CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

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On the Outside Looking In:
Window Shopping for Insights
Into Diversity-Driven Conflict
Kristin sMith-CroWe anD arthur P. Brief
David eccles school of Business, university of utah
elizaBeth e. uMPhress
Mays Business school, texas a&M university
None of us label ourselves as conflict researchers. We do, however, share
an interest in organizational diversity (e.g., Umphress, Smith-Crowe, Brief,
Dietz, & Watkins, 2007); and, even though organizational scholars rarely
view diversity through a conflict lens, we are aware that doing so can be
worthwhile (e.g., Brief, Umphress, et al., 2005). We are not alone here. For
example, in their introductory chapter, De Dreu and Gelfand (this volume)
reasoned principally from social identity theory (e.g., Tajfel, 1978)
that diversity is a source of value-related and relationship conflicts. Also,
in this volume, Jehn, Bezrukova, and Thatcher’s contribution is devoted to
diversity issues and conflict.
Given our common interests and outsiders’ perspective, we thought it
would be a potentially fruitful exercise to study the contributions in this
book with an eye toward insights into diversity-driven conflicts and how
to resolve them. To this end, we posed a series of questions about such conflicts
and then we poured over the chapters in search of answers. This process
yielded insights and perhaps even more questions, indicating the many
insights yet unrealized. More broadly, it suggested to us that organizational
conflict research could better inform those organizational scholars whose
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