African American and European American Women's Visions of Workplace Conflict: A Metaphorical Analysis

Abstract

This study continues a research program focusing on the intersections of race and gender in the context of workplace conflict (R. Shuter & L. H. Turner, 1997). The current investigation examined African American (AA) and European American (EA) women's perceptions of workplace conflict. Results from this exploratory study indicate that although all women's attitudes toward workplace conflict, as measured by their metaphors for it, were predominately negative, AA women's were more negative, more passive, and less focused on resolution than were EA women's. AA women's metaphoric language was also more intense than EA women's. These findings strengthen our argument for the use of examining organizational communication through the prism of race and gender.

Keywords:

• women and conflict
• workplace conflict
• conflict metaphors
• race differences

Notes

1 We recognize that gender includes both men and women of all races and ethnicities, whereas race, a social construction, includes multiple identities. The study cited here follows the line of research we began in 1997. Thus we focus only on European and African American women in the workplace. Although we did this consciously to specifically contextualize our work and further an understanding of these groups, we acknowledge that this is simply a beginning to a research agenda that explores diversity in the organization. Other work, such as that by Ashcraft and Allen (1998), Ely and Thomas (2001), Li and Karakowsky (2001), and Orbe (1998), has taken an expansive view of diversity and its impact on organizational life by examining more than one gender and more than two races.