How Culture Influences Conflict Management Styles

Abstract

This study investigated how people from three different cultures tend to manage conflict with their immediate supervisors. All three groups used problem solving the most followed by compromise. However, the participants from India were the most likely to use yielding. It ranked third for the Indians. Yielding also ranked third for the Westerners, primarily Americans, but they did not yield quite as much as the Indians. The third group, the Middle-Easterners, primarily Lebanese, used forcing more than the other two groups. Forcing ranked third for them. Exploratory analyses revealed an interaction between gender and country for the conflict management style of compromising. The Western men were less likely to compromise than any other group.