Effectively Managing Corporate Culture, Race and Conflict Resolution

[Frank T.]

Effectively Managing Corporate Culture, Race and Conflict Resolution
By Frank T. Scruggs
May 2009

The North American workplace provides one of the few opportunities where men and women, blacks and whites come together and interact with one another since for the most part blacks and whites live in separate worlds personally and socially.
According to New York’s St. John’s University, law professor Cheryl Wade, a corporate culture that is intolerant of racial inequity will reduce litigation thereby avoiding the kinds of huge settlements recently paid by large corporations like Coca Cola, Texaco and Boeing. Effective monitoring will also reduce the costs of arbitrating such disputes and the costs of negative publicity generated by charges of racial discrimination. Corporate culture therefore is highly crucial in determining how conflict as an issue of concern is dealt with and in many cases how conflict may actually be created by a company’s culture. Wade also stressed that shareholders need not have to be altruistic when dealing with racial identity and perceptions of racism since resolving these issues effectively is beneficial economically and build wealth since losses resulting from racially toxic corporate cultures are reduced thus creating a more harmonious and productive workplace.
Inequality often hinders conflict to a point causing inadequate resolution. This imbalance creates a situation leading to inequality and unequal participants. The conflict then has not really been favorably resolved. Sociologist Marian Borg an expert in the area of social control and conflict resolution has identified five forms of conflict management in which African Americans, African Canadians and other minorities may choose in order to deal with the everyday disputes that arises in the school, workplace and other organizations. These five forms of conflict management include the ideas that:
•People can reach a negotiated settlement between themselves by talking to each other,
•They can avoid each other (which according to Redford Williams, M.D. is a form of hostility),
•Another alternative is to tolerate the wrong and decide not to take any action whatsoever,
•People can also resort to self-help which involves using force or aggression to resolve the conflict (which may cause additional problems or may be socially unacceptable or even end up as a criminal action),
•The final form is to seek or ask for third party intervention to manage or resolve the conflict i.e. legal assistance, human resources, mediation, etc.
Borg also stresses that the relationship people maintain with one another affects how they’ll resolve the conflict. Factors that determines the relationship between people is equality or the extent that people involved in a conflict have equal access to resources, social distance which is the extent of intimacy between people (e.g., family member, coworker, complete stranger) and cultural distance that people share which is understood to mean whether or not they share the same language, lifestyle, values and/or sense of right and wrong.
Let us all maintain a sustained dialogue with one on ways of confronting and reducing racism, sexism and bias in our institutions and workplaces. Every corporate officer, senior managers, business, professional organizations and all of Corporate America, and members U.S. and Canadian academic can become a site of empowerment and equity for all if we realistically confront issues of bias and challenges of racism and white privilege if we work towards genuine understanding of one another. Contact me or simply leave a comment anytime at http://www.friendsofknowledge.com and let me know what’s on your mind.