4. Notice that there are certain rules in intercultural communication contexts. Do not be ethnocentric and think your own rules are the only right ones.
5. Do no give verbal or nonverbal negative evaluations about cultural differences.
6. Prepare for a new culture for studying and prevent culture shock. (p.
344)
Previous guidelines have been created two decades ago but they are still useful when creating a good communicative atmosphere in multicultural organisation. Also Rana (2013) calls that organisations should pay attention to the effective communication because it has several advantages: “securing employee loyalty, improving or maintaining employee morale, creating mutual respect, increasing trust between employees and management, reducing turnover, reducing absenteeism, empowering employees, helping employees deal with change effectively, generating greater productivity, enabling the organisation to get through a crisis” (pp. 2-3).
Samovar and Porter (2003) state that people who defend and notice the value of cultural diversity, support and accept a multicultural global village, need to prepare themselves for conflicts arising from cultural differences (p.
16). To achieve free culturally diverse society, people in it need to be given a permit for diversity to flourish without prejudice and discrimination which are only negative aspects damaging the community and its members.
According to Ruben and Stewart (2006) Brinkman’s (1992) survey for 4 191 employees from three organisations showed that seven themes can be identified for diversity effectiveness:
1. Climate – How organisation is able to manage diversity 2. Hiring practices – What kind of people organisation hires
3. Promotion practices - Managerial jobs are offered for diverse people 4. Training and development – What kind of training is offered to
employees
5. Equity and fairness – Fairness and respect in the organisation
6. Visible commitment – Acknowledgement of achievements of diverse people and other visible signs
7. Politics in the workplace – Is there a favoritism. (pp. 318-319)
By investing in the previous seven themes and ensuring that the organisation acts in an effective way concerning the themes, better effectiveness concerning diversity may be achieved.
For her part, Rana (2013) states that one important part of the business success is effective communication (p. 1). If workforce is multicultural, effective communication is in more significant role. Also Rana, as so many others, says that in the organisations it is nowadays extremely important to notice the diversity – we cannot ignore it (Rana, 2013, p. 1). The last section of this chapter deals with intercultural conflict management.
2.4 Intercultural Conflict Management
There is not a workplace without conflicts but in multicultural workplaces conflicts may arise from different reasons than if the workforce is homogenious.
Almost every employee or employer have experienced a conflict at the workplace. Conflicts can never be avoided, they always occur from time to time. People in different cultures have differences in cultural patterns and hold different values and assumptions which may cause cultural conflicts because they interpret, evaluate and act on situations differently (Adler, 2002, p. 77;
Friedman & Antal, 2005, p. 72; Keisala, 2012, p. 21; Ting-Toomey, 2003, p.
373). Despite the increase in research on conflict and its management, there is no one and only definition of conflict (Mayer & Louw, 2012, p. 3). According to Chen and Starosta (2005) conflict “refers to a disagreement between or among persons in an interdependent relationship in which they try to meet each other’s social needs while, in many cases, pursuing some instrumental goal. A disagreement can occur when the interdependent parties face incompatible goals, resources, decision making, and behaviours.” (p. 141) Conflict is a phenomenon which affects people and their behaviour as well as internal feelings. Conflicts related for example to stereotypes or perception may be seen negative but sometimes the conflicts may also be useful and enable the development. Ting-Toomey (2003) defines conflict as “the perceived and/or actual incompatibility of values, expectations, processes, or outcomes between two or more parties from different cultures over substantive and/or relational issues” (p. 373). Also Mayer & Low (2012) state that conflict is often
associated with identity and value issues (p. 4). Conflicts may arise because of stereotypic thinking and they may cause misunderstandings as well as miscommunication, which enhance the prejudices concerning other cultures (Chen & Starosta, 2005, pp. 141, 229). When Chen and Starosta define that a conflict may cause miscommunication, in turn, Ting-Toomey (2003) says that intercultural conflict starts because of miscommunication and if it is unmanaged, may become an actual interpersonal conflict (p. 373).
According to Ting-Toomey (2003), effective conflict management requires effective, appropriate and creative communication. In conflict situations, different worldviews must be respected and people need to be knowledgeable about the different ways of dealing with the conflict situation.
Cultural variability and different communication styles must be noticed. Ting-Toomey makes a distinction: “collectivists need to work out on their ethnocentric biases as well as individualists need to work out their sense of egocentric superiority”. Collectivists may think their way of conflict management is the only right way, but it is not. Humans bring their own cognitive, affective and behavioural blinders to the conflict management situation, which means that both, individualists and collectivists need to notice that. A good solution of the process can be reached if one is willing to learn about others’ cultural norms and rules. (pp. 380-383) After the intercultural communication theory part we turn to the chapter which deals with the theory of diversity management.