Cross cultural conflict management

Abstract

As the pace of globalization continues to develop rapidly, managers in businesses have increasingly found themselves operating in offices and organizations in cross-cultural settings, with employees of diverse cultural backgrounds. This applies as much to domestic organizations as it does to transnational corporations. The focus of this thesis is an analysis of the cross-cultural business management literature to understand how culture is understood in this work, what the key problems in the business world are argued to be linked to culture, and how these issues can be resolved. The argument in this thesis is that the culture concept that is used is rather simple in this body of work, and often from the perspective of the global north. While this work is intended primarily as a tool for managers dealing with culturally based conflicts, the field could benefit from looking at how culture is understood in the critical social sciences. The thesis opens with a close look at the culture concept in this literature, with special attention to the work of Geert Hofstede, arguably one of the leading researchers in this field, as well as the criticisms that have been made of his work. This thesis will then look at some of evidence for culturally based conflicts in cross-cultural business environments, followed by exploring some of the strategies have been suggested for dealing with these issues, such as integrating diverse workforces as well as the need to make compromises. As argued throughout this thesis, the approach to ‘culture’ in this thesis may not be as complex as in some of the critical social sciences, but there is no question that culturally based conflicts arise in the workplace and the managers need to be aware of the causes of these conflicts, and the strategies in which to deal with them.