Globalization and the increased complex­ity and interdependence of contemporary issues have concomitantly created a greater need for organizational cooperation and a greater possibility for organizational conflict.

Contemporary issues such as the global distri­bution of goods and the need for healthy work environments are so complex they require cooperation and new forms of partnerships among organizations from different sectors of society and cultural groups.

But it is not just the large global issues and joint collaborations that have changed the nature of organizational life. Technological and structural innovations affect our every­day experiences, our sense of self, and our relationship to our communities. Digital media have changed the nature of our work, how we accomplish our work, and with whom we work. Communication across time and space is less costly, boundaries are more permeable, interpersonal and group relations are more fluid, and networks are transformed. B oth long-term and short-term transnational teams are now a central feature of the global workplace and a major context for both conflict and cooperation.

The changing face of the global workforce and substantial increases in participation by traditional minorities (e.g., women, Hispanic workers in the United States, Turkish work­ers in Scandinavia and Germany, South Asian workers in the Gulf States region) further facilitate increasing contact among diverse groups with diverse values, expectations, and norms. Traditional dominance by a particular cultural group is ending, and expectations for the less dominant are rising.

Clearly, globalization has brought amaz­ing opportunities to work smarter, faster, more creatively, and better with more people across time and space. Heterogeneous and flexible groups are more creative, increase the quality of ideas generated, and are more likely to reach high-quality decisions than homogeneous groups (Surowiecki, 2004). Globalization and heterogeneity go hand in hand. But as we shall see, heterogeneity also brings challenges and greater possibilities for conflict.

This chapter follows five central arguments that will help us better understand conflict in the global workplace: (1) definitions of global­ization, culture, and cultural variability influ­ence how we understand conflict; (2) conflict dynamics occur at the nexus of macrofeatures of the environment and the microcontext of the work group; (3) paradoxes of globaliza­tion create powerful tensions across organi­zations and groups; (4) transnational teams are a primary site of workplace conflict; and (5) global alliances mirror the conflict dynam­ics found in teams.