The Use of Conflict Management Styles Across Different Cultures Term Paper

The Use of Conflict Management Styles Across Different Cultures - Term Paper Example The paper has highlighted that individualistic cultures that have low power distance, high sense of individualism and achievement will encourage competing while collectivism cultures prefer to avoid conflicts in order to maintain relationships. Korea and Malaysian cultures will accommodate conflicts while Brazilian and Argentine cultures will compromise conflicts due to equal power distance. Multicultural societies like Britain can consider different views and collaborate in order to manage the conflict. Conflict is a contest or struggle between people with opposing views, ideas, values and goals and usually leads to adverse outcomes (Ting-Toomey, 2012). Conflict management refers to the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflicts through enhancing the positive aspects of conflict. Conflict management recognizes that conflicts are inevitable and cannot be resolved and thus should be managed to minimize the adverse effects of conflict escalation. The conflict management styles differ across cultures since the norms, belief systems and values influence the appropriateness of the style in conflict management. Avuruch (1998) outlines the five major conflict management styles that include competing, compromising, accommodating, avoiding and collaborating. Various research studies have identified cultural differences in conflict management styles since high context cultures are less assertive and confrontational while Western cultures that are low context are mainly confrontatio nal (Yu & Chen, 2008, p 153). Some studies concluded that Chinese executives display avoiding and compromising behaviors while dealing with conflicts unlike British executives who prefer competing and collaborating styles in managing conflicts in their organizations. Asian cultures such as Japan, India and China prefer non-confrontational strategies in dealing with conflicts due to the collectivism, close