Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks - Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship

Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks
Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations
University of Michigan
jeffreysb@umich.edu
Oceans, in a way, are like the diversity of people that inhabit their respective shores. From the
Pacific to the Indian — they share a great deal in common, and yet have characteristics unique
to each one. To focus on superficial characteristics — all oceans come in shades of blue/green —
is to ignore more subtle, nonetheless powerful differences that distinguish them - the
movements of their currents, the variation in their tides; differences that are essential to
recognize if one wishes to navigate across them.
One of the challenges to fostering positive dynamics in organizations where the workforce
increasingly reflects a mosaic of cultural diversity is learning how to manage this diversity. With
this objective, traditional approaches in diversity research have focused on the influence of
people’s demographic labels (e.g., Race, Gender), overlooking substantive differences in
relational styles that different groups bring into the organization. A growing body of literature
suggests that these substantive differences can be an even greater source of negative dynamics
during intercultural contact. The flipside is that they may also provide clues about how to
leverage this diversity to create a more inclusive and synergistic organizational culture.
Moreover, studies also suggest that diverse teams and the people in them experience more
positive outcomes when the unique perspectives and styles represented in the group are
explicitly recognized rather than ignored or suppressed in an attempt to highlight superficial
commonalities.
Relational Styles Matter
One of the lessons I have found in my research is that daily experiences as a participant in a
particular cultural milieu shapes people’s beliefs about appropriate levels of attention to social
emotional and relational elements in workplace relationships. These beliefs influence decisions
about who would make a good boss, member of a team, and employee; who is considered
professional and who is not. These beliefs also influence how much people attend to socialemotional
rapport and forms of face-saving communication in workplace relationships.
Protestant Relational Ideology & American Workways
A reoccurring finding in cross-cultural comparisons of relational work styles is a restricted focus
on relational concerns in American culture. In contrast to societies as diverse as East Asian,
Latin American, and the Middle East, American work patterns are characterized by an implicit
and explicit preference for putting aside impersonal concerns in the workplace. Although this
relational asceticism does not apply to interactions outside work, it can limit one’s ability to
coordinate relational styles in cultural diverse organizations. This bias within mainstream

American culture toward restricting attention to relational styles (evidenced within
organizations and researchers alike) may well contribute to the difficulty in generating positive
outcomes out of cultural diversity. Research that addresses the theoretical and practical
concerns about the complex ways culture and psychological processes influence interpersonal
relations may be particularly useful in this regard.