Methodological flaws in the Intercultural Conflict Style inventory

Cultural Assessment

The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) inventory seeks to explain intercultural communication style along two dimensions. One is direct/indirect and the other is emotional expressiveness/emotional restraint. The theory is that the items in the questionnaire are mutually exclusive, such that one can evenly distribute the points. That was not my experience, but that is the working theory. The results of my quiz showed a score of 16 along the indirect/direct line, which is said to indicate a tendency towards indirectness. That's an interesting finding. Along the emotional expressiveness/restraint axis, I scored a 30, indicating a tendency towards emotional expressiveness. That makes more sense. This puts me in the dynamic style of conflict resolution.

Hammer (2005) notes that the dynamic style is oriented towards indirect strategies. Traits include hyperbole, associative arguments, ambiguity, repetition and use of third party intermediaries. These are not good traits for debate, quite frankly, but again these aren't things that I do much either. I would have put myself in the direct category, and in that would have landed in the engagement style, which is more direct and confrontational in nature, but with emotions.

I do not find this interpretation to be accurate. There are methodological flaws. Choosing between responses that are not mutually exclusive lends to strange results, where I could reasonably choose strongly in favor of both questions. Moreover, I find it nonsensical that Hammer feels that choosing an emotional approach gives a "0" to directness. What is indirect about emotion? The entire structure of the inventory is based on the idea that directness and emotion lay on different axes, but the pair response methodology has us choosing one at the expense of the other. This means something that is a 5 on emotion is a 0 on directness. This leads to the conclusion of indirectness. Yet it does so on a premise that runs directly counter to the premise on which the entire intercultural conflict style is based. It's no wonder the results don't make much sense -- the entire exercise is poorly conceived. Paired questions are not how you would operationalize this.

Let's be halfway smart about this and assume that I fall into the engagement style. When dealing with customers from other cultures, this can be challenging. It seems clear that emotions are one of the communication mechanisms where cultures can vary significantly. High levels of emotional expressive are often seen as negative, in many cultures from Western Europe to Japan. So this is something that can become a barrier, because in many cultures a high level of emotional expression reflects a lack of control, which in turn means a lack of trustworthiness. Getting angry is not necessarily the best strategy, but it is a strength when dealing with people who are more emotionally expressive, as those people do not think emotionally restrained people care about the issue.