Conflict studies incorporating culture differ in whether the individual is the unit of analysis and culture is a contextual variable versus those in which the unit of analysis is culture (or nation) and the sample includes a set number of cultures.
Almost all conflict communication studies use the former approach. (Some quantitative studies and mathematical models of the causes of war are exceptions; see Cashman, 1993, and the chapters within Diehl, 2004).
Because of the way culture enters into conflict communication research, it is treated as static by necessity: It is an exogenous variable that is considered to vary over people or over space but not over time. However, culture does change over time, sometimes even over relatively short periods. Effects due to cultural change are almost always excluded from conflict communication research.Many studies examine such static cultural differences in conflict styles (for reviews of these studies, see Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003; Wilson et al., 1995). These studies are mixed in their results, some find members of East Asian cultures to be more avoidant or yielding and people from the United States to be more dominating (e.g., Lee & Rogan, 1991; Trubisky, Ting-Toomey, & Lin, 1991). Other studies find members of both cultural groups to prefer integrating styles (e.g., Cai & Fink, 2002). The typical method used to investigate conflict styles across cultures is to provide a hypothetical conflict scenario, ask participants to consider a conflict with someone (e.g., a friend, colleague, or stranger), and, based on that imagined conflict, to complete instruments such as the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II; Rahim, 1983) or the Organizational Communication Conflict Instrument (OCCI; Putnam & Wilson, 1982) to measure the individual’s approach to the conflict. However, to draw conclusions about how cultures compare in conflict behavior, researchers need to answer three questions about the sample and the conflict. First, is the meaning of conflict and the variables representing the conflict process comparable across the cultures being investigated? Second, are the samples comparable (see pp. 54-56)? And third, are the cultures at the same place in the process under investigation? (Note that the discussion that follows can be made for comparing conflict across organizations, ethnic groups, or any other categorical variable, as well as culture.)