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Introduction
Achieving the appropriate resolution of employee-manager conflicts is a critical element of maintaining productive relationships between labor and management (Tjosvold et al. , 1999). Scholars in the industrial relations field emphasize the value of solutions that benefit both labor and management with regard to such conflicts as wage rates, supervisory styles, and work conditions (Walton et al. , 1994; Kochan and Osterman, 1994). Although considerable organizational research argues that the behavioral strategies individuals take (such as smoothness, avoidance, compromise, force, or collaborate) decide whether a conflict is constructive or destructive (e.g. Munduate et al. , 1999), industrial relations research has found that social psychological theories such as the theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1973, 1994) might enhance our understanding of conflict management by explaining how the relationship between individuals influences their interactions, that is, the behavioral strategies they take, and then determining the probability of mutually beneficial solutions (Tjosvold et al. , 1999). Although scholars have called for more studies integrating organizational behavior research into other fields, such as conflict and industrial relations issues related to work conditions (Bemmels and Foley, 1996), discussions of manager-employee cross-cultural conflict management research largely ignore the theory of cooperation and competition. The present study aims to fill this research gap by emphasizing the role organizational values play in explaining the underlying mechanisms that result in cooperative conflict management between managers and employees. Specifically, we argue that organizational cultural values can very much affect conflict management (Tjosvold et al. , 2005).
As the number of business transactions across national borders increases, management research has examined culture as a contextual variable (Adair et al. , 2004). The growing workforce diversity in the global marketplace presents a complex challenge to manage conflicts among individuals with different cultural values. The literature suggests that culture affects motivation (Lalwani, 2009; Oyserman and Lee, 2008). In the global marketplace, employees' workplace attitudes and behaviors are influenced by culture (Parboteeah and Cullen, 2003). Researchers in the conflict management field consider cross-cultural conflict to be challenging to manage, as people from different cultures usually follow different norms when interacting with each other (Ma, 2010). According to Beersma and De Dreu (1999), a group decision-making process often involves communications among all the members of the group...