Intercultural Conflict and Collaboration

Current cross-cultural management research has a decidedly comparative flavor; we tend to compare management practices in one nation versus another. The globalization of trade and an increasingly mobile international workforce make intercultural interactions within and between organizations commonplace. These intercultural interactions, whether face-to-face or virtual, can take place within a given geographic location or across countries.  However, we only have a limited understanding of how individuals and organizations interact, communicate, negotiate, and manage conflict across cultural boundaries. Previous research shows that when interacting with counterparts from different cultures, we may experience variations in negotiation strategies (Adair & Brett, 2005; Brett & Okumura, 1998; Brett, 2014), asymmetrical communication experiences (Liu, Chua, & Stahl, 2010), different sensitivities to self-construal (Lee, 2005), or different motivations for consensus (Liu et al., 2012). A recent review of literature on conflict management (Tjosvold, Wong, & Chen, 2014) reveals that open-minded discussions and mutually beneficial relationships are critical to resolving conflicts. Combining these two lines of research, we ask how the intercultural context challenges the development of mutually beneficial relationships? Is cultural complexity a barrier for open communication?  Can cultural diversity facilitate creative and constructive solutions to intercultural conflict? 

The purpose of this special issue is to showcase research that sheds light on the dynamics, antecedents, consequences, and contextual factors that influence intercultural conflict and collaboration. We invite theoretical and empirical papers using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed approaches to explore intercultural interactions at the individual, team, organizational, and multiple levels. We invite papers from management and other disciplines to advance the understanding of intercultural conflict and collaboration, including but not limited to the following issues:

• What are the individual, cultural, societal, and institutional causes of intercultural conflict? What might help diffuse the negative impact of the causes and consequences of such intercultural conflict? What would facilitate constructive management of intercultural conflict? What and how could we harness the positive consequences associated with diverse perspectives and approaches to yield more innovative solutions to problems/issues that confront us as rapid changes and growing complexity become the norm rather than the exception?
• Why do we collaborate interculturally at the individual, team, and firm levels? What constitute intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for intercultural collaboration? What are the dynamics of such motivation that influence the success and sustainability of intercultural collaboration? How can we assess the benefits and costs of culturally diverse teams?
• What individual characteristics might influence the ways intercultural conflict and collaboration are managed? How are these characteristics developed?  
• What kinds of team composition and dynamics influence success and failure in managing intercultural conflict and collaboration?
• How do organizations manage intercultural conflict and collaboration with multiple stakeholders? Do they manage conflict with clients, suppliers, and customers from different cultural backgrounds similarly or differently?  What determines the similarity or differences in their approaches? Do organizations collaborate with intercultural partners differently?  What strengthens and weakens intercultural collaboration?

The list of topics is suggestive, not comprehensive. We are open to multiple perspectives on identifying new areas for enhancing the understanding of intercultural conflict and collaboration at multiple levels of analysis.

References:

Adair, W.L., & Brett, J. M. 2005. The negotiation dance: Time, culture, and behavioral sequences in negotiation. Organization Science, 16, 33-51.

Brett, J. 2014. Negotiating  globally (3rd ed.). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Brett, J. M., & Okumura, T. (1998). Inter- and intracultural negotiation: U.S. and Japanese negotiators. Academy of Management Journal, 41(5), 495-510.

Lee, S. 2005. Judgment of ingroups and outgroups in intra- and intercultural negotiation: The role of interdependent self-construal in judgment timing. Group Decision and Negotiation, 14(1), 43-62.

Liu, L.A., Chua, C.H., & Stahl, G. 2010. Quality of communication experience: Definition, measurement, and implications for intercultural negotiations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(3), 469-487.

Liu, L.A., Friedman, R.A., Barry, B., Gelfand, M.J., & Zhang, Z-X. 2012. The dynamics of consensus building in intracultural and intercultural negotiations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 57(2), 269-304.

Tjosvold, D., Wong, A.S.H., & Chen, N.Y.F. 2014. Constructively managing conflicts in organizations. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 545-568.

Submission Guidelines and Deadline:

To be considered for this special issue, manuscripts need to meet the following guidelines: (1) be submitted through the ScholarOne website http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ccmij, (2) be between 7,000 and 12,000 words in length including references and appendices, and (3) follow the manuscript requirements outlined on the journal’s website: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=ccm#10.

All submissions will undergo a double-blind review process. The submission deadline is September 1, 2016.

Questions about the special issue can be directed to the guest editors: Leigh Anne Liu (laliu@gsu.edu), Wendi Adair (wladair@uwaterloo.ca), Dean Tjosvold (tjosvold@ln.edu.hk), or the Editor-in-Chief Rosalie Tung (tung@sfu.ca).

Guest Editors:

Leigh Anne Liu is an associate professor of international business at Georgia State University.

Leigh Anne studies the roles of culture and cognition in negotiation, conflict management, collaboration, teams, and relationships in multicultural settings. Her research has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Management and Organization Review, among other outlets. She has been a visiting professor at Toulouse Business School in France, Peking University, and Nanjing University in China. She has consulted for Fortune 500 companies and the nonprofit sectors on conflict management and multicultural competence programs. Leigh Anne has taught courses and workshops for undergraduate, MBA, MIB, PhD, and executive students on topics of international negotiation, multicultural competence, global management, and cross-cultural behavior.

Wendi Adair is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Culture at Work Lab at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Adair’s research focuses on negotiation and conflict management in the global marketplace. Other areas of research include culture and creativity, culture and communication context, and third culture building in multicultural teams. Wendi is Associate Editor of Negotiation and Conflict Management Research and past president of the International Association for Conflict Management. Her research has appeared in outlets including Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, and Organization Science, and she is co-editor of the Handbook of Research on Negotiation (2013). She has taught negotiation and conflict management, cross-cultural organizational behavior, leading and managing multicultural teams, and inclusive communication for undergraduate, MA, PhD, corporate, and nonprofit audiences.

Dean Tjosvold is Henry Y. W. Fong Chair Professor of Management, Lingnan University in Hong Kong. He has taught at the Pennsylvania State University and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is a past president of the International Association for Conflict Management and was elected to the Academy of Management Board of Governors in 2004. Dean has published over 200 articles, 20 books, 30 book chapters, and 100 conference papers on managing conflict, cooperation and competition, decision-making, power, and other management issues. He is a past Associate Editor, Journal of Organizational Behavior; Ex-Officio Senior Editor, the Journal of World Business; and past Associate Editor, Group Decision and Negotiation. His books have been selected by Fortune and other Book Clubs and have been translated into Chinese and Spanish. With colleagues, he has written books on teamwork, leadership, and conflict management published in Mainland China. He is a partner in his family’s health care business based in Minnesota, USA.