Don't Mess with My Professionalism (How to Resolve Conflict Across Cultures)

ACE-ing business through intercultural conflict resolution

Questioning others’ professionalism is an immediate negative reaction that many international executives have when facing workplace behavior which is culturally different from theirs. ‘Professionalism’ becomes the alibi for ethnocentrism which in turn jeopardizes relationships at work and reduces chances of success in the ever-growing multicultural business world. Such phenomenon may help explain why 70% of Merger and Acquisitions that fail are due to cultural differences, whether these may be corporate or national. According to another research, 60 to 80% of all difficulties in organizations stem from conflicts between employees. These difficulties increase when cultures collide. This book goes beyond individual views of “professionalism” to discuss the complex intercultural conflict phenomenon at work and propose practical ways to resolve it effectively. The distillation of our research enabled us to unveil a framework for intercultural conflict resolution called ACE, which consists of three parts:

i) Attending to the emotions;
ii) Contextualizing the conflict;
iii) Exploring conflict resolutions.