The Analysis Of Conflict Management Styles By Chinese And Americans In Multinational Corporations In China

Through the process of globalization, managers often have to deal with people from othercountries with different cultural backgrounds. This cultural background includes not only thelanguage;it means a completely different way of feeling, thinking, behaving and as a resultalso conflict management.Over the past decades, researchers have paid substantial attention to conflict interaction invarious settings. This study focuses on the conflict management styles of Chinese andAmerican employees in the American multinational corporations in China from a crosscultural perspective. Understanding conflict interactions, as well as the way in which peoplefrom different cultures perceive conflict behavior, can enhance the working environment, notto mention benefit organizations in various ways.The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese and Americans' preferences for styles ofconflict management. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to obtain amore precise and complete picture of conflict phenomena in multicultural organizations.The study tests the cultural values of the Chinese and the Americans for another time. Thefindings reflected that the Chinese are becoming more individualistic, although they are morecollectivistic and masculine than the Americans. The Chinese also have a higher uncertaintyavoidance and larger power distance than the Americans.The results of the survey testing the conflict management styles showed that the Chinese aremore likely to adopt the avoiding, obliging, dominating and compromising styles to resolve aconflict, whereas the Americans are more likely to adopt the integrating style. In the end ofthe study, the author gives some practical suggestions to the people who work in anintercultural environment.