How Conflict Management differs across cultures

Brief background: This incident happened during my summer lab internship. As the majority of those in the lab are Mainland Chinese, their grasp of English is generally poor. Such language barriers are often a breeding ground for misunderstandings to occur. When these arise, conflicts happen and this is further compounded by how different cultures resolve conflict differently.

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Towards the end of my lab internship, my boss, Adam, organized a farewell lunch for the lab. As he was always busy, he assigned Guo, one of the postdocs, to make the restaurant booking. However, we only found out that a mistake was made upon reaching the restaurant. Instead of a 12pm lunch reservation, an evening reservation of 7pm was recorded. No one could ascertain what caused the mistake as Guo insisted that he clearly asked for a 12pm slot.

Being the boss and the host of the lunch, Adam risked losing his "face" should the lunch appointment flop. Having come from Mainland China, the concept of having "face"and being judged positively by others (especially one's subordinates) was even more important. Thus, with all these issues pressing down on him, Adam became visibly agitated and upset with the mix up. 

Adam then asked the staff to open a table for us as soon as they can, as everyone was already waiting there. As the staff serving us was Malay and could not speak Mandarin, he had trouble understanding Adam's strongly Mandarin-accented English. In a bid to placate Adam, the staff meekly offered some possible reasons for the mix-up while asking us to wait as the restaurant was fully packed with lunchtime crowd. This agitated Adam even more as the staff’s reasons were not strong. Adam, being straight forward and demanding as usual, simply asked him to stop giving excuses and set up a table for us as soon as he can. As this exchange went on, Adam started raising his voice and lambasted the restaurant staff for making such a careless mistake and thus, wasted the 'precious time' of our lab members. As he started raising his voice and was nearly yelling, I started edging away from the group as diners were looking on and I did not want to be associated with the din that he was creating.  

Of course, out of courtesy, the staff kept apologizing and assured that we would be seated soon. However, we could also see that he was trying hard to conceal his look of annoyance of being shouted at since he was not the one who handled our phone reservation. As he turned back to ask his Chinese staff to attend to us, he rolled his eyes discreetly. To roll his eyes, he must have thought that Adam was just another “difficult, loud and unreasonable Mainland Chinese who does not know how to behave appropriately in such cultured settings”. Luckily, we were seated soon and all became smooth again after the food arrived.

Thinking back about this incident, I felt as if I were trapped in two worlds when this happened. Which side should I side with? Should I just be like most Singaporeans and view my boss as being another “difficult, loud and unreasonable Chinese who reacts inappropriately in such cultured settings”; thus distance myself from him? Or should I be tolerant of his behaviour, because I understood why he acted this way? (Knowing how important “face” is to Chinese, intensified by his status as the “Boss”, not “losing face” is even more important in such events where he was the host)

This is thus a clear instance of how different cultures react so differently to conflicts. Despite being of the same ethnicity, our lifestyle, habits and response to situations (such as this), are distinctly different. Singaporean Chinese tend to be subtler and toned down, and would most  likely simmer with rage inside, but do not have anger outbursts like Adam. Conversely, Mainland Chinese tend to speak louder and are more brusque in their actions and words. Thus, locals often view them as being “uncultured”, when in fact, they are just acting like how they are brought up to be.

So having read this, if it were you (the reader), how would you have reacted in this same situation? Would you step up to explain things between Adam and the staff to placate everyone (and risk being judged by locals)? Or would you just edge away like me and do nothing about it?