Mgt 456
Professor Hartley
September 10, 2012

Personal Reflection

Culture plays a big role in everyday conflict. Every type of culture has its own unique way of approaching a conflict and responding to it with different actions. The different beliefs and views impact our feelings and behaviors regarding conflict and conflict resolution. Looking more in-depth of conflict resolution, below each culture lays a web graph of gender, religious beliefs, home and/or national cultural influences. Resulting from the diverse cultural differences influences dissimilar approaches to resolving conflict. Coming from a strict Armenian heritage, our culture is considered to mainly having the “blow up conflict” approach. According to Hocker Wilmont, the blow up conflict approach is stated as “hostility and uncooperativeness which leads to heated emotional exchange”. Unfortunately, the male gender of most families makes the decisions of any type of conflicts. Usually in the case of conflict in our culture then results to the “silent-treatment conflict” approach where there is silence between the relationships in conflict. This specifically applies to my background in my families approaches to conflict management. I was born into a family where conflicts existed every day. Growing up I thought to myself why are my elders yelling at each other and informing me to behave and not talk back to them when they were the ones going “wild” in front of me. As I got older I realized there were many conflicts existing in my family and they were approached by yelling, screaming and even sometimes using physical force. Unfortunately to this day I have close family members which I don’t speak to due to major conflicts which occurred between my families during my childhood days.
Being the first generation born in the U.S., I believe what guided to my conflict management approach was strictly viewing what was outside of my family. As I was witnessing what was occurring in my family every day and as there would be tension between mother and son, brother and sister, I was forced to think this had to be the wrong way of resolving conflicts and preventing them. I would compare my close friends’ families and see the difference on how they would treat one another and come to a conclusion that I would educate myself to one day treat my children a different way as they grow up in a different environment. Growing up in a melting pot, I was adopted to the American low-context cultural ways specifically in which people process conflict. Having the background of ongoing conflicts in my families, I came about of implementing the “civil discussion” approach. Always being a calm person growing up, today I use calm and rational discussions to resolve any type of conflict that I come across. At first, I try to calculate the logical and psychological aspect of the conflict which then I try to come to an ethical conclusion. This approach mainly takes great affect at my workplace since it’s a high-paced customer interaction working environment. I do use this type of approach in family matters as well and sometimes stuns the person in front of me who is at times furious. My calm and understanding character first portrays the person in front of me that I would not fight back verbally but rather through a logical discussion. I think this has definitely worked for me in that past and always will by resolving conflicts at home, with friends, and at the working environment.
In conclusion, different cultures have different approaches and characteristics dealing and negotiating with each other especially during conflict. Although I was born into a different cultural background where conflict is handled or resolved in a different manner, living in a country like the United States has definitely shaped my character specifically in the way I manage conflict. I believe every conflict can be resolved and can have its own unique way of being prevented in the future. I do respect different cultural ways and their approaches to conflict but it is sometimes tough to negotiate with people who come from different backgrounds. Conflict is needed to raise and address problems but sometimes it can be a problem when it creates inappropriate behaviors through miscommunication.