Question

When two cultures disagree about appropriate communication, how do you think the issue should be resolved? In other words, which cultural norms should be given priority?

Answer 1

The differences in national culture lie in values rather than practice. While, in organizational level, culture differences appear mostly in practice rather than value. Intercultural Relations can also called as cross culture communication, says about relation between two or more than two cultures belongs either to a same or different place/city/country or any geographical area.

People who are involved in the convestion with others must have basic idea whats going on in the other country. It's just fine if they don't have any informaiton before hand, but it would be good to have some knowledge to understand what the other person is saying. If they don't understand what the person is saying they can ask the others to explain but in a polite voice.

Lets see an example. When compared to USA, Asian countries have more festivals. So before planning for an important delivery of work or business employees of both countries need to check the availability of the dates and plan accordingly. If the information is not passed to others well in advance, it would definitely leads to a conflict.

On the other hand, there are many religions in the world and Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are some popular religions. Having some basic knowledge (like important festivals, food habits, cultural habits, languages) would be good enough to avoid most of the conflicts.

Act as a mediator to resolve the conflict:

If I am given a chance to be mediator to resolve the conflict, the first thing I would do is, I'll try to get to know the people involved in the conflict. So that, it would give me some idea on both sides (be it between two persons, companies, businesses, teams or countries). Then I will see the conflict first and analyze what could went wrong between these parties.

Based on my analysis, I would try to talk to each party separately first and then will schedule a meeting with both parties and would discuss the things then and there. So that it would give them the clarity and information they want.

This kind of Conflict resolution is called "Compromise" where both parties should compromise on something.

Please note there are other other conflict resolution techniques like

Confrontation: Resolve the issue completely (For several reasons)

Forcing: Letting someone accept the decision of others forcefully.

Withdraw: Getting dropout from the conflict (For several reasons)

Compromise: Letting both parties compromise on something and come to mutually acceptable decision.