Interpersonal Conflicts Between Different Cultural Individuals At Multicultural Workplace

Managing cultural diversity is one of the biggest challenges in multicultural workplaces.The purpose of current study is to explore the contributing factors and differences of out-group interpersonal conflict situations raised in multicultural workplaces between Chinese(collectivist culture)and Foreigners(individualist culture)to find out whether out-group interpersonal conflicts accrue due to the differences in conflict perceptions,conflict management styles,the ways of different cultures express manners,the way people see face during conflict situations Data were collected from 360 employees working in multicultural workplaces in China.Several major findings emerged from the four studies conducted in this paper.In study one,conflict scenarios were collected from 60 participants(30 Chinese(M=24.60,SD=1.85)and 30 Foreigners(M=26,-SD=3.2))and 100 participants(50 Chinese(M=27.18,-SD=3.14)and 50 Foreigners(M=27.54,SD=3.76))took part in conflict evaluation.Our results showed significant cultural differences in perceiving,interpreting and approaching out-group interpersonal conflicts at multicultural workplaces.Specifically,the same situation that was considered as interpersonal conflict for individuals from Individualistic culture was not perceived as conflict for individuals from collectivist cultures at multicultural workplace.Study two adjusted Oetzel(2003)5 conflict styles measurement instrument to multicultural workplace settings to reveal how out-group conflicts are managed at workplace(100 Chinese(M=31.91,SD=6.51)and 100 foreigners(M=31.11,SD=7.19),participants were the same for study three and study four).MANOVA(Multivariate test)analyses showed that during out-group conflict situations Chinese prefer integrating,compromising,obliging,avoiding and Foreigners dominating conflicts styles,moreover integrating is the most preferred conflict style both for Chinese and Foreigners at workplace.Notably,when the working experience(multicultural experience)increases,Chinese use less avoiding strategy and foreigner less dominating and more obliging styles while experiencing conflict with each other.In study three,2 types of conflict scenarios related to direct and indirect manners were used to explore how Chinese and foreigners deal with conflicts at multicultural workplace settings.We found that direct manners expressed by Foreigners and indirect manners expressed by Chinese can generate or cause interpersonal conflicts at workplace.Finally,in last study the original version of Oetzel and Ting-Toomey(2003)method has been modified to investigate the different effects of face concerns in individuals from different culture when dealing with out-group conflicts.The results demonstrated that in general,during out-group conflict Chinese employees still prefer interdependent self-construal,care about other-face more and use avoiding and integrating facework and Foreign employees still prefer independent self-construal,care about self-face more and use dominating facework.Whereas,with the raise of working experience Chinese start to care less about other-face and more about self-face and Foreigners start to care less about self-face and more about other face.This study provides first findings on out-group interpersonal conflicts differences between individuals from collectivist(Chinese)and Individualist(foreigners)cultures working in multicultural workplaces in China.Our theory provides new insights that out-group affects conflict interpretation and management in multicultural workplace,cultural manners potentially generate interpersonal conflicts between out-group colleagues,and face concerns are seen differently while experiencing conflict with coworkers from different cultural backgrounds.Moreover multicultural working experience plays an immense role during out-group interpersonal conflict situations.This study wishes to contribute to enhance cultural awareness of understanding differences during interpersonal conflicts,in order to foster better cooperation among cultures and multicultural workplaces.Meanwhile,this paper extends and enriches existing cross-cultural studies and carries theoretical implications for managing workplace diversity.