Chapter 3: Conflict and Harmony in Foreign-Sino Ventures in China

Leadership has traditionally been defined as the ability to influence, motivate and enable employees to contribute to the effectiveness of organizations (House, Javidan, Hanges, & Dorfman, 2002). But this ability is complex and difficult to master. Indeed, in a survey, only 8% of executives believed that their organization had sufficient leadership (Groves, 2005). Fortunately, considerable recent research has emphasized that leaders who develop high-quality relationships are able to empower employees to perform both in-role and extra-role responsibilities (Brower, Schoorman, & Tan, 2000; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; House, Wright & Aditya, 1997; Hui & Law, 1999). But developing these relationships is also challenging, especially when leaders and employees are from different cultures. This chapter proposes programs of that cooperative conflict management helps leaders and employees, especially when they have different national/cultural backgrounds and values, develop leader-member exchange (LMX) high- quality relationships and take advantage of them.