A Comparative Study Of The Differences In Conflict Management Process Between Chinese Employees And American Employees: From A Cross-cultural Perspective

With the ever-growing globalization, intercultural communication has become unprecedentedly important and frequent. Due to the different cultural backgrounds, misunderstandings and conflicts are likely to take place during communication process. Since intercultural conflicts are inevitable, how to manage them in a constructive way has become a growing concern in international companies. To achieve this, one need to understand how members of another culture behave during conflict interaction process and why they behave in such a manner.This paper investigates the differences in conflict management process between Chinese employees and American employees, emphasizing six aspects in conflict management process: attitudes toward conflict; conflict perception; conflict management strategy; conflict rhythm; face-concern in conflict management; conflict aftermath. The author firstly applies some relevant cultural dimensions to discuss the probable effects of cultural differences between China and America on the above six aspects and puts forward six hypotheses accordingly. Then, a research is conducted to collect data for both quantitative and qualitative analysis to test the hypotheses. Altogether, 132 samples were collected in the research, including 36 indigenous American employees, 56 Chinese employees working in State-owned Enterprises (SOEs), and 40 Chinese employees working in American Multinational Companies (MNCs) in China. It should be noted that the Chinese employees in State-owned Enterprises where little cross-cultural contact occurs serve as the primary group and the baseline for the comparison study. The Chinese employees working with MNCs only function as a supplement in order to find out the changes on conflict management caused by cross-cultural contact with Americans. As predicted, the author's hypotheses are justified to various extents, together with some new findings. For example, the Chinese employees are found to have the tendency of adopting dominating style in managing conflicts. Based on the results, the thesis comes to conclusions and puts forward practical suggestions to constructively manage the conflict in diverse cultural environments, particularly under Sino-American cultures.