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In this essay I discuss cultural causes of conflict in the workplace and call for research to address what happens when cultures collide generating workplace conflict. I begin by defining workplace conflict and introducing three elements of workplace conflict management that may be heavily influenced by culture and that are the focus of this essay. These are direct vs indirect confrontation, feelings and expression of negative emotions, and third party conflict intervention. After introducing these conflict concepts, I define culture and explain the logic underlying the distinctions among dignity, face, and honor cultures - the cultural perspective used in this essay. I then use theory and empirical research to propose how these three elements of workplace conflict and conflict management are likely to manifest in dignity, face, and honor cultures. Finally, I propose what is likely to happen when cultures collide and call for research on those collisions.
Socialization from childhood prepares people to express and respond to conflict in ways that reflect the prevailing cultural ideologies and practices of groups (cultures) from which they derive a sense of social identity. Although much of the cross-cultural and international management literature distinguishes cultures by national boundaries, in this essay I distinguish cultures by groups' shared ideologies around the definition of self-worth and norms for social interaction associated with self-worth defined by the dignity, face, and honor cultural framework (Leung and Cohen, 2011). A multicultural workplace that mixes people from these different cultural backgrounds, regardless of whether face-to-face or virtual, may experience significant conflict deriving from these cultural differences. Of course, a multicultural workplace also may experience workplace conflict for reasons that are not the subject of this essay.
Workplace conflict may be defined as incompatible activities - actions of one person that interfere, obstruct, or in some way get in the way of the actions of another person (Tjosvold et al. , 2014, p. 547; Deutsch, 1973; Roloff, 1987). Workplace conflict is usually described by type of conflict: task conflict, also called conflict of interests; procedural conflict, or conflict over how to do a task; relationship conflict, or interpersonal conflict; and status conflict, or conflict over social dominance. However, I am going to ignore these differences in types of conflict, because cultural differences in workplace...