Relationship Between Power Distance And Conflict Management Styles: A Contrastive Cross-cultural Study Between The Chinese And The American Culture

This study on conflict management styles in US-Chinese cross-cultural environment was designed to improve our understanding of the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict resolution styles through a probability survey of 90 subjects in three groups, including Chinese working in Sino-American or solely American companies, Americans working in merely local American environment and Chinese working in local Chinese companies or state-owned enterprises.Built upon the theory of Hofstede's renowned cultural dimension of power distance as well as Rahim's conflict management model of five conflict resolution styles, the current study explores and compares the patterns in the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict resolution styles across culturally different groups.Previous researches have been thoroughly reviewed and carefully drawn upon, on the basis of which three hypotheses were developed to go in line with the research questions: How does power distance tendency of one culture influence its preference for certain conflict resolution tactics by the Chinese and the Americans, and What conflict management styles are preferred by members from different culture groups: the Chinese and the Americans.The study was carried out through the administration and analysis of two questionnaires to the 90 subjects. One-way ANOVA with repeated measures on five conflict resolution styles was the statistic method employed.Results showed that beyond initial expectation, power distance orientation does not work as an efficient predictor on choosing different conflict styles. That is, the three groups did not present significant difference in their power distance tendency. The encouraging results proved the expectation that the Chinese and theAmericans present different preference for conflict styles. For example, the Americans prefer integrating style most while the Chinese working in local companies or state-owned enterprises resort to avoiding more often than the other two groups. Besides, Chinese working in Sino-American or solely American companies did manifest similar preference for conflict styles with the Americans, as previously presumed. These results went in line with previous studies; however, on the other hand, others really deviated from their expected styles in handling conflicts. It was found that the American subjects were reported to resort to dominating style the least across the three groups while the Chinese working in local companies seemed to utilize dominating more often than the other two groups.The findings suggested the phenomenon of "culture regression" to account for the results obtained. They also highlighted the importance of taking into account other national and non-national factors such as communicating styles, self-construal, organizational cultures and organizational positions of the subjects.The current study will provide guidance to those who explore cross-cultural communication issues as well as to those who are interested in international HR management and training.