Communication
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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 resolution