UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item The Dynamics of Intimate Intercultural Relationships: The Negotiation of Cultural and Relational Identities on Intercultural Couples’ Conflict Management(2019) Chien, Hsin-Yi; Atwell Seate, Anita; Khamis, Sahar; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research suggests that intercultural romantic relationships are replete with opportunities for conflict. Intercultural couples not only need to manage relational concerns, they also need to reconcile cultural differences. During this process, interculturally-dating/married individuals often engage in cultural (un)learning. However, the intersection of intercultural communication, acculturation, and conflict communication remains largely untheorized in extant literature. Moreover, extant studies on intercultural couples’ conflict management are mostly conducted with Western samples, with a majority of them studying interracial couples that share the same national culture. To address these gaps, this dissertation employed a mixed methods design to study interculturally-dating/married Taiwanese’s relational conflict experiences. This dissertation project aims to provide a better understanding of how cultural and relational factors might work in tandem to influence intercultural couples’ relational conflict management and relational dynamics, including their relational identity orientations and relationship satisfaction. Study 1 was conducted using qualitative in-depth interviews (N = 20). Results showed that (a) some participants enacted conflict strategies that were inconsistent with their endorsed cultural values and that (b) the so-called (non-)constructive strategies, as categorized in Western conflict literature, did not seem to have uniform influences on relationship satisfaction. These unexpected findings indicated that new approaches are needed to more thoroughly understand intercultural couples’ conflict management. In Study 2, a cross-sectional survey with interculturally-dating/married Taiwanese was conducted to test two working models (N = 412). The first working model proposed that cultural (i.e., self-construals), relational (i.e., concerns for self and the partner), and contextual (i.e., neighborhood compositions) factors, collectively, influenced respondents’ relational identity orientations. It was further hypothesized that relational identity orientations predicted respondents’ actual conflict behaviors, whereas self-construals predicted their preferred conflict styles. The second working model investigated if discrepancies between conflict style preferences and enacted conflict behaviors represented an identity gap, which negatively influenced relationship satisfaction. Results provided partial support for these hypotheses. Although relational identity orientations functioned as better predictors of actual conflict behaviors than self-construals, their effects were in the opposite direction than hypothesized. While personal-enacted identity gap negatively predicted relationship satisfaction, the hypothesized indirect effects from conflict management discrepancies to relationship satisfaction through identity gap were only significant for two out of five conflict types: integrating and avoiding. Taken together, results indicate that a theoretical framework that simultaneously captures cultural, relational, and contextual influences provides better prediction of interculturally-dating/married individuals’ actual conflict behaviors. In addition, this dissertation suggests that inter/cross-cultural conflict research can benefit from a non-Western centric approach to theorizing the effects of conflict tactics.Item Putting Out Fires: How Communication Professionals Understand and Practice Conflict Resolution(2014) Allen, Susan D.; Toth, Elizabeth L; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Do communication professionals fill the role of negotiators and conflict resolvers within their organizations? Some scholars (Dozier, Grunig, & Grunig, 1995; Plowman, 2007) have claimed this role theoretically, but little research evidence has verified the negotiator role in practice. To gather empirical evidence, I conducted a qualitative research study (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) using in-depth interviews and critical incident technique with thirty-one public relations professionals who had an average of 18 years of experience in a variety of organizations across the United States and overseas. Data analysis included open and axial coding and integration with prior research. Validity and reliability were enhanced through member checking, triangulation of data, and peer review of findings. Researcher bias was minimized through bracketing and audit trails. Findings showed that practitioners experienced most conflict within teams and other internal audiences, practiced conflict avoidance rather than conflict engagement, understood individual level factors as major contributors to conflict, and avoided digital channels in conflict resolution. A model of practitioners as transformers of organizational conflict is proposed. This exploratory study leaves an important question unanswered: Can communication practitioners play a recognized role in transforming organizational conflicts rather than negotiating solutions? A quantitative survey with random sampling could be a next step in verifying the extent of conflict resolution in communication practice and how practitioners can engage workplace conflict more effectively. However, communication practitioners in my sample strongly recommended conflict training and activism to promote conflict transformation as an official role for public relations professionals. Keywords: negotiation, public relations, communication professionals, conflict management, conflict transformation, grounded theory, digital conflict resolutionItem Managing Discontent: Institutions, Intervention and Ethnic Conflict(2006-03-21) Biswas, Bidisha; Lichbach, Mark I; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last fifteen years, the number of civil conflicts worldwide has declined and negotiated settlements have increased. The spread of democracy and greater international concern about domestic conflicts have encouraged states to adopt a negotiations-based approach to addressing minority grievances. In many conflicts, international intervention has played a significant role in facilitating dialogue and peace settlements. The complexities of cases of ethno political conflict suggest that a twin track approach, which looks at the domestic and the international levels of analysis, is critical. Yet, the existing literature on conflict management tends to study either international intervention or domestic institutions. Intersections between the two are ignored. Combining a cross-national analysis using the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset with a case study of Sri Lanka, this research project examines the relative and combined impact of domestic institutions and international intervention on the management and de-escalation of conflict. Uncertainty and mistrust between the state and minority groups drives political violence. Mitigating this uncertainty and building trust become essential for building peace. The extant literature fails, however, to recognize that the pathways to building trust and reducing uncertainty vary according to domestic political capacity. When the conflict-affected state is facing domestic institutional anarchy, coercive forms of international intervention, such as offering security guarantees through peacekeeping troops, become necessary. In contrast, where conflict co-exists with relative political stability and some measure of democracy, non-coercive intervention, such as mediation, becomes critical. In contrast to collapsed states, the challenge in such countries is to reform, rather than replace or create, institutions. Where the state is not facing a collapse of authority, facilitative intervention, such as mediation, can be a more cost-effective conflict management tool than high-cost, high-impact actions. This class of cases, which includes Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, has not been adequately investigated in the existing scholarly literature. The arguments and findings presented here make an important contribution by focusing on the interactive role of domestic and international variables, particularly in relatively stable states.