Interrole Conflict

A traditional area of organizational conflict research focuses on the competing demands and expectations that a person experiences when tying to fulfill different roles. Interrole conflict is negatively associated with several critical dimen­sions of employee experience such as satisfaction and balance (Broome, DeTurk, Kristjansdottir, Kanata, & Ganesan, 2002).

The description of a festering conflict between Japanese nationals and the multicul­tural American members of a San Francisco­based Nomizu sake-making team highlights the many types of cultural differences that simultaneously emerge in multinational teams.

The Americans had no cultural or artistic connection to sake making and saw their job as a basic nine to five commitment of wage labor. They were characterized by their sense of individual identity, equal sense of status, informal style and direct assertiveness. In comparison, the Japanese nationals were characterized by a sense of group identity, respect for hierarchical status, formal style and indirect expression. Consequently, the American portion of the workforce, though initially intrigued by the novelty of Kawate’s management techniques, soon grew tired of having to work past five o’clock p.m. to meet daily production quotas, as did their Japanese counterparts. (G. Morgan, 1989, p. 311)

After serious work disruption and the inability to bridge the basic differences in team members’ ideas of what “work” meant, man­agement decided “it was much more cost effec­tive for the company to allow the Japanese to work overtime until production quotas were met and let the Americans go home at five o'clock as they wished” (G. Morgan, 1989, p. 313). In this case, the cultural gap remained, and the conflict cycles continued.