Hi. I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today we're going to cover intercultural conflict styles and inventory. So let's get started with some of our key terms. Culture-- a form of human social organization in which people identify themselves as members of a group sharing symbol systems, norms, traditions, and viewpoints towards the world.
Cross culture-- used to describe interactions between members of different cultures in which cultural differences may influence behavior, perception, or interpretation. Subculture-- a group with a different cultural orientation than the larger culture around it. So if you remember our Thomas-Kilmann conflict styles graph here with our varying styles that are determined through that 30-question assessment, where we find out how people react or act in conflict-- so the Thomas-Kilmann conflict styles inventory is the best known means of describing people's conflict styles.
But it's important to remember that it's only one of a number of models and inventories up there to describe people's conflict styles. And the Thomas-Kilmann conflict sales inventory assumes that the users who are taking the assessment are from the United States culture and that these users hold United States cultural assumptions.
And this may not be effective use or a model for those who do not hold the United States world views. And going to look at the intercultural conflict styles inventory, this takes the cultural differences into account, and may be more useful in conflict with cross-cultural elements. And this makes sense.
Not everybody who takes the Thomas-Kilmann conflict styles inventory is going to be from the United States, and they're not going to all hold the same viewpoint, and so it's important that we have another way of assessing people's conflict styles-- especially when there's a cross-cultural component in it.
So in summary, Thomas-Kilmann conflict styles inventory is not the only way to look at conflict styles, and it's important that we take into account the cultural difference that are present in conflict. And when we do so, we may be able to address some varying needs within the conflict, but if we ignore it, we're not going to address the conflict fully, and we are not understanding what the other side needs.
So it's important that we do look at this. Thank you for taking the time out to view this tutorial, and I really hope you learned something from this, because it's important. And I hope to catch you again next time.
