Strategies for Managing Cultural Conflict: Models Review and Their Applications in Business and Technical Communication

Abstract

In the field of business and technical communication, scholars have called for research on dealing with cultural conflict for a long time. But the limited study on dealing with cultural conflicts, along with the current political context in the United States, calls for efforts to systematically address diversity issues and cultural conflict in our research and teaching practices. One obstacle to advance effective communication strategies on cultural conflict in business and technical communication is the lack of communication with other disciplines. Through an interdisciplinary perspective, the current article introduces the concept of cultural conflict, examines strategy models to address cultural conflict in different fields, and provides an example on how to identify a strategy model to resolve cultural conflict in business and technical communication practices. This article concludes by emphasizing that there is not a best model that can be applied to handle cultural conflict in all circumstances and calling for research on exploring and identifying effective strategy models to resolve cultural conflict in business and technical communication practices.