Conflict Management Style: Accounting for Cross-National Differences Michael Mr. Morris, Katherine Y.Williams, Kwok Leung, Richard Larrick, M.Teresa Mendoza, Deepti Bhatnagar, JianfengLi, Mari Kondo, Jin-Lian Luo, Jun-Chen Hu A problem in joint ventures be- flict style and the cultural values tween U.S. and Asian firms is that that account for these differences: cultural differences impede the Chinese managers rely more on an smooth resolution of conflicts avoiding style because of their between managers. In a survey of relatively high value on conformity youngmanagers in the U.S., and tradition. U.S. managers rely China, Philippines, and India we more on Q competing style because find support for two hypotheses of their relatively high value on about cultural differences in con- individual achievement. recurring theme in studies of inter- exchange of signals.Since cultures A national business is the idea that have different signalling languages, problematic misunderstandings arise as negotiators faced with a counterpart a result of cultural differences in styles from another culture can easily misread of negotiating and handling conflict a signal or transmit an unintended mes- (Adler? 1986; Adler & Graham, 1989; sage. The literature suggests that U.S. Hofstede, 1991; Maddox, 1993). Nego- negotiators struggle with such crossed tiation can be thought of as a mutual signals not only with counterparts from Michael W. Morris is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and research affiliateof the Institute for Social and Personality Research at U.C. Berkeley. Katherine Y.Williams is an advanced graduate student in Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Kwok Leung is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Richard Larrick is an Associate Professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. M. Teresa Mendoza is a faculty assistant at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Deepti Bhatnagar is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Indian Instituteof Management, Ahmedabad, India. JianfengLi is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at The People’s University of China’s College of Business Administration. Mari Kondo is an Associate Professor of Asian Institute of Management in Manila. Jin-Lian Luo is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics & Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Jun-Chen Hu is an Associate Professor in the School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. The authors acknowledge helpful comments from Michael Bond, Roderick Kramer, Joanne Martin, and Margaret Neale as well as insights from research colloquia at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and atIPSR at UC Berkeley. JOURNAL OF IA’TERMATIOMAL k?LJSlhrESS STUDIES, 29, 4 (FOURTH QIJARTER 1998):729-748. 729 CULTUREAND CONFLICXSTYLE completely unfamiliar c;ultures, such as several times, but, like so many indigenous tribal groups, but also with Americans I’ve known, he’s not inter- counterparts from cdtures with which ested in listening when he thinks he’s they have a surface familiarity, such as right. He wantsthis thing done yes- Japan (Graham & Sano, 1984). China terday. He haspracticall?. screamed (Pye,1982) and India (Gopalan & this at me at our last few meetings- Rivera, 1997). As Pye (1982, pp. 20-23) once in front of a few of my employ- explained: ees” (Roongrerngsuke and Chansu- “Unquestionably the largest and pos- thus, in press). sibly the most intractable category of The many examples of joint ventures problems in Sino-American business that have run aground on cultural dif- negotiations can be traced to the cul- ferences have been an impetus for tural differences between the two research on cultural differences in societies. Conscious efforts to take styles of handling conflic: with co- into account the other party’s cultural workers. Kesearchers have shifted from practices can eliminate gross misun- the method of inductively gcneralizing derstandings, but cultural factors con- from qualitative interviews (Pye, 1982) tinue to surface and cause problems to the method of testing hypotheses in more subtle and indirect ways.” with carefully matched samples of man- Although cultural differences present agersand quantitative measures a challenge in a one-time formal negoti- (Graham,1985). Many studies have ation, the problem of cultural differ- investigated so-called “East-West differ- ences is even more endemic in joint ences” by comparing U.S. managers to a ventureswhere managers need to matched group in an Asian society. resolve everyday conflicts with co- Two patterns of findings have been workers from other cultures (Baird, observed repeatedly, aibeit the precise Lyles, Ji, Wharton, 1990; Miller, Glen, cultural boundaries on these differences Jaspersen,Karmokolias, 1997). In the arenot well understood. First, com- literature on joint ventures between pared to U.S. managers, Asian managers U.S. and Asian firms, two types of mis- rely on a style of avoiding explicit dis- understanding in conflicts are frequent- cussion of theconflict. Second, com- ly identified. In one type of misunder- pared to Asians, U.S. managers are more standing, U.S. managers make the error inclined toward a style of assertively of reading silence from their Asian comDeting with the other person to see counterpart as an indication of consent. who can convince the other of their pre- U.S. managers may fail to pick up on ferredresolution of thoconflict. the indirectly expressed objections of Although many researchers have specu- Asian colleagues (see Graham and Sano, lated that these behavioral differences 1984). A differenttype of misunder- reflect underlying differenccs in cultur- standing occurs when Asian managers alvalues (Bond & Hwang,1986; make the error of reading an U.S. col- Kirkbride, Tang, & Westwood, 19911, league’s direct adversarial arguments as this has not been rigorously investigat- indicating unreasonableness and lack of ed. We review the cross-cultural litera- respect. Consider the reaction of a Thai ture on conflict style and values to manager to his assertive U.S. colleague: derive mora precisepredictions. Then “I’ve tried to explain all this to Max we compare the conflict management MICHAELW. MORRIS styles and values of young managers in cal assessments of the five-fold taxono- the U.S. and three Asian societies to test my as a model of the overall structure of predictions about the values underlying conflict behavior is mixed (Jehn & cultural differences in conflict style. Weldon, 1997; Rahim, 1983; Womack, 1988).Nevertheless, the Thomas and MODELSOF CONFLICT MANAGEMENT Kilmann scales for tapping particular STYLE conflict styles, such as avoiding and Researchers in social psychology and competing, compare favorably to other organizational behavior have proposed methods in terms of validity and relia- models that reduce the myriad tacticsof bility (Brown, Yelsma, 8r Keller, 1981; negotiators and managers to several Killman & Thomas, 19771. basic styles. Early models of strategy in On theoretical grounds, Pruitt and conflict (Deutsch, 1973) followed the Rubin (1986) have argued that model- I intuitive notion that styles can be ling conflict style in termsof five dispo- arrayed on a single dimension ranging sitionsis redundant. The important from selfishness (concern about own insight is that low concern for the oppo- outcomes) to cooperativeness (concern nent occurs with two quite different about the other party’s outcomes). styles: Passively avoidinsr discussion of However, a limitation of single-dimen- conflict as opposed to actively collabo- sion models is that they fail to encom- rating, and comDetine; as opposed to pass styles that involve high concern for accommodating,Theso two styles, both self and other and likewise, styles then, seem particularly likely to under- that involve a high concern for neither lie friction in a working relationship, self nor other (e.g., Thomas & Killman, and this may explain why these styles 1974; Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). have been the focus in cross-cultural Subsequent theorists have drawn on conflictmanagement. To understand Blake, Shepard and Mouton’s (1964) the roots of cultural differences in taxonomy of managerial styles to model avoiding and competing in conflicts, conflict styles within a framework of however, we need measures of underly- two orthogonal motivational dimen- ing values. sions, a self-oriented and an other-ori- ented concern (see Thomas & Killman, MODELSOF VALUES 1974; Pruitt & Rubin, 19861. Within this Researchers have taken several ap- framework,Thomas and Kilmann proaches to conceptualizing and measur- (1974) developed an instrument for ingvalues, Most research focuses on measuring an individual’s dispositions individual differences within cultures towardfive discrete styles. We will rather than cross-cultural differences; focus on two of these, on avoiding (low nevertheless, researchers assume that self-concern and low other-concern) one’s values represent cultural demands and comDeting (high self-concern and as well as idiosyncratic goals (Rokeach, lowother-concern). The remaining 1973). Members of the same culture are styles are, respectively, the polar oppo- likely to share a set of values acquired in sites of avoiding (collaborating) and of the process of socialization - values that competing (accommodating) and a represent the acceptable modes of con-