Culture Clash

There’s a reason in many job interviews we are asked “do you like working in a team,” or

“are you a team player?” Working with others is essential to the success of any business.

Organizational structures are balanced on people working together to complete a project or

develop new ideas. However, people often struggle to work with others due to the

unpredictability and clashing of personalities.

Conflict has a negative connotation for being described as something that should be

avoided at all cost. People will avoid conflict in order to maintain “peace”, but never actually

obtain relief or solve problems. I believe conflict can be handled in a functional way and in the

professional world this is critical to the success of any project, team, or general organizational

structure. Conflict is labelled as negative due to most people’s dysfunctional handling of conflict.

Unfortunately, conflicts involve human emotions and our emotions make conflict very difficult

to manage especially when two or more individuals' emotions clash together. With that being

said though, I believe people can and should be taught how to manage conflict to make it a

constructive and functional event.

A well managed conflict can be a positive event that solves problems and brings positive

change to a relationship or organization. When people are taught how to handle not just

themselves in a conflict, but the emotions of others, they learn how to take perspective and have

the emotional intelligence to understand and empathize with the other party. In HRD conflict is

an essential function that helps motivate change and when managed correctly can increase

overall employee engagement and performance. Employees often have conflict with other

employees or their supervisor and this can create an unhealthy working environment. HR should

have the capabilities to help employees navigate conflict in a way where they feel safe
expressing their feelings and are able to engage in genuine problem solving conversations. It’s

important for HR/OD professionals to have these skills for their own use and to help manage

conflict between others.

Conflict among a group of people can also be functional when handled correctly, but as

emphasized above many people don’t have the skills needed to manage conflict in a functional

way. I think the Tuckman’s five stages of team development are still applicable to today’s

workplace teams. Even though technological advances have changed the delivery and dynamic

of group interaction, the basic fundamental stages of group development remain stable. The

forming stage is still present in every group I’ve seen and been a part of. This stage I believe can

act as a barrier in the process of developing the team, but it holds firm as people often do not

show their true colors until conflict arises which progresses the group to the next stage of

storming. From my experiences many groups can’t make it past the storming stage. The group

may be able to create an end product, but conflict is never resolved and group members just hold

their breath waiting for the project to conclude.

If the group can manage the storm a sense of understanding and compromise will start to

create the norming stage. This stage is great for making a comprehensive project that everyone in

the group can stand behind. Even with barriers such as technology or distance keeping the group

apart, norming can be the event that makes the team feel like a real team. Lastly, in the

performing and adjourning stages the group works cohesively to create their end goal and

completes their time as a group. Performing can only truly happen if the group can make it past

the storming phase. This phase I believe will always be reached if the group makes it past the

norming phase and works out their conflicts. The adjourning stage will happen to every group

because no project lasts forever. I believe this stage especially remains true with today’s
technology and globalization of teams. Not being present together makes the four stages prior to

this one happen very slowly, so by the time you make it successfully to the end and you’re done,

you start to wonder what could’ve gone better? You wish you had more time to live in the

accomplishment of working with others successfully.

Case study

Recent changes in the customer service call center organization have created new

challenges for the leader of the group. What was once a small call center in America has been

acquired into a much larger industry with sister call centers in China, France, and India. While

expansion is great for growth and opportunity, the change has greatly impacted the moral,

productivity, and efficiency of the separate call centers. Each call center has found themselves in

conflict with another call center due to disproportionate workload and differences in service

quantity and quality. Overall the manager of these four call centers had now found themselves in

place of unmanaged conflict that now has to be solved.

I believe one of the first reasons that conflict started to develop was due to the acquisition

of the American company to begin with. With any change there is resistance and once the French

company brought the American team on board this created a shift in the organizational moral.

Shortly after acquiring the American division, the American manager is placed in charge of all

other call centers in the different countries. This probably created animosity between division

managers and the manager of all four call centers. The organizations decided to put the newest

manager in charge of all four without having any experience in the other markets. The

unawareness of different cultures and how each division ran their business creates a divide and

even more change.

 Now that the divisions have a new manager, they are going to start suggesting and

implementing change. This change is going to meet automatic restatiance for several reasons.

The first, a general lack of trust in new management. The new manager for all four call centers is

essentially an outsider to the other divisions. They are still learning about them and the other

divisions are still deciding whether or not to trust them. The manager also may be trying to

suggest change that goes against the culture and current processes of the division which could be

perceived as a threat to their business style. Due to resistance and probably and lack of

communication between divisions a divide starts to occur.

As the divisions start to hear more from and about each other weaknesses are exposed

and this starts to create the issue of workload and quality. Each branch has visible strengths and

weaknesses. Since the divisions weren’t introduced in a way that partnered them as team

members, they became competitors and started exposing each other for their weaknesses and

eventually started sabotaging each other to appear stronger.

I think Hofstede’s theories on individualistic versus collectivistic societies play a critical

role in analyzing the struggles between the divisions. Countries such as America and France are

more individualistic and China and India are more collectivist. This would explain the profit

sharing pay system in the China call center. These characteristics are derived from cultural

upbringing and how people interact with each other. These differences would make collaboration

and general understanding difficult due to fundamental differences in how the divisions view

themselves and their work.

A plan needs to be created in order to tackle the many conflicts that have complied over

the course of this case study. I believe this plan starts with research on the managers part. The

new manager of these divisions needs to take the time to learn about each division and the norms
and culture that define them. Learn their strengths and weaknesses to see what services you can

offer them to help them improve their operations. I believe the best way to do this is by actually

speaking with individuals at each division and learning from the people who are producing the

product. This also will give the manager a chance to start building rapport and not be seen as this

absent manager who is just throwing random changes at them. The manager should also analyze

data provided by each division. By analyzing reports of quantity and quality of work, the

manager can hopefully start to better understand how to help each individual branch.

After analyzing each division and conducting a thoughtful needs assessment, the manager

can start drawing up potential changes that can be implemented. First, I think the manager should

decide what kind of changes need to be made on an organizational level and on an individual

division level. An important takeaway from analyzing each division should indicate that each

branch has its own culture and due to location there will probably continue to be differences

between each division. While some policies and procedures should remain consistent in order to

maintain fairness and compliance, I think each division should be able to maintain a sense of

individuality to help them acclimate to the new organization and feel like they belong. For

example, issues of incentive and pay were brought up by the Chinese division because they did

record the number of problems solved per person due to profit sharing. I think a good

organizational change would be to pay all divisions the same either by commission or profit

sharing, but each individual division should have the freedom to pick incentives that best suit the

needs and wants of the particular division’s culture. This example shows how fairness among

divisions is established while maintaining individuality.

Once changes are put in place at the organizational and divisional levels to solve the

efficiency of each division, I think the next challenge to face is the moral and cooperation among
divisions. The conflicts among divisions created a sense of “us vs them” mentality. In order to

remove these feelings from the divisions, the manager would have to find a way to bring them

together. It’s important that the divisions have individuality, but also feel a part of the overall

team that way everyone works together. I think the manager should attempt to provide

professional development and training in a virtual environment that allows people from all four

divisions to interact in a space where they are equal to each other. All the divisions need

improvements that can be implemented with a little training and practice. By letting the

employees from different divisions learn together it can build a sense of commardie and

understanding between each other. A potential constraint of this is the fact that the call centers

are all over the world and that creates a geographical divide. However, I think it will still create a

space to learn and grow from collaboration.

Conclusion

Conflict is an area in general management that I think is often overlooked and pushed

aside as something you learn as you go and adopt your own style. While there is some truth in

that, there’s also a lot of room for dysfunctional habits and poor conflict management skills to

development. It’s critical HR professionals take the time to not only develop conflict

management skills themselves, but also provide managers in the organization the opportunity to

develop these skills as well. Many take conflict and sweep it under the rug until it gets to a point

where no more dirt can fit and then you have really deep clean the rug. If managers could learn

basic conflict management skills and handle conflicts as they appear versus waiting till they

spiral out of control, then situations like the one in the case study could have been avoided.

The plan I created for implementing change and finding solutions starts with basic HR

practices. In every HR class I’ve taken it has been stressed to me the importance of doing a needs
assessment when something is wrong. I believe in this situation a needs assessment will really

help the manager pinpoint root causes and get a chance to learn more about the culture of each

division and start to understand them. It was important for my plan for the manager to take the

time to learn and understand the culture of each call center in order to make strategic efforts to

help the overall organization and each individual call center.

I also decided a critical part of the plan would have to include ways of helping the

organization to maintain both individualistic and collectivistic ideals. Due to opposing cultures

and norms it’s important for the manager to balance the needs of the divisions and the

organization. Allowing the organizations to maintain a controlled amount of their culture will

help in transitioning and potentially generating new ideas in the future. It’s also important though

to implement overall rules and procedures in order to maintain fairness across the organization

and help with uniformity. Overall the organization will need to come together and work as one

entity with many moving parts in order to succeed as a global organization.

References

Foundations in Teamwork – A Workbook