Mono-Cultural Conflict In The Workplace

Introduction

Conflicts are part of our daily life and are inevitable when people with different interests come together. Wherever people work together and meet conflicts arise. They arise because each person has their own goals, needs, expectations and values, he/she wants to realize and satisfy. Hence, conflicts are a part of our everyday life, whether in our private or professional life. Their outcome is highly dependent on how we deal and learn to cope with them.

Especially, in todays work environment two ongoing trends set the way for working in and for organisations. First, the amount of work in organisations, which is done through teamwork rather than by individuals working alone increased (Puck, Neyer, & Dennerlein, 2010). As Puck,

Past studies have shown that if a multicultural team has only once recorded better results in identifying problem perspectives and in the generation of alternatives can be achieved, as is the case with mono-cultural teams (Watson / Kumar / Michaelsen, 1993). On the other hand, studies show by Kovach (1980; quoted in Adler, 2002, p 148) that multicultural teams either very effective or ineffective in comparison to mono-cultural teams. Researchers DiStephano and Mazunevski (2000) come in their work even to the conclusion that: "Despite Their potential, most diverse teams Either do not perform as well as homogenous teams do, or They equalize." (P.45)

5. Conflict in Teams

In context to team diversity, Wiersema, M. F., & Bantel, K. A. (1992) discussed the existence of difference in work background, belief structure among the team members. Belief structure means the ideas of the individual about some specific task, object and process. When these ideas differ either with respect to task given or on personal interactions, this leads to the conflict in teams27.

5.1 Team

Conflict may be referred to task the team is trying to accomplish or person to person relationship29. Task conflict is defined as the difference of opinion of the team members with respect to team task. Relationship conflict is defined as the difference of opinion caused by the different personality aspects such as friction, irritation, frustration and annoyance etc.

Conflict can be both productive and destructive. Task conflict is considered as a positive conflict whereas relationship conflict is considered as negative conflict30 31.

Considering the ‘task conflict’ first, the Puck, J., & Pregernig, U. (2014) agree that team performance can be predicted by task conflict. Jehn, K. A. (1997) and Carron, A. V., & Brawley, L. R. (2000) consider it positive with respect to performance as the critical thinking within team motivates better decision making. Still there are some studies that shows that task conflict also have a negative effect on performance32 33. These studies argue that negative effect of task conflict emerges if the team members conflict with each other constantly by challenging each other’s’ opinion with respect to their tasks. This produces a communication gap among the conflicting team members and less coordination to accomplish the task, hence performance