Chinese Employees' Approach To Resolving Interpersonal Workplace Conflict In Relation To Work Status In American Invested Companies In China

With further development of economic globalization and integration, intercultural communication has become unprecedentedly important and frequent. Due to different cultural backgrounds, misunderstandings and conflicts are likely to take place during the communication process.With regard to Chinese and Americans' conflict managing characteristics;it is commonly believed that the Chinese people prefer indirect, more contextual communication strategies while the American people tend to use direct and explicit communication strategies in the general perspective. However, Chinese employees who work in diverse teams in American invested companies in China (AIC) are a typical group of people who are under the influence of both traditional Chinese culture and the American culture. Their way of approaching conflict may be quite different from that of the Chinese employees who work in state-owned enterprises (SOE). What is more, it is proposed that, in a multinational workplace, cultural orientation alone may not predict choice of strategy, in that situational constraints may also contribute.This study examines the effect of the situational factor of work status of the other on AIC Chinese employees in work conflict interactions. The subjects of the research are three groups of people, AIC Chinese employees (primary subject), SOE Chinese employees and indigenous American employees (baseline subjects for comparative study). A sample of 85 employees (25 SOE Chinese, 20 Americans, and 40 AIC Chinese) responded to the questionnaire survey. The author's hypotheses got generally supported. Work status of the other was found to moderate conflict choices based on cultural predictions. AIC Chinese employees prefer to adopt direct approaches to both peers and supervisors, but this preference is a little weaker than that of the Americans. The research also revealed some new findings, explanations of which were found from several informal interviews following up the questionnaire survey.