The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory

For Individuals and Teams

About the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory

  • The ICSI is built on decades of intercultural communication research and has been rigorously tested for reliability and validity. It identifies how people engage in and navigate conflict across cultural differences—measuring both directness and emotional expressiveness to reveal individual and group conflict styles.

    Rather than labeling conflict behaviors as “good” or “bad,” the ICSI offers a neutral, research-backed lens for understanding how culture influences our approach to disagreement and resolution. It has proven consistent and reliable across race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and class.

    Collaborate Consulting is based in Portland, Oregon, and partners with organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest—including Washington, California, and Idaho—as well as across the U.S.

  • The ICSI provides teams with a clear and actionable understanding of how members approach and experience conflict.

    Each participant receives a personalized report detailing their preferred and secondary conflict styles, along with development strategies for communicating more effectively across difference. All participants complete a one-on-one debrief with a certified ICSI facilitator from Collaborate Consulting, focusing on their individual results and real-world application.

    Team leaders receive a group summary report outlining collective strengths and areas for growth. Collaborate Consulting then facilitates a customized team debrief session—helping participants practice conflict strategies that lead to better understanding, stronger relationships, and improved collaboration.

    ICSI sessions can be facilitated online, in person, or through hybrid delivery formats.

  • Conflict is often where teams get stuck… but it’s also where real growth can happen. The ICSI turns conflict from a source of division into a bridge for understanding.

    Unlike traditional conflict resolution frameworks that assign blame or force consensus, the ICSI helps individuals recognize and value different communication styles, creating shared language for addressing tension productively.

    Organizations that use the ICSI report stronger team cohesion, clearer communication, and a deeper capacity to engage across cultural difference. When teams understand how they experience conflict, they can transform it into connection and collaboration.

    Transform your team’s approach to communication and conflict with the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory.

What is a Team ICSI Process Like?

1. Assessment

After a brief introductory email, participants receive a personalized link to complete the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory online. The assessment takes about 15–20 minutes and can be completed from any device. Collaborate Consulting manages all administrative details—tracking participation and ensuring full completion from staff and/or board members.

2. Analysis

Our certified ICSI facilitators analyze individual and team results, interpreting how cultural preferences influence communication and conflict within your organization. These findings are used to design both the one-on-one debriefs and a tailored group session that reflects your team’s unique mix of conflict styles.

3. Individual Debriefs

Each participant meets one-on-one with an ICSI facilitator to review their results in detail. During this conversation, they gain a clearer understanding of their preferred and secondary conflict styles and begin to explore strategies for navigating tension or disagreement more effectively, especially across lines of cultural difference.

4. Group Debrief

The full team comes together for a collaborative debrief and skill-building session. Using the team’s collective data, Collaborate Consulting facilitates an engaging workshop focused on bridging across different conflict styles, recognizing strengths, and reducing friction in communication. Participants explore how diverse approaches to conflict can become an asset, strengthening trust, collaboration, and problem-solving across the organization.

Research Supporting the ICSI

  • Grounded in the pragmatics of human communication perspective, this study examined how disagreements and emotion function across cultural context in resolving conflict. Specifically, the research effort developed the Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) inventory, a measure of intercultural conflict resolution style based on two core dimensions: direct vs. indirect approaches to dealing with disagreements and emotionally expressive vs. emotionally restrained patterns for dealing with the affective dimension of conflict interaction. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) found the model was a good fit to the data. The direct/indirect scale obtained a coefficient alpha of .73 and the emotional expressiveness/restraint scale achieved .85 reliability. Validity testing of the scales found no significant effects by gender, education or previous intercultural living experience.

    Hammer, M. R. (2005). The intercultural conflict style inventory: A conceptual framework and measure of intercultural conflict resolution approaches. International journal of intercultural relations, 29(6), 675-695.

  • Of the topics covered in the course, all of the students commented that they were enjoyable, useful, or both. The most useful activities were the categories and labels, cultural context inventory, and Hammer’s (2003 a, 2003 b) Intercultural Conflict Styles Inventory. In particular, several students found Hammer’s Intercultural Conflict Styles Inventory interesting because not only does the inventory help one see his or her own preferred way of dealing with conflict, but also how to understand that of others and how others might behave as a result.

    Rogers, L. (2013). Culture and Conflict: A study of a course focusing on the relationship between culture and conflict. Kwansei Gakuin University social sciences review, (17), 23-36.

  • Many conflict models/tools have been specifically developed using concepts and their associated characteristics that reflect a western-centric, individualistic cultural perspective. As a result, they are not culturally generalizable to other non-western, collectivistic cultural groups. Further, many of these conflict style tools do not sufficiently assess conflict approaches based on a clear identification and empirical evidence of culturally generalizable patterns of cultural difference from which conflict style differences across diverse groups can be validly examined. Finally, these instruments are typically offered in English and have not been translated into other languages or if translated, they have not used the scientific, “back translation” protocols to insure the items in these instruments “mean the same thing” in other languages with diverse cultural groups. Because of these difficulties, Dr. Hammer developed a model and assessment tool that is not culturally biased but rather, cross-culturally generalizable and valid of intercultural communication and conflict style differences.

    M.A. Moodian (Editor). Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence (chapter 17, pp. 219-232). Los Angeles, CA: Sage; and (4) Hammer, M.R. (2005). The Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory: A conceptual framework and measure of intercultural conflict approaches. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29, 675-695.

It will just take a moment to sign up for an ICSI intake with Collaborate Consulting!