Culture and Conflict Management

1
Culture and Conflict Management
2
Definitions of Culture

• Particular practices and values common to a
  population living in a given setting (Ross)
• Complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
  art, morals, laws, customs. . .acquired by man as
  a member of society (Tylor)
• Derivative of experience, more of less
  organized, learned or created by individuals of a
  population, including those images. . . and their
  interpretations, from past generations,
  contemporaries, or formed by themselves
  (Schwartz)

3
Organizational Culture (Schein)

• Patterns of behavior
• Guided by deep, shared beliefs about what is
  right
• what works
• Created by people working together who solve two
• types of problems survival and working
  together
• Influenced or imposed by the founding leader

4
Symbols as Culture

• Symbols embody an organizations culture- the
  interwoven pattern of beliefs. Values, practices,
  and artifacts that define for members who they
  are and how they are to do things.

5
Culture Questions

• Is culture causal vs adaptive, situational,
  flexible, unequally distributed ? (Avruch)
• Can culture be used as an analytic framework?
• Do other needs override cultural responses?

6
Definitions of Conflict

• Objectivist struggle over values and claims to
  scarce status, power, and resources in which the
  aims. . .are to neutralize, injure, or eliminate
  the opponents (Cosner)
• Subjectivist Perceived divergence of interest
  or belief that parties current aspirations
  cannot be achieved simultaneously (Pruitt)
• Functional resolve divergent dualisms, bring
  about unity (Simmel)

7
Origins of Conflict

• Inherent (Hobbes) to the individual
• Contingent on factors outside the person

8
Origins of Conflict

• Interactionist
• Human beings have needs, needs will be pursued by
  all means available, but the social setting
  limits the degree to which they are satisfied and
  the means by which they are satisfied (Burton)
• Eight needs response, security, recognition,
  stimulation, distributive justice, meaning,
  rationality, control

9
Origins of Conflict

• Social Constructionist
• Conflict is a socially constructed cultural
  event conflict emerges through an interactive
  process based on the search for and creation of
  shared meaning individual common sense and
  accumulated experience are the basis of how they
  create and respond to conflict culture is rooted
  in shared knowledge and schemes (Lederach)

10
Implications for Conflict Management
11
Culture Frameworks Matter

• Individualistic/independent vs Collective/interdep
  endent Ethos (Hofstede)
• Low context vs high context communication (Hall)
• Monochronistic (one thing and one person at a
  time addressing immediate issues and moving on
  haste) vs polychronistic (handle several tasks in
  parallel pervasive sense of the past
  steadiness) sense of time (Hall)
• Low vs high context negotiating style ( man
  determines his own environment for his own
  purposes vs man adjusts himself to it
  negotiation as end vs episode in long-term
  relationship) (Kinhide)
• From Cohen, Negotiating across Cultures

12
Beyond Culture ?

• Problem-Solving Workshops (Burton)
• Getting to Yes Interest-Based Negotiation
  (Fisher and Ury)

13
From Cultures

• Elicitive Training vs Prescriptive Training
  (Lederach)
• Aimed at discovery, creation, and solidification
  of models that emerge from the resources present
  and respond to needs in that context
• Real life stories