000) summarize that the following four global literacies are critical in the making of an effective global leader: (a) personal literacy: understanding and valuing yourself; (b) social literacy: engaging and challenging others; (c) business literacy: focusing and mobilizing your organization; and (d) cultural literacy: valuing and leveraging cultural difference. Accurate, culture-based conflict knowledge, mindfulness, and constructive conflict management skills (see Chapter 6) are three key dimensions that we believe enhance the profile of a global-minded conflict manager. Global literacies and domestic diversity literacies are increasingly affecting one another in the workplace environment.

Domestic Workplace Diversity

The study of intercultural conflict management in the United States is especially critical for several reasons. First, immigrants (many are non-native English speakers) and minority group members will account for a third of the new entrants into the U.S. workforce in the 21st century. Second, and more specifically, by 2006, African, Asian, and Latin Americans will together compose more than 30% of the general U.S. workforce. Third, skilled and highly educated immigrants (especially in the areas of computer and engineering service industries) play a critical role in U.S. advanced-technology industries.

The payrolls of leading information technology (IT) companies such as Intel and Microsoft include “many highly skilled, foreign-born employees. In their absence it would be difficult for America to regain its global lead in IT” (Judy & D’Amico, 1997, p. 21). Many U.S. immigrants have contributed positively (historically and presently) to the social and economic development of the nation. The richness of cultural diversity in U.S. society has led to many dramatic innovative breakthroughs in the fields of physics, medicine, and technology.

Inattention to diversity issues in the workplace can lead to the following costs: (a) low morale because of culture clash, (b) high absenteeism because of psychological stress, (c) substantial dollars that must be spent to retrain individuals because of high employee turnover, (d) much time wasted because of miscommunication between diverse employees, and (e) the enormous amount of personal energy expended in defensive resistance to inevitable change (Loden & Rosener, 1991). The long-term advantages of managing diversity effectively at the organizational level are (a) full use of the organization’s human capital, (b) increased knowledge and enhanced mutual respect among diverse employees, (c) increased commitment among diverse employees at all organizational levels and across all functions, (d) greater innovation and flexibility as others participate more constructively in problem-solving teams, and (e) improved productivity as more employee effort is directed at achieving the system’s goals and less energy is expended in dealing with cultural miscommunication issues (Loden, 1996; Loden & Rosener, 1991).

At the dawning of the 21st century, it is inevitable that we will encounter people from diverse cultures and ethnicities in our own backyards. Learning to understand such cultural differences and dealing with these differences proactively will serve as a major step toward building a more harmonious multicultural society. We have reviewed four practical reasons why the study of intercultural conflict management is an important topic. We now turn to a discussion of the critical role of culture in the conflict negotiation process.

CULTURE: A LEARNED MEANING SYSTEM

What is culture? Culture is a learned system of meanings that fosters a particular sense of shared identity and community among its group members. Members of a culture learn the meanings of right and wrong that produce particular consequences in a community. They learn the meanings or interpretations of what constitute proper and improper conflict behaviors by adhering to or deviating from such behaviors in a particular community. In sum, culture is defined in this book as “a learned meaning system that consists of patterns of traditions, beliefs, values, norms, and symbols that are passed on from one generation to the next and are shared to varying degrees by interacting members of a community” (Ting-Toomey, 1999, p. 10). We explore some of the key elements of culture-traditions, beliefs, values, norms, symbols, and meanings—in the following sections.

Culture: Traditions, Beliefs, and Values

Culture is like an iceberg: the deeper layers (e.g., traditions, beliefs, and values) are hidden from our view; usually, we see and hear only the uppermost layers of cultural artifacts (e.g., fashion, trends, popular music) and of verbal and nonverbal symbols. Based on observed surface-level similarities, we may hear travelers in foreign countries comment, “People in all these cultures are basically the same: They eat like us, they dress like us, they must think like us.” This ethnocentric observation, unfortunately, is profoundly misleading because “underneath,” people are not the same. The underlying set of beliefs and values that we learn within a culture and the meanings that we attach to them create fascinating cross-cultural variations.

Culturally shared traditions can include myths, legends, ceremonies, and rituals (e.g., celebrating Kwanzaa, Ramadan, or Thanksgiving) passed on from one generation to the next via an oral or written medium. Culturally shared beliefs refer to a set of fundamental assumptions that people hold dearly without question. These beliefs can revolve around questions as to the origins of human beings, the concept of time, space, r...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• 1. Intercultural Conflict: An Introduction
• 2. Intercultural Conflict: A Culture-Based Situational Model
• 3. Intercultural-Intimate Conflict in Personal Relationships
• 4. Intercultural Conflict in Diverse Work Groups
• 5. Intercultural Conflict Between Managers and Employees in Organizations
• 6. Managing Intercultural Conflict Competently
• Appendix: Measures of Face Concerns and Facework Behaviors in Four National Cultures
• References
• Index
• About the Authors