Where's the Expertise? Investigating the Drivers of Prescriptive versus Elicitive Approaches to Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution Trainings

Abstract: Scholarship on cross-cultural conflict management has offered the distinction between more prescriptive versus more elicitive approaches to intercultural training and intervention (Lederach, 1995; Weller et al., 2001). While prescriptive trainings privilege the instructors’ expertise with a top-down transfer of knowledge, elicitive trainings use a bottom-up strategy that centralizes local insights and cultural knowledge. Using a mixed-method online survey sent to cross-cultural conflict resolution instructors, this study aims to explore the external conditions that prompt cross-cultural conflict resolution instructors to employ a prescriptive, elicitive, or hybrid approach to conflict resolution trainings in a foreign culture. A series of analyses were conducted and indicated that trainings rated and coded as more elicitive produced better outcomes for effectiveness, efficiency, and culture fit, followed by hybrid and prescriptive models. This finding indicated the field’s lack of understanding and application of elicitive trainings, which suggests an untapped potential for cross-cultural conflict resolution practices.

Keywords: cross cultural, conflict resolution, prescriptive elicitive