Constructive controversy

Deutsch’s theory of cooperation and competition proposes that goal interde­pendence very much affects expectations, interactions, and effectiveness. (See Chapters One and Three in this volume for more detailed discussion.) Deutsch argued that cooperative compared to competitive goals contribute to productive conflict management.

North American Research

Controversy occurs when persons discuss their opposing views about how a prob­lem should be solved. (See Chapter Three for a detailed research review.) Research has documented that controversy promotes curiosity, exploration, understanding, and integration. When confronted with an opposing view, people have been found to feel uncertain about the most adequate solution, are curious, and seek to under­stand opposing views. The expression of various views and the defending and articulation of their rationales and the internal uncertainty and search for new, more complete information and understanding all develop new, useful solutions to the problem that the protagonists accept and implement. Controversy has been found to be highly constructive when protagonists have cooperative goals because they are willing to integrate opposing views and reach a high-quality agreement. Field research has shown that the dynamics of cooperative controversy can be highly useful for solving a wide array of complex problems for organizations (Tjosvold, 1998; Tjosvold and Tjosvold, 1995).

Should the Theory Be Applied in China?

Many social scientists are skeptical that Western theories can be applied in such collectivist cultures as China, arguing that an imposed theoretical framework captures the cultural experience only of the West. Specific objections have also been raised to the application of the Deutsch theory. The theory assumes that individuals are self-interested. Their actions and feelings are hypothesized to depend upon whether they believe their self-interests are cooperatively or com­petitively related. As collectivist rather than individualist, Chinese are thought to pursue the interests of their groups rather than their own. Is the Deutsch assumption that self-interest motivates group behavior justified in China?

A related objection is that as collectivist, Chinese people are highly oriented toward cooperation where competition and independence are not preferred. Are the Chinese able to interact in competitive and independent ways, or are these experiences infrequent and countercultural?

Deutsch argued that conflict is an inevitable aspect of social interdependence and that, even with highly cooperative goals, group members conflict. However, the Chinese culture highly values harmony, making conflict anathema.

A related, though somewhat inconsistent objection is that conflict, when sur­faced, is inevitably competitive, although Deutsch argued that conflict has a coop­erative face. The Chinese word for conflict connotes warfare, suggesting that conflict is invariably win-lose. Is a cooperative conflict approach viable in China?

Chinese people are thought to avoid conflict because they are particularly sensitive to social face and highly averse to interpersonal hostility and assertive ways of handling frustrations and problems. These values make it difficult to initiate conflict; just disagreeing easily and nonverbally communicates an aggressive affront to face. With social face values, can conflict be dealt with directly and open-mindedly?

Chinese society is considered a traditional, hierarchical one where employees readily defer to their superiors.

More generally, the open-minded teamwork proposed by Deutsch’s theory supports organizations pressured to maximize value for customers. Deming and other popular theorists have argued that teamwork and conflict are necessary because of market demands to serve customers with quality products and services. China remains largely a centrally controlled economy dominated by state owned enterprises (SOEs) that appease ministers, not serve customers. Are Chinese organizations using cooperative conflict to serve customers?

Deutsch’s theory, like any other, cannot be assumed to apply in another culture, but applying it in China may be particularly questionable. Before examining our findings, the next section reviews our experimental and field methods.

Research Methods in China

North American research methods to test the theory, like the theory itself, cannot be assumed to apply in China. East Asian researchers have modified our North American methods. Trained both in the East and West and based in East Asia, researchers have debated the theory and developed the methods. The network itself has demonstrated the value of cooperative teamwork and constructive con­troversy! We are most grateful for our colleagues’ openness and contributions to the research.

In an initial step, network members as well as managers in the region argued that cooperation and competition were both important phenomena in Chinese organizations. Concretely, they translated the major concepts and research ques­tions into Cantonese (the local Hong Kong dialect), Mandarin (the national lan­guage of China), Japanese, and Korean. This process also simplified and improved the English operations. Interviews, questionnaires, and experimental methods have all been used to test the theory.

Interviews

The interview studies have employed the critical incident methodology.

The interview has a highly defined structure. For example, in a study on developing commitment to Japanese organizations in Hong Kong, Japanese and Chinese managers were asked to identify a specific interaction that affected their commitment and to describe the setting, what occurred, and the consequences (Tjosvold, Sasaki, and Moy, 1998). Then they answered specific questions about goal interdependence, constructive controversy, and consequences that allow statistical tests of the framework and hypotheses.

The interviews provided rich descriptive information about effective and inef­fective interaction between Japanese and Chinese that affected commitment. Data were coded and sorted to identify the reasons for cooperative, competitive, and independent goals, the interaction behaviors that occurred in them, and the consequences of the interactions. These interview methods have been used to study cooperation and competition and constructive controversy in a variety of organizational contexts.

Questionnaires

Questionnaire surveys allow for the sampling of many people and the use of inde­pendent sources for outcome measures. For example, 191 pairs of supervisors and employees were recruited from ten SOEs in Nanjing and Shanghai to participate in a leadership study on goal interdependence, justice, and citizenship behavior (Tjosvold, Hui, Ding, and Hu, 2003).

Employees completed questionnaires on measures on cooperation, competi­tion, independence, and constructive controversy with their supervisor and their level of procedural, distributive, and interactional justice. Their supervisors com­pleted questionnaires on the extent that the employee engaged in-role perfor­mance (productivity) and extra-role performance (organizational citizenship).

Experiments

Experiments directly test hypothesized causal relationships with high internal validity. We theorized, for example, that open discussion of conflict need not affront social face in China and could contribute to effective problem solving when face was confirmed (Tjosvold, Hui, and Sun, 2004). Eighty participants from a university in Guangzhou were randomly assigned to four conditions: open discussion-affront to face, open discussion-confirmation of face, avoiding discussion-affront, and avoiding discussion-confirmation.

To begin, the participants read that as supervisors they were to meet with employees about job rotation. The supervisor, as a representative of manage­ment, opposed this job rotation as inefficient. The “open” participants read where their organization valued frank discussion of differences and could earn up to five chances in a lottery if they discussed their differences openly and directly. The “avoiding” participants would earn chances to the extent that they minimized their disagreement.

After eight minutes of discussion, the participant and a confederate completed a questionnaire that included the social face induction, which the experimenter unexpectedly exchanged. The “affront” participants read the confederate’s rat­ings indicating that they were seen as ineffective and the “confirm” participants that they were seen as effective. After another ten minutes, participants made the decision, were fully debriefed, given a small gift, and one chance in the lottery.

Curiosity was measured by the number of questions the participants asked and learning by their listing the opposing arguments. Participants also indicated on seven-point scales their interest in learning and strength of their relationship.

Interview, surveys, and experiments have their strengths and limitations. Our results are not method specific and deserve confidence because they have been developed through diverse methods.

Results of East Asian Tests of the Theory

Chinese people have been found to distinguish cooperation and competition and respond much as do North Americans. Experiments indicate that conflicting opinions when discussed in a cooperative context promote open-mindedness and integrated views. Studies are showing how Chinese values can contribute to positive conflict. Field studies document that cooperative conflict dynamics contribute to effective teamwork, leadership, and quality customer service in today’s Chinese organizations.

Documenting Causal Relationships Between Cooperation, Open-Minded Discussion, and Effectiveness

In an experiment, Chinese people who had cooperative compared to competitive goals were more open toward the opposing position and negotiator (Tjosvold and Sun, 2001b). Participants in cooperation were committed to mutual bene­fit, were interested in learning more about the opposing views, considered these views useful, had come to agree with them, and tended to integrate them into their own decisions. They were more attracted to the other protagonist and had greater confidence in working together in the future than participants in the competitive condition.

More surprisingly, the Chinese participants were able to use and responded favorably to open discussion itself. Direct disagreement, compared to smoothing over the opposing views, strengthened relationships, and induced curiosity where Chinese people asked questions, explored opposing views, demonstrated knowl­edge, and worked to integrate views (Tjosvold and Sun, 2003). Indicating that they found open discussion valuable, participants characterized protagonists who disagreed directly and openly as strong persons and competent negotiators whereas avoiding protagonists were considered weak and ineffectual.

Chinese participants were found to choose disagreement when they felt con­fident in their own abilities (Tjosvold, Nibler, and Wan, 2001). Protagonists used direct controversy to build a cooperative relationship and open-mindedly explored and understood the opposing view whereas avoiders were competitive and unaware (Tjosvold and Sun, forthcoming). In another experiment, partici­pants in China found that open compared to avoiding discussion and problem solving compared to blaming stimulated the exploration, integration, and adop­tion of alternative ideas as well as strengthening interpersonal relationships (Tjosvold and Sun, forthcoming). Evidence also suggests that openness and problem solving have these effects by developing perceived cooperative inter­dependence that encourages people to believe that incorporating alternative ideas can help them succeed. Avoidance and blaming, on the other hand, result in a competitive struggle to see who can impose their ideas on the other, leaving people committed to their original thinking.

Cooperation, Open-Minded Discussion, and Effectiveness in Chinese Organizations

Field studies provide evidence that the experimental findings apply to various kinds of task and organizational settings in China. Cooperative goals have been found to promote the open-minded discussion of diverse views. Studies also indicate that managing conflict for mutual benefit (cooperative conflict) pro­motes effective teamwork and leadership.

In a study of thirty-nine groups and their supervisors in Hangzhou, China, work teams in China that used open-minded, constructive discussion of their differences promoted product quality and cost reduction; these discussions were more likely with cooperative than competitive goals (Tjosvold and Wang, 1998). Cooperative, open-minded discussions of service problems helped restaurant employees work together to serve their customers (Tjosvold, Moy, and Sasaki, 1996). Conflicts over scarce resources have been thought particularly divisive. However, an open-minded discussion helped Hong Kong accountants and managers dig into and resolve bud­get issues, strengthen their relationships, and improve budget quality so that limited financial resources were used wisely (Poon, Pike, and Tjosvold, 2001). These dis­cussions were much more likely with cooperative than competitive goals.

Constructive controversy can be useful for Chinese people to deal with both task and emotional issues. Over one hundred teams working in Chinese orga­nizations who discussed issues open-mindedly were able to deal with biases and took risks effectively (Tjosvold and Yu, forthcoming). These risk-taking groups were able both to innovate and to recover from their mistakes. Con­structive controversy also helped managers and employees in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland express and handle their anger successfully (Tjosvold, 2002; Tjosvold and Su, forthcoming).

Earlier studies found that cooperative goals and constructive controversy were useful for Singaporean Chinese managers and employees to resolve issues and work productively together (Tjosvold and Chia, 1989; Tjosvold and Tsao, 1989). Findings also demonstrated that student groups that have cooperative goals have more open-minded and more productive discussion of diverse ideas than those with competitive and independent goals (Chen and Tjosvold, 2002; Tjosvold, Wong, Nibler, and Pounder, 2002).

Studies have shown that cooperative approaches to managing conflict are typically more productive for getting things done as well as developing relationships compared to competitive, trying to win and avoiding approaches to conflict. Cooperative conflict was found to help 100 work teams in Shanghai, China, reflect upon their work effectively so that they could adjust and strengthen their procedures (Tjosvold, Hui, and Yu, forthcoming). Teams that rated themselves as high on cooperative conflict and reflexivity were also rated by their managers as productive and as good organizational citizens. Coopera­tive conflict was found to develop a sense of fairness in teams that helped them be productive (Chen and Tjosvold, 2002). Work teams in China that managed their conflicts cooperatively strengthened their confidence in the their relation­ships and this confidence in turn predicated to team effectiveness (Tjosvold, Poon, and Yu, 2005).

Cooperative conflict management may be an important contributor to effec­tive top management teams in China. Executives from 105 high-technology firms around Beijing who indicated that they relied on cooperative rather than com­petitive or avoiding conflict were rated by their CEOs as effective and their orga­nizations as innovative (Chen, Liu, and Tjosvold, 2005).

Studies have also shown that cooperative conflict management contributes to effective collaboration across organizations. Supply chain partners in China that relied on a cooperative approach to conflict, rather than competitive or avoiding approaches, felt that they had developed a strong sense of justice in their relationships and this in turn resulted in strategic advantage and inno­vation (Tjosvold, Wong, and Chen, 2005). Hong Kong, Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese building contractors used cooperative conflict, but not com­petitive or avoiding conflict, to work successfully with their subcontractors (Tjosvold, and others, 2001). Manufacturing managers in Hong Kong who handled conflict cooperatively used their frustrations with suppliers in main­land China to improve product quality (Wong, Tjosvold, Wong, and Liu, 1999).