(Notes from a workshop on Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Columbia University, New York)

I once sat in a ‘cross-cultural’ training workshop at Teachers College, Columbia University. The participants were mainly New Yorkers from the educational and corporate industry, essentially from Wall Street. They were mainly middle-class Caucasians.

We went through several weekend sessions to study the concept of conflict resolution and mediation. I was one of the few non-Caucasian participants and I think I shared so much transcultural experience with the participants.

There was a role-playing session called ‘Clashing Worldviews’ which interest me and here is my journal reflection on it. It showed the different approaches of the American and Japanese cross-cultural management styles. It concerns, essentially of corporate culture situated within ‘culture’ as a location of contestation and the struggle for power and dominance.