Final Group Project: Cultural Conflict

Individual Differences - Cultural Conflict

Our group encountered cultural conflict per below as we considered that we have different values, beliefs and goals. When individual cultural, value and perspective come together, they will inevitably clash against one another and the result could be devastating. 

* Team members who are from different disciplines and pose communication issues or assume different assumptions from different disciplinary or industry backgrounds;

* Team members who have ideological difference about content or methods in achieving group outcomes;

* Team members with different interpretations of accountability and responsibility of tasks and team outcomes; and

* Team members with different personality

Solutions

We resolved the conflict by Negotiation, Communication and Trust.

Negotiation

Negotiation is a process in which groups with conflicting interests meet together to make offers, counteroffers, and concessions to each other in an effort to resolve their differences (George Jones, 2012).  Negotiation helped us to resolve conflict and to enhance cooperation and performance instead of competitive or dysfunctional outcomes.

According to Robbins Judge (2007), negotiation permeates the interactions of almost everyone in groups and organizations.  Despite there was cultural conflict occurred in our group, we were able to achieve a win-win outcome through negotiation. By taking the perspectives of the team members, we did not only enhance problem-solving abilities but also the ability to jointly solve problem at the bargaining table (Thompson 2009). Our successful negotiation undoubtedly fostered good team spirit and coherent as each member knows their role and supports other team members.

Negotiation works best on conflict resulted from different disciplines but less effective on conflict resulted from different personality.  Since personality is inborn, it is difficult to change.  No matter how we negotiate, we were unable to change others’ personality.  For this, we can only compromise to some extent.  For the other three differences which are not inborn, negotiation works well in resolving.  Each of us could try to understand others’ standpoint and then arrived at win-win situation.

Communication

Effective communication improves relationships, empowers people, provides clear direction and increases productivity.  One may lose motivation and the inability to make decision without it (eHow 2015).

Through open communication within our team, we successfully resolved conflict arisen from individual differences.  By communicating, we understood each other more in-depth.  Communication allowed us to clarify own and other’s standpoint.  We can also fully utilize each member’s strength as we understood each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  By communicating, we could not change others’ personality but we could understand and react accordingly.  By communicating, we could understand each member’s concern and feeling so that we could better collaborate.

Trust

Only with trust among team members, negotiation and communication can be effective.  Only if we trust each other, we could focus on our own assigned task and made the collaboration process smooth and efficient.  Without trust, no matter how we communicate and negotiate, there would be no result.  As each of us tried hard to build up trust among ourselves by showing positive track record and integrity, we could trust each other’s expressions when we negotiate and communicate.

Conclusion 

Though we encountered cultural conflicts due to individual differences, through negotiation, communication and building up trust with each other, our group had successfully collaborated and resolved the conflict.  We are all glad to be in a group and we all agreed that this is a productive and efficient group. 

References:

Communication Skills (2015), Retrieved from 25 April, 2015, from http://www.communicationskills.co.in/

George J, & Jones G (2012). Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior. (6th ed). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Leigh L. Thompson (2009). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator

Martin, v. (2015). How to Work With People From Different Cultures. Retrieved 25 April, 2015, from http://www.ehow.com/how_8780495_work-people-different-cultures.html

Robbins Judge (2007). Organization Behaviour (12th ed). Pearson