Conflict Management Style: Accounting for Cross-National Differences

6. Multidisciplinary perspectives on intercultural conflict: the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of conflict, culture and communication

“…This data thus indicates that far from being a negative strategy that shows lack of concern both for self and for other (see Figure 1 above), promoting conflict avoidance can be a very effective and positive management strategy. This applied linguistic research thus supports other work in organizational behaviour and cross-cultural psychology (e.g., De Dreu 1997;Gire and Carmet 1992;Leung et al 1990;Markus and Kitayama 1991;Morris et al 1998;Ohbuchi and Takahashi 1994) that maintains that conflict avoidance in fact can be motivated by a concern (rather than lack of concern) for others.…”

“…In fact, other researchers have found that avoiding is motivated by a concern for the relationship with the people involved (e.g., De Dreu 1997;Leung et al 1992;Markus and Kitayama 1991;Morris et al 1998). Friedman, Chi and Liu (2006) proposed that far from reflecting lack of concern, an avoiding style could result from concern for others.…”

“…Could culture, therefore, influence this hierarchy, with some orientations being more prevalent in certain societies than in others? Many cross-cultural studies have explored this question, and a widespread finding (e.g., Bond and Hwang 1986;Morris et al 1998;Ohbuchi and Takahashi 1994;Trubinsky et al 1991) is that a neglect style (that is also labeled avoidance) is more common among East Asians than among Americans. Yet, van Meurs (2003) found there were also differences between British and Dutch managers in this respect.…”

“…Morris et al (1998) analyzed the extent to which Schwartz"s cultural values could predict two of the grid framework conflict handling styles: avoidance and competition. In a study of Chinese and US managers in joint venture firms, they predicted that the Chinese managers would have a greater preference for avoidance than the US managers, and that the US managers would have a greater preference for competition than the Chinese managers.…”

Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…While does not expect opposing values to be negatively correlated, if an individual holds opposing values at the same time, conflicting motivations may increase internal conflict during the decision-making process . Researchers have empirically verified that the theoretical structure of Schwartz's value types is reliable and can be generalized to various samples (Morris et al 1998). Due to this integrated value structure, researchers can explore how related value sets impact the desirability of the financial and non-financial returns, as well as switching costs, associated with persisting with entrepreneurship (Feather 1995).…”