International Journal of Project Management Vol. 17, No. 6, pp.

393399, 1999
# 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0263-7863/99 $20.00 + 0.00

PII: S0263-7863(98)00059-3

Conict management styles in Hong

Kong industries
C C Cheung and K B Chuah

Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong,
83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China

Review of literature has revealed that little research on conict management has been conducted
in Hong Kong industries despite Hong Kong being one of the world's most competitive economies, and a major commercial, nancial, industrial centre. This paper examines the use of dierent conict resolutions in 63 actual case studies from Hong Kong industries. Contrary to
common perception and previous ndings, `confrontation', as a mode of conict resolution, is
found to be more commonly used in handling conict. And signicantly, almost all of the case
incidents which used the `confrontation' approach were said to have achieved positive consequences. The authors argue that this change of resolution strategy in the past decade could be
due to the increasing number of Hong Kong companies adopting the matrix structure explicitly
or implicitly in carrying their projects. It appears that in Hong Kong industries, the inuence of
the Chinese culture and traditional values in attitude, behaviour and professional practices of
both engineers as well as managers, is diminishing. Although the `withdrawal' and `forcing'
approaches were also being used for certain types of conict, as revealed by some of the case
studies, the consequences are often recognised to be dysfunctional to team work. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved
Keywords: conict resolution, conict management styles, case studies, Hong Kong industries

Introduction
In recent years, a number of researchers and practitioners in project management have reported that
there is an increasing trend in the use of cross-functional project teams because of the dynamic nature of
today's projects and their life cycles.1, 2 More and
more, conict is being perceived and accepted as inevitable in such a stressful project-oriented environment.
Project managers should therefore be able to identify
the sources of conicts and apply appropriate resolutions in today's project environment.1 Tjosvold3 and
Deustch4 suggest that when conict is appropriately
managed, it could be constructive and even add substantial value to an organisation. They, and a number
of other Western researchers, have written much about
how to eectively confront and resolve the various
types of organisational, task-related or personal conicts (e.g.1, 38).
Hong Kong was ranked as the world's third most
competitive economy in the Institute for Management
Development's
1996
World
Competitiveness
Yearbook.9 It is located at the major conuence of
eastwest commercial, nancial, industrial and cultural
activities. From our extensive literature search on conict management and its related issues in Hong Kong
industries, to our surprise, we have found little being
written about this subject locally in the last few dec-

ades. One of the few such studies was done by Tang

and Kirkbride10 a decade ago, on the development of
conict handling skills in Hong Kong under the inuence of dierent cultures. They found that the Chinese
executives of both the Government and private sectors
in Hong Kong preferred to use the `compromising'
and `withdrawal' approaches to handle or resolve conict. They concluded that the choice of conict handling styles was culture specic. In a dierent study
conducted by Tsang11 in 1993, on conict management
styles of Chinese and Western managers in Hong
Kong, the author had observed that most Chinese
managers in Hong Kong generally adopted the nonconfronting
approachesi.e.
`withdrawal'
and
`smoothing' when dealing with conicts in organisations.

Purpose of the present study

Do culture issues and traditional values still play a signicant role in managers' choice of conict resolution
strategies in Hong Kong industries today? This is one
question we seek to answer. In a recent study conducted by Chuah et al.12, the matrix organization
structure is found to be the most widely used project
organization structure in Hong Kong. Contemporary
Hong Kong engineers' and engineering managers'
393

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

views on project management were found to be much

inuenced by modern Western concepts and practices.
Have these local engineers and engineering managers
started to view conicts and conict management with
a dierent perspective too?
Research into conict management concepts, techniques and tools and their use to improve project
team's eciency and eectiveness have been undertaken in the West for many decades (see e.g.18, 1321).
There are, broadly speaking, two dierent approaches
in conict management. The classical approach sets
out to reduce and minimise the occurrence and level of
conict to achieve harmony and co-operation within
an organisation.13, 14, 19, 20 Contemporary researchers,
however, suggest that conict in many of today's organisations is inevitable and unavoidable, with the
possibility of positive or negative consequences
depending on how eectively it has been resolved or
managed.1, 38, 1518, 21 Increasingly in recent years, more
researchers and practitioners have adopted the latter
approach. They believe that when properly managed,
in what Tjosvold3 aptly calls, ``a positive conict organization'', disagreements and conicts can in fact be
used as opportunities which help to improve group
cohesion and project team performance.3, 4, 21 The signicance and eectiveness of using the `confrontation'
or `collaboration' mode to manage conict is particularly emphasized by Tjosvold.3 His ndings point out
that conscious and deliberate eort to understand conict, confronting and managing it with a positive attitude, will help a present day company to achieve
continuous improvement in its competitive edge and
employees' job satisfaction.
In the last two decades, the success of Hong Kong
companies, whether they are indigenous or subsidiaries
of overseas corporations, is well acknowledged around
the world. The tremendous pace of economic development is partly the result of these Hong Kong companies and entrepreneurs' willingness and ability to seize
the opportunities brought about by the open-market
policies in China since the early eighties. The World
Bank has estimated that Asia will account for half the
growth in world trade between 1993 and 2000.22 In the
few months before and after 1 July 1997, changeover
of Hong Kong's sovereignty from Britain to China,
much has been written about Hong Kong and from
many perspectives. Among them, there have been a lot
of articles about real and potential political and societal conicts in Hong Kong during this time of
change. However, as mentioned earlier, apart from
work by Tang and Kirkbride,10 Tsang11 and Lau,28 we
have found nothing in recent literature about intra-organisational conicts and conict management in
Hong Kong industries. Today Hong Kong is well
established as one of the ve `Dragons' in the Asia
Pacic region, namely Taiwan, Korea, Singapore,
Hong Kong and the new addition, Southern China.
With other southeast Asian countries and other
developing countries pushing hard, the level of competition is expected to become more severe. Certainly,
the rapid growth of China's economy has attracted
much attention and investment. Owing to Hong
Kong's historical lineage and traditional link with
Mainland China, coupled with its rapidly rising costs
of labour and land, the opening up of South China,
the Pearl River Delta in particular, two decades ago
394

oered a golden opportunity which the Hong Kong

manufacturers and entrepreneurs took with earnest.
Hong Kong has been the largest source of `foreign'
direct investment in China since the start of Deng
Xiaoping's bold experiment`Capitalism with Chinese
Characteristic'.23
This study sets out to examine how contemporary
Hong Kong engineers and engineering managers deal
with the day-to-day intra-organizational conicts. The
study also aims to identify the main factors which inuence the general practice of conict management in
Hong Kong. This paper presents our ndings on their
conict-management styles.

Methodology
The ndings presented in this paper are based on the
analysis of 63 conict case incidents written and submitted by part-time students of the MSc in
Engineering Management (MScEM) programme at the
City University of Hong Kong over the last 3 years.
This MScEM is a post-experience engineering management development programme conducted in the evenings. These students (i.e. the original case authors)
come from a diversied industrial background including government agencies, public utilities, large corporations and small enterprises. They are professional
engineers, technical personnel or engineering managers
from dierent Hong Kong industrial sectors and have
an average of 7 years' working experience. The piechart in Figure 1 shows the distribution of the
MScEM students across industries involving public utilities (electricity, gas, telecommunications, transportation), manufacturing (electronics, electrical products,
computers and peripherals), government agencies
(highway department, electrical and mechanical services department), and engineering services (construction, electrical and mechanical engineering services,
and installation and maintenance). Although there
were occasionally a few non-Chinese students in the
MScEM classes during the past few years, all of the
case authors of these 63 case incidents were local
Chinese. As a part of the programme requirements,
the students were required to submit a written assignment selecting from a set of questions. One of the
questions asked them ``to describe a good and/or bad
experience of conict and conict resolution'' in their
respective organisations with consideration of the following suggested areas:

Figure 1 Distribution of MScEM students across industries

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

.
.
.
.
.
.

the situation in which the conict occurred;

the types of conict described;
the key persons involved;
the likely causes of the conicts;
how they were resolved of handled; and
why he/she have felt particularly good or bad
about the experience.

The students were also instructed to use Kezsbom's

13 conict sources1 and the 5 classical modes of conict resolution, discussed in the next two sections, as
reference in their evaluation and write-up of their chosen case incidents. The cases reported were all based
on actual conict events which the students either were
directly involved in or had rst hand knowledge of. It
is worth pointing out that these case incidents had not
been pre-selected for the present study and analysis.
The information extracted from these case incidents
gives a truly representative picture of the types of conicts that commonly occur, and how they are resolved
in Hong Kong industries today.

Conict sources
Thamhain and Wilemon15, 16 have categorised causes of
conict over the life cycle of a project into 7 major
sources, namely, project priorities, administrative procedures, technical opinions and performance trade-os,
manpower resources, cost, schedules and personality.
Recently, Kezsbom1 presented a more comprehensive
list of 13 major conict sources. She included in this
expanded list, 6 other sources like, communication,
reward structure/performance appraisal, politics, leadership, ambiguous roles/structure, and unresolved
prior conicts. Brief descriptions of these 13 conict
sources are given below:
1. Schedulingdisagreements that develop around
the timing, sequencing, duration of projects and
feasibility of schedule for project-related tasks or
activities.
2. Managerial and administrative proceduresdisagreements that develop over how the project will
be managed; the denition of reporting relationships and responsibilities, interface relationships,
project scope, work design, plans of execution,
negotiated work agreements with other groups,
and procedures for administrative support.
3. Communicationdisagreements resulting in poor
information ow among sta or between senior
management and technical sta including, such
topics as misunderstanding of project-related goals
and the strategic mission of the organisation and
the ow of communication from technical sta to
senior management.
4. Goal or priority denitiondisagreements arising
from lack of goals or poorly dened project goals,
including disagreements regarding the project mission and related tasks, diering views of project
participants over the importance of activities and
tasks, or the shifting of priorities by superiors/customers.
5. Resource allocationdisagreements resulting from
the competition for resources (for example, personnel, materials, facilities and equipment) among
projects members or across teams, or from lack of
resources of downsizing of organisations.

6. Reward structure/performance appraisal or measurementdisagreements that originate from dierences in reward structure and from the insucient
match between the project team approach and the
performance appraisal system.
7. Personality and interpersonal relationsdisagreements that focus on interpersonal dierences
rather than on `technical' issues; includes conicts
that are ego-centred, personality dierences or
caused by prejudice or stereotyping.
8. Costsdisagreements that arise from the lack of
cost control authority within either the project
management or functional group, or from the allocation of funds.
9. Technical opiniondisagreements that arise, particularly in technology-oriented projects, over technical issues, performance specications, technical
trade-os, and the means to achieve performance.
10. Politicsdisagreements that centre on issues of
territorial power, personal inuences or hidden
agendas.
11. Leadership: poor input or directiondisagreements
that arise from a need for clarication from upper
management on project-related goals and strategic
mission of the organisation, or from a perception
by specialists of a lack of decision-making regarding project goals.
12. Ambiguous
roles/structuredisagreements,
especially in matrix structures where two or more individuals or sections have related or overlapping
assignments or roles.
13. Unresolved prior conictdisagreements stemming
from prior unresolved conicts.
There is also a number of other authors who have
classied conicts sources or causes dierently in
dierent working environments (see e.g.2427). We are
of the opinion that Kezsbom's list is more comprehensive in today's dynamic project environment. As mentioned in the previous section, it is used by the
MScEM students as a reference checklist in their
evaluation and write-up of their chosen case incidents.

Conict handling methods

More than three decades ago, Blake and Mouton13
identied 5 main methods for resolving or handling
conict. Subsequent researchers have largely concurred
on these but some have called them by dierent terms.
These 5 classical methods or modes of conict resolution (with other common alternative terms given in
brackets) are described below. The case authors were
asked to refer to these 5 conict resolution modes in
their reporting of their respective conict incidents.
The description of each resolution mode below is supported by an appropriate incident selected from the 63
case studies:
1. Withdrawal (Denial/Avoidance)to ignore or deny
an actual or potential disagreement.
Case incident: In a building consultancy rm, a
quantity surveyor was required to report his
work progress regularly to both a project manager and a quantity surveying manager. There
was always disagreement over the job priority set
by the quantity surveyor with these two managers
395

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

but the managers never tried to face or resolve

the conict directly with each other. They had
chosen to ignore the `awkward or dicult situation' for as long as they could so as to maintain
the supposedly good relationship or `guan-xi'
with one another.

as soon as possible, they eventually agreed on a

compromisei.e. to accept the current design
and work on a new system for those countries
having more than 15-digit international call numbers at the later stage.

2. Smoothing (Suppression)to emphasise the commonalities or strong points and to de-emphasise or

even suppress any dierences in viewpoints among
conicting parties.
Case incident: In a hospital workshop, artisans
were not satised with the new job assignment in
a remote hospital and at rst, nobody was willing
to take the new jobs. The supervisor managed to
persuade them to change their minds and accept
(reluctantly) the new assignments by repeatedly
emphasising on the benets, the common good it
was going to bring to the company as well as the
artisans. Deep-down, the artisans aected were
still very unhappy about the longer travelling
time and higher cost incurred and other inconveniences caused as a result of the move.

5. Confrontation (Integration / Collaboration / Problem

Solving)to face or confront conict directly with
a problem-solving attitude and generate the `best'
solution even though the original views of either or
both conicting parties may need to be modied or
discarded. Both parties set out to seek for a win
win situation.

3. Forcing (Power)to exert one's point of view at

the expense of another and often lead to a win/lose
situation.
Case incident: In a manufacturing company,
there had been some disagreement about the
quality acceptance level for a new product
between the quality engineer and the manufacturing engineer. The manufacturing engineer was of
the opinion that production people needed time
to `move up the learning curve' and become familiar with the new product and the intricacies of
its production process. Therefore, he argued, the
acceptance level should not be the same as that
of the current products. However, the more
senior quality engineer simply insisted on reworking all rejected items. Although the quality engineer might have had some valid reasons for his
decision and insistence, he had not bothered to
explain or justify his action. He got his way
because of his seniority, but there were many disgruntled people on the shop oor, not to mention
the manufacturing engineer!
4. Compromising (Negotiation)to determine `acceptable' solutions in which conicting parties have
some degree of satisfaction with a `give and take'
attitude
Case incident: Two communication network
consultancy companies jointly developed a new
network for international call services. A functional manager was not satised with the existing
design which only supported a maximum of 15digit call identication code. Because of some
countries having international call with more
than 15-digit numbers, he requested the project
team to redesign the system which could support
up to 20-digit codes. The project team did not
agree with the requested design enhancement
owing to the project time constraint. In order to
be able to launch the new service to the market
396

Case incident: In a manufacturing company,

the procurement department complained that
time required for new parts' approval by quality
department was too long. In order to speed up
the process of new product development, the new
project team structure was modied and adopted.
The quality department was to assign an engineer
to participate in the project team early at the design stage to formulate all relevant testing specications and start the design work on testers early
in the product development cycle. Although originally some of the more experienced members of
the product development project team were reluctant to change existing procedures and practices,
after some open discussions and exchange of
opinions, they felt that it was for the good of all
concerned and were willing to accept and support
the change.
More than two decades ago, a study done by
Thamhain and Wilemon15 found that dierent modes
of conict resolution may lead to either positive or
negative consequences. A `withdrawal' approach may
intensify the conict in the future as it is neglected and
left unresolved. A `smoothing' approach may have
similar consequences although the conicting parties
are less resentful as there is inherent emphasis on identifying some common ground in resolving the conict.
A `forcing' approach always leads to a winlose situation, thereby generating feelings of resentment among
conicting parties regardless of whether they come out
as winners or losers. Before using this approach, a project manager should always assess the probable eects
on the team members and all the parties involved.
Although the `compromising' approach can generate
resolutions which satisfy to some degree both the conicting parties, they are most probably not the optimal
ones. It would be too risky to use this approach to
handle disagreements over quality or technical performance issues.21 Finally, the `confrontation'
approach was found to be the most eective solution
in handling conict.14, 15, 21 The conicting parties set
out with a positive frame of mind in search of what is
the best course of action to take. The root causes of
the conict are identied and dierent alternatives and
solutions are generated, debated and the best is
selected. The problems are confronted and solved by
means of a collaborative eort from all concerned.

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

Table 1 Use of conict resolutions across dierent types of conict
Type of conict
Interpersonal
Intragroup
Intergroup
Organisational
Inter-organisational
Total

Withdrawal

Conict resolutions
Forcing

(4)
(2)
(21)
(2)

8 (0)

1 (0)

2 (0)
3 (0)

7 (0)
2 (0)

1 (1)
3 (0)
1 (1)

30 (29)

13 (0)

10 (0)

5 (2)

Confrontation
4
2
22
2

Smoothing

Compromising

Total

1 (0)

14
3
36
8
2
63

2 (1)
2 (0)
5 (1)

Note: each bracketed gure shows the number of cases which are said to have been resolved with positive eects or consequences.

Contrary to the ndings of past local studies, it is

clearly evident that the `confrontation' mode was the
most commonly used approach in handling the types
of conicts detailed in the cases. Indeed, it was used in
30 of the 63 cases, or nearly 50% of the reported
cases! The percentage admittedly is lower than the approximately 70% usage by project managers found in
Thamhain and Wilemon's study16 more than two decades ago. Nevertheless, it is very signicant and surprising that this result is quite dierent from past
studies in Hong Kong, in which `compromising' and
`withdrawal' modes were found to be the dominant
conict-management styles.10, 11 In Tsang's study11
some 5 years ago, only 12% of the cases had used the
`confrontation' approach while more than 50% of the
cases chose the `withdrawal' and `smoothing'
approaches; `confrontation' was not the most commonly used approach in handling conict among the
Chinese executives as the traditional Chinese culture
and values were thought to be the major factor in
shaping the attitude and behaviour of those Chinese
managers.
Moreover, this study also shows that the `confrontation' mode has proved to be eective in handling or
resolving conict of dierent types, in particular intergroup conict which was the most common type of
conict among the reported case incidents. As shown
in Table 1, 36 of the 63 reported cases belonged to this
intergroup conict. Of these 36 cases, 22 were resolved
by the `confrontation' approach. And strikingly, 21 of
these 22 usage of `confrontation' mode were reported
by the respective case authors to have resulted in some
`positive consequences' to the project team or organisation.
Also, we can see from the breakdown of usage of
the `confrontation' mode in Table 2 (second column) it

Discussion of collated information

The summarised case data are presented in Table 1
and Table 2. Table 1 shows the use of the 5 dierent
conictresolution modes in the reported cases. The
case incidents in which these modes were used were
classied into such types of conict as: interpersonal,
intragroup, intergroup, organisational and inter-organisational. The number in each pair of brackets shows
the number of conict cases which are said to have
been handled or resolved with positive consequences
by the case authors. Some examples of positive consequences reported are: enhancement of the project
team's collaboration or eciency; enhancement of
intra- or inter-team communication eectiveness;
shortening of the product development cycle time;
empowerment of sta in handling future conict etc.
The sources of conict in the 63 reported cases are
categorised in Table 2, using Kezsbom's list of 13 conict sources discussed earlier. These are further broken
down according to the conict resolution modes used.
The end column of Table 2 gives the sub-total of the
occurrence of each conict category or source in the
63 reported cases.

Conict resolution modes

The analysis of the case incidents revealed that the
conict management styles of Chinese managers or
executives have switched from the adoption of the
`compromising' or `withdrawal' approach to the `confrontation' approach. The result also clearly indicates
that the `confrontation' approach is eective in handling conict, especially the intergroup conict and the
outcome is usually constructive to an organisation.
Table 2 Use of conict resolutions across dierent conict categories

Conict categories
Scheduling
Managerial and administration procedures
Communication
Goal/priority denition
Resource allocation
Reward structure /performance appraisal
Personality and interpersonal relations
Costs
Technical opinion
Politics
Leadership: poor input or direction
Ambiguous roles/structure
Unresolved prior conict

Conict resolutions
Confrontation Withdrawal
Forcing
(intergroup
(interpersonal
(intergroup
conict)
conict)
conict)
Smoothing
3
7
6
1
6

(3)
(3)
(5)
(1)
(6)

3
1 (1)
1 (1)

1 (1)
1 (1)

3
1 (1)
1

5 (5)

2 (1)

1 (1)

1
2 (1)

1 (1)
3 (3)

1 (1)

1 (1)

Compromising

Sub Total

5
14
7
4
10
0
10
2
6
0
1
2
2

Note: each bracketed gure shows the number of cases where the dispute or disagreement was classied as intergroup or interpersonal conict.

397

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

was often used to handle intergroup conicts concerning `managerial and administration procedures',
`resource allocation' and `communication'. We suggest
that this may be directly linked to the increasingly
popular use of matrix organisation structures, as noted
in a recent study of Chuah et al.12 The matrix project
team is a temporary structure. It is often unlikely that
every member of a matrix team is at the same stage of
the `learning curve' and there will inevitably be confusion in procedures and communication, or disagreements on individuals' level of responsibility and
authority etc. The project manager or co-ordinator in
such an environment needs to work with other functional members under the inherent project constraints
of time, costs and resources. The level of intergroup
communication increases dramatically in this type of
project organisation structure. The project manager or
co-ordinator must ensure eective cross-functional as
well as intra project team communication. The project's cost and schedule objectives and performance
specications have to be met. Sub-optimal compromises or partial completion are not acceptable. And
the project manager or co-ordinator in a matrix project team does not have the full authority to dictate
terms or to `force' a solution he/she wants.
Confronting the conict issues openly then seems to be
the only acceptable option under such circumstances.
`Withdrawal' ranked the second most favoured conict resolution mode and was used in about 20%, or
13 of the 63 reported cases. In contrast, Thamhain and
Wilemon16 found that `withdrawal' was the least
favoured conict resolution mode and more than 40%
of the project managers in their sample rejected this
mode of conict resolution. It is interesting to note
that the `withdrawal' approach is popularly used to
handle conict over personality clashes and interpersonal relations in 8 out of 13, in other words, more of
the 60% of the `withdrawal' cases. We believe that this
phenomenon is related to the inherent inuence of
Chinese culture and traditional values,10 especially in
these types of conict. The Chinese engineers or managers tend to prefer to avoid interpersonal conict in
the belief that maintaining the personal `guan-xi' or relationship and `being a friend rather than an opponent'
are necessary for sustaining goodwill and ensuring
future co-operation or collaboration. However, the
case data in Table 1 have shown that none of the
reported conict issues including the interpersonal
ones, could be satisfactorily resolved by this approach.
In other words, there was no reported `positive' consequence in all of the 13 cases where the `withdrawal'
approach was adopted!
The third choice was the `forcing' mode. Ten out of
the 63 cases had used it. The data in Table 1 show
that more engineers/managers used this technique to
handle intergroup conict. Table 2 shows that the `forcing' mode was more likely to be used to resolve issues
related to resource allocation and managerial and administration procedures. This perhaps is related to the
unique organisational culture in Hong Kong that there
is still a large proportion of rms being owned and
run by members belonging to the same families or
clans.23 In such organisations, autocracy in decision
making and conict resolution is still very much the
norm. However, as in the cases which used the `withdrawal' approach, none of the 10 cases where the `for398

cing' mode was used were said to have been resolved

satisfactorily. Most of the case authors reported that
personnel in the cases disliked being forced to do a
particular job and their working morale was adversely
aected. They observed that gradually a barrier
between the conicting parties would tend to build up.
The `smoothing' and `compromising' modes were
the least preferred, being used in only 5 out of the 63
cases each. Of these 10 cases, 7 were concerned with
resolving intergroup and inter-organisational conicts.
Unpopular though they were, 3 out of these 10 cases
were reported to have been resolved with some positive
consequences.
Sources of conict
The last column of Table 2 shows that dispute over
`managerial and administration procedures' has been
identied as the major source of conict. Over 22% or
14 of the 63 conict cases were said to be due to some
disputes or disagreements in procedural matters. And
7 of these 14 cases were resolved by `confrontation'
mode and two by `forcing' mode. In 3 cases, one party
simply `withdrew' from the disputes.
`Resource allocation' and `personality and interpersonal relations' ranked equal second, each with 10 out
of the 63 cases. The former were predominantly intergroup conicts (9 out of the 10 cases) and was resolved
mainly by the direct `confrontation' approach (6 out
of the 10 cases); but half of the latter were said to be
interpersonal conicts, and understandably, all were
`resolved' by one party `withdrawing' from the scene.
`Communication', `technical opinion', `scheduling'
and `goal or priority denition' were the next 4 more
common sources of conict, causing problems in 7, 6,
5 and 4 cases, respectively. In 6 out of the 7 `communication' disputes, and 3 out of 5 of the `scheduling' disagreements were resolved by direct `confrontation'.
There seems to be a even spread of resolution modes
by which the `technical' and `goal or priority' conicts
were resolved.
The remaining 6 of Kezsbom's list of 13 conict
sources were less frequent causes of conict in this
sample of 63 cases. Surprisingly, none was in fact said
to have been caused by `reward structure/performance
appraisal' disputes or `politics'!
Some possible explanations and reasons for the
observed pattern of conict resolution have been discussed in the previous section. We hypothesize that
these same factors are equally at play in shaping the
pattern of conict sources noted here. Extracted information from the 63 cases helps us to paint a trend not
previously noted. A proper correlation between the
inuencing factors and the observed phenomenon or
consequence in Hong Kong industries' conict management practices would require a series of further,
more structured studies.

Conclusions
This study has found some empirical evidence from
collected case incidents that the inuence of Chinese
culture and traditional values on Hong Kong engineers/managers' perception of conict, and their choice
of resolution methods is diminishing. The information
extracted from the 63 case incidents signies a trend

Conict management styles in Hong Kong industries: C C Cheung and K B Chuah

that the Chinese engineers and managers in Hong

Kong today prefer to use the `confrontation' mode in
their handling of conicts instead of the `compromising' and `withdrawing/avoiding' approaches as
reported in the past. It seems that the cultural and ethnic background is no longer a predominant factor in
determining the conict management style in Hong
Kong. We believe that the change is related to the
increasing use of Western management philosophy and
paradigm and, in particular, the common adoption of
matrix organisation structure. In the light of this changing trend, further research is being carried out by the
authors to develop a practical framework and methodology for conict management practices for selected
industrial environment. We foresee that Hong Kong
management practice will continue to be oriented
towards Western management philosophy and paradigm while still retaining some of the Chinese culture
and values even after its return to Chinese sovereignty
in July 1997. The Chinese leaders in Beijing have
repeatedly emphasized that the `One Country, Two
Systems' concept is here to ensure Hong Kong does
not become another Chinese city, at least in the next
50 years!

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Mr C. C. CHEUNG is an MPhil
research student in the Department
of Manufacturing Engineering and
Engineering Management, City
University of Hong Kong. He has a
Mechanical Engineering degree
from the University of Hong Kong.
After completing a formal period of
professional training in 1992, in
Outboard Marine Corp. (Asia), he
continued to work for the company
until 1996 as a project engineer
dealing with the development of new
four-stroke outboard motors. He
became a corporate member of
IMechE and a Chartered Engineer in 1996 and later a corporate
member of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers in 1997. His
MPhil research is in conict and conict management in Hong
Kong manufacturing industry.
Dr K. B. CHUAH is an Associate
Professor in the Department of
Manufacturing
Engineering
and
Engineering Management, CityU of
Hong Kong. He teaches metrology,
project/technology management and
CIM systems development and implementation. He has a Mechanical
Engineering degree and his PhD was
awarded for his work on a US Navy
sponsored project on Roughness and
Hydrodynamic Drag. He obtained his
DMS while working as a Senior
Research Co-ordinator managing a
multidisciplinary
CIM
Research
Team at Teesside Polytechnic, UK. He joined CityU in 1990 and is
now a core faculty member of both the BEng Manufacturing
Engineering and MSc Engineering Management programmes. His
current research areas are: CAPM and CIM systems implementation and organization restructure, project management practices
in Hong Kong and China, conict management, 3D surface mapping and characterization and knowledge-based project risk management.

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