Cultural Values and Preferences for Compromising: An Examination of Preferences among Americans, Bulgarians, Chinese, Iranians, and Mexicans

Vol. 5 No. 3

Year : 2011

Issue : Dec-Feb

Title  : Cultural Values and Preferences for Compromising: An Examination of Preferences among Americans, Bulgarians, Chinese, Iranians, and Mexicans 

Author Name  : Asad Yavari, Ben Mahdavian , Stephen J.J.Mcguire, Mohammad Ala 

Synopsis  : 

We examined cultural values and preferences for compromising among 948 university students from Bulgaria, China, Iran, Mexico, and US.  Our purpose was to test hypotheses that individual-level cultural values and conflict management preferences varied by country, and that certain cultural values were predictive of a preference for compromising.Our results show significant differences between respondents from the five different countries on three of five conflict management preferences: compromising, collaborating, and accommodating; we did not find significant differences in competing or avoiding.  As hypothesized, we found that females preferred compromising more (and competing less) than males did, and that age had no association with any preference.  Results also indicated significant country differences on four out of five cultural values: being — doing orientation, determinism — free will, uncertainty acceptance — uncertainty avoidance, and individualism — collectivism, but not power distance.  Finally, we tested the hypothesis that being orientation, determinism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism would negatively predict a preference for compromising when controlling for gender.  While overall results did not support this hypothesis, when we examined each country group individually, we did find that one or more of the values being orientation, uncertainty avoidance, determinism, and power distance were significant, negative predictors of compromising preference for four of the five country samples.