When I was reading this assignment I immediately thought of an episode of The Office called "Did I stutter?" The Office is a show about a paper company called Dunder Mifflin. The show is all about the office and co workers interacting. In this particular episode the white boss, Michael and Stanley the African American sales rep. get into a conflict. Michael had called a staff meeting and Stanley always sits in the back and does his crossword always ignoring Michael. Michael asks Stanley to put down his cross word, he says,"no." Then Michael responds with, "Stanley, come on we are trying brainstorm here." Stanley then says, "Leave me alone dammit." Michael continues to ask him and Stanley says, "Did I stutter?" Michael is very embarrassed and tries to make it look like they were just kidding around to the human resource man (Toby). Toby wants Stanley to apologize to Michael but he says he won't apologize. Michael then asks another African American man at the office what he should do. He does not give Michael good advice. After a little while Michael pretends to fire Stanley so he would apologize but he ends up yelling at Michael. Michael tells everyone in the office to leave and Michael and Stanley admits to Michael that he has no respect for Michael. Michael and Stanley come to the conclusion that he doesn't have to like him but he has to show him respect in the office.
I think the major conflict issues are that Stanley doesn't have any respect for his boss. He doesn't like his boss and they do not see eye to eye on things. Michael needs respect from his co workers because if one shows disrespect then the others will too. The style of conflict is compromising style. The two parties have to talk to agree to something where they both give something up. Michael and Stanley talk about their disagreement and decide that although Stanley doesn't agree with Michael he needs to show him respect. There is also a affective conflict where the two parties agree to disagree. When Stanley and Michael talked things over they both knew they did not agree and talked about how to fix that.
The two parties did resolve their differences. Michael and Stanley both talked things over and came to a resolution. I don't think that this conflict ever had to happen because a person needs to have a certain respect for their boss, many people don't like their bosses but they never find out because they still have respect for them.
I thought this episode was really interesting because Stanley was upset and told his boss what he thought, he didn't care what his boss thought or any of his co workers. Michael was the one who wanted to play it off as a joke. Michael also tried to get help from another African American man to try to fix the problem, which is stereotypical because why would an African American man and a white man settle conflicts differently.
Do you find that the cultures you observed wanted to handle conflicts differently? How did each side handle the conflict?
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Watch The Office much? Just kidding.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I think that the cultural barriers between governments in conflict can be pretty scary, especially if the two governments have different views of conflict and conflict resolution. In my blog, I talked about the US and Iran conflict that is currently going on regarding low-enriched uranium, and those two governments definitely have different approaches to the conflict. The US seems to be a dominating style, whereas Iran seems to be an integrating style. Unfortunately, when one side is a dominating style, it is like slamming your head against a brick wall, it just doesn't accomplish anything other than one mean headache. This has been the problem with the US's approach to this conflict, because they give no ground to Iran, who has agreed to several proposals from other countries(Brazil and Turkey, for instance), but cannot seem to get the US to concede any ground on the matter. This shows a prime example of how the inability or unwillingness to communicate interculturally can have a damaging effect on a relationship, which can be pretty scary when the possible result is nuclear war.
I think that most cultures do handle conflict differently. Some cultures want to get in there and get the problem figured out as easy as possible. Some cultures want to solve the problem, but also sometimes enjoy the conflict and stretch it out. I don't know why someone would enjoy conflict, but I think they maybe think that it is a good way to bring attention to oneself and prove that they are better than others.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kelsey that conflicts in different cultures are handled differently by the parties involved. I looked at the conflict that has been/is going on between Israel and Palestine. I think that in this case, they both wanted to handle the conflict in the same way - violence. They think that violence is going to put an end to the problem that they are having but it really just makes the conflict worse. The conflict is not resolved yet and the two states continue to handle the conflict with violence. It is very sad.
ReplyDeleteI found that most cultures to tend to handle things differently however usually the goal in most cases is somewhat of a common ground, although for those who didn't, wanted more of an opposite and wanted all rather then nothing. Those who did usually were will to risk almost anything to gain these things that they don't have.
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