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102 Nathalie van Meurs and Helen Spencer-Oatey

Table 1. Main terms used as labels for the five conflict management orientations
High self/high High self/low Medium self/ Low self/high Low self/low
other concern other concern medium other other concern other concern
concern
– Integrating – Dominating – Compromis- – Appeasing – Neglecting
(Thomas (Thomas ing (Thomas (Thomas (Thomas
1976; 1976; 1976; 1976) 1976)
Rahim Rahim Rahim – Accommo- – Avoidant/
1992) 1992) 1992) dative (Tho- avoiding
– Collabor- – Competitive – Sharing mas 1976) (Thomas
ative (Tho- (Thomas (Thomas – Obliging 1976;
mas 1976) 1976) 1976) (Rahim Rahim
– Problem – Contending 1992) 1992; De
solving (De (De Dreu – Yielding Dreu 1997)
Dreu 1997) 1997) (De Dreu
1997)

Thomas and Kilmann (1974) developed the Thomas–Kilmann conflict MODE
instrument to measure people’s conflict handling orientations. However, Rahim
(1983) criticized its validity and reliability, and developed the ‘Rahim Organiz-
ational Conflict Inventory-II’ (ROCI-II Instrument). It achieved higher reliabil-
ity scores, and this instrument has been widely used by researchers in manage-
ment studies and intercultural communication. However, Sorenson, Morse and
Savage (1999) actually measured the underlying concerns particular to the dual
concern model (i.e. self vs. others) and found that only dominating and appease-
ment strategy choice correlated with these concerns; the more integrative strat-
egies (i.e. problem solving and obliging) shared little variance and seemed sub-
ject to other contextual variables.

3.2. Intercultural perspectives
In his structural model, Thomas (1976) maintains that people’s response styles
are hierarchically ordered, in that they have a dominant style, a back-up style, a
least-preferred style and so on. He suggested that this hierarchy could be in-
fluenced by factors such as personality, motives and abilities. Could culture,
therefore, influence this hierarchy, with some orientations being more prevalent
in certain societies than in others? Many cross-cultural researchers have explored
this question, and a widespread finding (e.g., Bond and Hwang 1986; Morris et
al. 1998; Ohbuchi and Takahashi 1994; Trubinsky, Ting-Toomy and Lin 1991)
is that a neglect style (that is also labeled avoidance) is more common among
East Asians than among Americans. Yet, van Meurs (2003) found there were
also differences between British and Dutch managers in this respect. Her results