Intercultural Conflict Management In Shanghai's Foreign Investment Enterprises

With more and more FIEs (Foreign Investment Enterprises) operating and growing in China, it is critical that the management teams understand how and why local employees behave in the intercultural conflicts with their superiors. Literature review indicates that studies on Chinese people's conflict management styles are mostly based on Western theories, which may not apply to Chinese culture. Hwang (1997) generated 12 conflict management styles of Chinese people but these styles have not been tested in an intercultural business context. Based on Hwang's theories, this research explores whether employees working in FIEs in Shanghai have different conflict management styles when they deal with conflicts with someone from their vertical ingroups -- Western superiors, compared with other employees working in local companies. Altogether eight conflict management styles were measured: collaborating, compromising, indirect communication, endurance, obeying publicly and defying privately, facework and severance.A questionnaire was sent out to office workers in Shanghai and totally 161 valid responses were used and three pairs of comparisons have been tested through a quantitative analysis by SPSS19.0. The result shows that collaborating is the most preferred option, reflecting an overall preference to a more proactive and time-saving solution in the workplace. Also, subjects are more likely to sacrifice interpersonal harmony in order to protect their personal interests when the conflicts are about personnel related matters compared with business/task related matters. There is no significant difference between subjects working in FIEs with Western superiors and subjects working in local companies with no experience working with Western superiors. By comparing the conflict management style with Western and Chinese superiors of subjects working in FIEs, the result shows a distinct difference in most conflict management styles tested. Subjects are more assertive and direct with their Western superiors than with Chinese supervisors. Another finding of this study is that male and female subjects do not have significant difference in most conflict management styles tested except for confrontation in business/task related conflicts.