How Culture Inherently Impacts Conflict Resolution
This essay addresses how culture inherently impacts conflict resolution. Australia is a very multicultural nation, makes a culture a very intrinsic part of everyday living, and in turn conflicts between individuals. Though the presence of different cultures has positively diversified Australia it has also limited conflict resolution theory that according to Acrush has largely stemmed from the “North American, male, white and middle-class world” and neglects the role that culture has played in conflict resolution. Culture can be defined as.
According to Pedersen, “the more cultural differences there are between people in conflict, the more difficulty they will have communicating or understanding why they are failing to communicate”. An individual's culture influences the way they behave, such as their manner of speaking, perceptions of politeness, body language, and most importantly communication. As conflict can be defined as a breakdown of communication, or as an inevitable by-product, anything that impedes this communication, impacts the conflict resolution. An example of these cultural communication detriments is within Aboriginal and Torres strait islanders people as they have certain cultural politeness rules of conversation such as, not naming a deceased person or a person that the community holds in disgrace, direct eye contact is considered disrespectful, answering yes to a question may only mean “yes I hear you”. These cultural behaviors can be frustrating for non-indigenous speakers, as a party may believe that an indigenous person not making eye contact would be considered “shifty or non-cooperative” while the indigenous person is just attempting to be respectful. Hence, causes a rift of misunderstanding between parties, which is destructive in conflict resolution as it makes it harder for parties to voice their concerns and explore their underlying interests when they cannot understand each other and establish goodwill between themselves. This is particularly difficult when language accommodation is only one way and only the indigenous party is attempting to accommodate for the cultural communication barrier. Especially as indigenous people have been so marginalized and disadvantaged in Australian society, they would be even more isolated in conflict resolution situations with non-indigenous persons that misunderstand their verbal and non-verbal communication. Thus magnifying the stress and emotions they would feel in conflict resolution.
This cultural impact on communication between parties in a conflict resolution situation is also highlighted by Sourdin’s reference to “high” or “low” context cultures. This cultural impact on communication between parties is also highlighted by Sourdin’s reference to “high” or “low” context cultures. Low-context cultures such as the United States and Australia prefer directness, frankness, confrontation, and open self-disclosure as compared to high-context cultures such as China and Japan that incline toward indirect, ambiguous, cautious, non-confrontational, and subtle communication as they value a more peaceful situation. These different methods of communication can cause distrust between parties as each party is used to a preferred method of voicing their concerns in a conflict, finding it unconventional when they experience a different method. This in turn increases the frustration of both parties and deters them from resolving the conflict as they are unable to effectively communicate, as they would if they were communicating in the mode they are accustomed to. Thus, developing effective communication skills that are mindful of cultural impediments is important in both conflict prevention and resolution.
The way that individuals react to conflict is also inherently cultural, parties from different cultural backgrounds tend to adopt different conflict resolution strategies. This is highlighted in a study where executives from two cultures-Canadian and the People's Republic of China (PRC) were asked to respond to a conflict situation. However, in order to understand their reaction to conflict one must first look at the inherent values of these cultures, Chinese culture is a collective type of culture where individuals value group harmony and interdependence whereas North American culture is more individualistic and emphasizes individual rights and independence. These values then consequently influence how these parties interact with conflict as the study reported that Chinese negotiators were keener on maintaining the relationship and disliked taking initiative whereas the Canadian negotiators were more inclined to be authoritative and more focused on making a deal. Subsequently, showing how effective conflict resolution relies on both parties being aware of these strategies for positive conflict resolution, otherwise, parties will be skeptical in approaching resolution and sustaining a relationship with each other when experiencing foreign strategies to conflict resolution.
It is also important to note, that these different approaches to conflict resolution due to culture can also impact conflict resolution theory in a positive way, as it diversifies it. In regards to this study the Chinese negotiators' approach of sustaining relationships and the Canadian on focusing on negotiating to achieve an outcome, produce a beneficial conflict resolution that entails both harmony and resolution. This highlights how each culture's outlook of conflict resolution creates opportunities of learning and positive growth to the theory.
