Conflict Management and Cultural Influences
From birth everyone is formally and informally taught how to behave and what to expect from the environment and the people that surround him/her. Common behaviors and familiar surroundings allow automatic responses and a related state. People can "make sense " out of what's happening and anticipate the effects their behavior will have on others and therefore on themselves(Heider:P58). When struggles occur within a community, its culture allows people to draw a common meaning to interpret one another's behavior and predict the consequences of their own actions. However, process of conflict management becomes problematic among individuals with different cultural backgrounds, because people do not share a common understandings and meanings in conflict and also in management of conflict. Individuals can not depend on their shared values any more, because each culture has its own effective ways to handle struggles. Then, how participants in inter-cultural conflict situation can understand the values shared among other social groups? How do individuals across cultures view conflicts? How do people in different cultures handle conflicts and what outcomes do they particularly look for? In this paper, I will first explore so
Finally, an application of the third dimension, low- and high context culture, will explain the different communication styles that individuals use for dealing with conflicts. This dimension will also answer two questions: (1)how do individuals' response toward conflict differ across cultures? (2) how do individuals express themselves toward management of inter cultural conflict situations? According to Glenn, Witmeyers and Stevenson's study on cross cultural persuasive styles, the predominate conflict may become problematic, because they may strive for outcomes with different utilities. Kochnan(1981) suggests that one of the most significant part of conflict management is how participants view their responsibilities to the other people's sensibilities and feelings. It may be possible that conflict situations escalate, when participants fail to recognize the differences of their conflict goals among conflicting groups. Therefore, realizing conflicting points of view, conflicting goals and also the values that the participants share is very important process in management of conflict. Second, how do individuals' perspectives toward conflict differ between a low cultural demand/low cultural constraint system and a high cultural demand/ high cultural constraint system? "In the low cultural demand/low cultural constraint system, individual's opinions and differences are highly tolerated and treasured, and a certain degree of conflict is probably viewed as productive and functional"(Gudykunst and Ting ,1985:P74). In a low cultural demand/low cultural constraint system, such as the U.S. American culture, each individual is expected to have an opinion and speak up for oneself forcefully. This behavior is often considered appropriate in the low cultural demand/constraint system; thus, conflict participants with this cultural background may engage in a conflict in more direct and confrontational effective in their way of communication. When a person is being socialized in a society, one develops certain views toward conflicts and orientations toward management of conflict. Each individual's views and orientations are based on his/her society's value system and cultural beliefs. These cultural orientations are the significant factor, which shapes up how individuals view conflicts. One of the most important concerns for managing inter-cultural conflicts involves understanding of how a conflict situation is viewed by its participants. Without knowing how each person perceived conflicts, the conflict management may end up very ineffective and unproductive process, because participants lack abilities in working through their differences to achieve various goals in conflict situations. To better understand others' conflict management methods, we will now examine one's general attitude toward conflict by using the three dimensions that have been discussed previously in this paper. First of all, what does the dimension of individualism and collectivism tell us about cultures and individual's different pe
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Approximate Word count = 2044
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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