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Negotiation

Section 05:
Negotiation Across Cultures

Chapter 16:
International and
Cross-Cultural Negotiation

© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom. No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
 International Negotiation: Art and Science

The science provides research evidence supporting trends

occurring during negotiation.
• The art is deciding which strategy, models and perspectives increase
cross-cultural understanding.
Complexity of international negotiation has two implications.
• First, there are many models and perspectives, not one-size-fits-all.
• Second, negotiators undervalue the within-culture variation that exists.
Guard against the cultural attribution error.
• The tendency to overlook situational factors in favor of cultural
explanations.

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 What Makes International Negotiations Different?

Two overall contexts influence international negotiations.

• The environmental context includes environmental forces that neither
negotiator controls but that influence the negotiation.
• The immediate context includes factors over which negotiators appear
to have some control.
Understanding the role of both contexts is important to
understanding the complexity of international negotiations.

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 Environmental Context

Political and legal pluralism. Ideology.

• Taxes, labor codes, contract • The U.S. believes in individual
law, NAFTA, or WTO. rights, other countries may not.

International economics. Culture.

• Less stable currencies increase • Process and conflict resolution
the risk for both parties. varies by culture.

Foreign governments. External stakeholders.

• Do they regulate industries? • People and organizations with an
interest or stake in the outcome.
Instability.
• Business associations, labor
• Can be resource or political unions, and embassies.
instability.

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 Immediate Context

Relative bargaining power. Negotiator relationships.

• Research is on joint ventures. • This negotiation is part of a past
and future relationship.
• Whoever invests more has more
relative power and influence Desired outcomes.
Levels of conflict. • Tangible and intangible factors.
• High-conflict situations will be Immediate stakeholders.
difficult to resolve.
• The negotiators and those they
• Diplomatic “back channel” directly represent.
negotiations may help.
• Negotiator CQ impacts process
and outcomes.

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 Conceptualizing Culture and Negotiation

All definitions of culture share two important aspects.

• First, culture is a group-level phenomenon.
• Second, cultural beliefs, values, and behavioral expectations are
learned and passed on to new members of the group.
You can conceptualize culture four ways in international
negotiation:
• As learned behavior.
• As shared value.
• As dialectic.
• And in context.

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 Culture as Learned Behavior

This approach does not focus on why members of a given

culture behave in certain way.
• It concentrates on creating a catalogue of behaviors the foreign
negotiator should expect when entering a host culture.
Many books and articles proved a list of dos and don’ts to
obey when negotiating with people from different cultures.

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 Culture as Shared Values: Hofstede

Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions.

• Individualism/collectivism.
• The focus on relationships in collectivist societies is critical in negotiations.

• Power distance.
• High power distance cultures concentrate decision making at the top, while
low power distance cultures spread decision making throughout the group.

• Masculinity/femininity.
• Masculine cultures are materialistic, feminine cultures are nurturing.

• Uncertainty avoidance.
• High uncertainty avoidance cultures are less comfortable with ambiguity.

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 Culture as Shared Values: Hall

Edwin Hall specified cultural values used to understand

differences in cultures, two apply to international negotiation.
• Communication context – low-context cultures communicate directly,
while high context cultures communicate indirectly.
• Time and space – refers to differences between cultures in how they
relate to, manage, and schedule events.
• Monochromic cultures prefer to organize and schedule things sequentially.

• Polychromic cultures use simultaneous occurrence of many different

activities.

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 Culture as Dialectic

All cultures contain dimensions or tensions called dialectics.

• “Too many cooks spoil the broth” and “two heads are better than one”
are conflicting adages – a tension, or dialectic.
• The advantage is that it can explain variations within cultures.
A similar method studies negotiation metaphors for the
effects of culture on negotiation.
• The greater the difference in cultural negotiation metaphors, the
harder it will be for negotiators to find common ground.
The culture-as-dialectic approach starts with a deep
understanding of a culture and uses negotiation metaphors
for a richer understanding.

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 Culture in Context

This recognizes that behavior as complex as negotiation is

determined by many factors, one of which is culture.
• Also personality, context, and environmental factors.
• Using culture as the sole explanation oversimplifies the complexity.
Researcher’s cultural complexity theory suggests cultural
values directly effect negotiations in some situations.
• Direct effects have strong effects across several contexts, such as
American individuality.
Cultural values have moderate effects in other situations.
• Here, values have different contextual instigators in the culture, such
as France with both monarchical and democratic traditions.

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 The Influence of Culture on Negotiation

The definition of negotiation varies across cultures.

• Americans view it as competitive, Japanese as information-sharing.
Culture influences perception of distributive or integrative.
• North American negotiators view it as distributive, not elsewhere.
Negotiator selection criteria is weighted differently.
• May include knowledge, seniority, connections, gender, age, or status.
Protocol, or formality of relations, is important.
• American culture is very informal, not so in other countries.
Culture influences communication, verbal and nonverbal.
• In the planning stage, seek advice on proper communication.

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 Cultural Influences

Cultures determine what time means.

• In the U.S., people tend to respect time, not so in other countries.
Risk-oriented cultures move early, others wait and see.
• Americans fall on the risk-taking end of the continuum.
The U.S. is an individual-oriented culture.
• Group-oriented cultures see individual needs as second to the group.
Culture effects agreements and the form they take.
• U.S. agreements are based on logic, formalized, and enforced.
Culture influences the extent negotiators display emotions.
• May be tactics, or genuine responses.

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 Influence of Culture: Research Perspectives

Two approaches were taken to explore if culture influences

negotiation outcomes.
• Intracultural – do negotiators reach the same outcomes when
presented with the same material, across cultures?
• Cross-cultural – compares intracultural and cross-cultural outcomes to
see if they are the same.
Initial intracultural studies found no link between profit and
culture but later simulations identified cultural differences.
Cross-cultural negotiations will result in poorer outcomes
compared to intracultural, at least some of the time.

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Cultural Effects on Process and Information Exchange

Individualism/collectivism influenced planning and offers.

Some cultures use direct information exchange (U.S.) while
others use indirect information exchange (Japan).
Culturally similar countries negotiated higher joint gains.
Japanese negotiators shared more information when
negotiating with Americans, than they did domestically.
Low-context cultures used direct communication and those
from high-context cultures used more indirect communication.
• Culture and channel influence the general communication strategy.
Some cultures negotiate consistently both internally and
internationally, like China – others do not.

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 Effects of Culture on Negotiator Cognition

Researchers study how culture influences the way people

process information and how that influences negotiation.
• Accountability may lead to competition among individualists but to higher
levels of cooperation among collectivists.
• Negotiators from collectivists cultures perceived conflict as involving
compromise more than those in individualistic cultures.
• The same two cultures use different frames to make sense of some conflicts.

• Negotiators may perceive negotiation opportunities differently.

• Individualistic cultures are more susceptible to fixed-pie errors and
self-serving bias than those from collectivist cultures.
• Collectivist cultures make less attribution errors than individualistic ones.

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 Effects of Culture on Negotiator Ethics and Tactics

A broad study investigating perceptions of negotiation tactics

across six cultures found these differences.
• The tolerance levels of different tactics in different cultures.
• The likely use of specific tactics, such as exaggerated opening offers.
• Trust levels changed the use, or absence, of questionable tactics.
• The way negotiators deal with in- and out-group negotiations.
There is also evidence the use and interpretation of
apologies is influenced by culture.
• Individualistic societies use apologies to assign blame.
• Collective cultures use apologies to express remorse.

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 Effects of Culture on Conflict Resolution

Negotiators from collectivist cultures used accommodation,

collaboration and withdrawal from conflict.
• Compared with negotiators from individualistic cultures who had a
stronger preference for competition.
Collectivist countries solved disagreements with rules.
• Individualistic countries use personal experience and training.
“Out-group” disagreements were less likely in high-power
distance cultures than in lower-power distance cultures.
Individualistic and collectivist cultures prefer negotiation to
arbitration.
• Mediation had a stronger effect on outcomes with individualists.

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 Culturally Responsive Negotiation Strategies

Negotiators should not make large modifications to their

approach.
• They may not be able to modify their approach effectively.
• Even if modified effectively, it may not lead to a better outcome.
• Negotiators negotiate differently with their own culture, than with others.
• Moderate adaptation may be most effective.
• Adjustment may be unlikely for a more distant culture.
During preparation, negotiators should concentrate on:
• Their own biases, strengths, and weaknesses.
• The other negotiator as an individual.
• The other negotiator’s cultural context.

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 Weiss’s Culturally Responsive Strategies

Low familiarity. High familiarity.

• Use agents – unilateral strategy. • Embrace the other’s approach –
unilateral strategy.
• Use a mediator – joint strategy.
• Improvise and approach – joint
• Induce the other to use your
strategy.
approach – joint strategy.
• Effect symphony – joint
Moderate familiarity. strategy.
• Adapt to the other’s approach –
unilateral strategy.
• Coordinate adjustment – joint
strategy.

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 End of Chapter 16.

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© 2019 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom. No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.