A Study On The Relationship Between Intercultural Sensitivity And Conflict Management Styles

The purpose of the present study is to explore the potential relationships between intercultural sensitivity and conflict management styles. According to Chen and Storasta's theory on intercultural communication competence, intercultural sensitivity is composed of six elements: self-esteem, self-monitoring, open-mindedness, empathy, interaction involvement, and suspending judgment. Based on their model of intercultural communication competence, Chen and Starosta developed Intercultural Sensitivity Scale to test the level of intercultural sensitivity. After repeated testing, it is found that this scale is in possession with high reliability and validity. Therefore, this scale is used to test the intercultural sensitivity level of the subjects in the present research. Based on their dual concern model, Rahim and Bonoma clarified five conflict management styles, which is employed in the conceptual framework of this study. Rahim designed Organizational Conflict Inventory-II to examine people's preference for certain conflict management style or a mixture of conflict management styles.The research subjects in this study are people working in foreign trading companies. They are asked to finish the paper questionnaire, e-questionnaire or on-line questionnaire. Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses are used in the analysis of the data.Founded on the calculation and statistics analysis of 168 valid questionnaires, there are three major findings. First, people working in foreign trading companies tend to choose integrating, avoiding and compromising styles rather than obliging or dominating style to handle conflicts with people from other cultures. Second, people working in foreign trading companies have a medium-high level of intercultural sensitivity. Among the five dimensions of intercultural sensitivity, the subjects get the highest average score in respect for cultural differences, second highest in interaction engagement, and third in interaction attentiveness. The lowest two are interaction confidence and interaction enjoyment. Third, conflict management styles have associations with dimensions of intercultural sensitivity either positively or negatively. There is a significant positive relationship between integrating and intercultural sensitivity, whereas there are significant negative relationships between intercultural sensitivity and obliging or avoiding style. No significant associations are found between intercultural sensitivity and compromising or dominating style.The results have been interpreted from various aspects, such as business, culture and fierce international trade. The findings of this research will provide some guidelines for individuals, enterprises and intercultural training programs. Moreover, it is suggested to study the mediating role of gender, age, education level and position in the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and conflict management styles. It is also suggested to employ other assessment tools to study the relationship between intercultural sensitivity and conflict management styles in the future so as to test the generalizability or consistency of the findings of this research.