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Because of their relationship‐oriented values, avoiding conflict is thought to be particularly prevalent and appropriate in collectivist societies like China Although research in the West has assumed that avoiding conflict is one approach and a largely ineffective one, collectivists may use conflict avoidance in different ways, including protecting the other protagonist. Eighty‐five managers and employees in six State Owned Enterprises in South China described concrete incidents when they avoided conflict and responded to specific items to measure the prior relationship, motivation, strategies, and consequences. Results identify major motivations and strategies used in conflict avoidance. Findings indicate that Chinese managers and employees relied upon the other person, promoted task productivity, and strengthened the relationship when they had a prior strong relationship and cooperative goals. Cooperative goals and fear of revenge were both found to underlie outflanking (trying to work around the other). Results were interpreted as indicating that avoiding conflict can be useful and even reaffirm an already effective relationship, but like open conflict, it must be managed constructively.

Little research has been done on the impact of social decision schemes on group process variables. Green and Taber created a self‐report scale to provide five measures of the group process. These measures deal with the descriptions of an individual’s behaviour as well as others’ behaviour towards a specific person. The items within each measure also probe evaluative ratings of several specific group processes and outcomes. Evaluates the relationship between the process variables and a dependent performance variable ‐ the profit achieved by groups in a marketing simulation game ‐ in an attempt to shed further light on the group process in strategic marketing decision making. A factor analysis reveals a reasonably close concurrence of the experimental data and that of the Green and Taber instrument, leading to the conclusion that the two sets of data were of a similar structure. Attempts to establish a relationship between the Green and Taber process variables and profit. Concludes that negative socio‐emotional behaviour and solution satisfaction are positively related to group success. Therefore, the opportunities for negative socio‐emotional behaviours such as rejecting others’ positions, arguing and criticizing seem to be worthy of exploration. Since solution satisfaction returned a significant regression, finds that the give‐and‐take arguments of socio‐emotional behaviour contributed to solution satisfaction.