N11: INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS - CULTURAL NEGOTIATION

There are two contexts that influence on international negotiation: the environmental and immediate context.

The environmental context includes political and legal systems, international economics, foreign governments and Bureaucracies, instability in a country, ideology, culture, and external stakeholders.

The immediate context includes relative bargaining power, levels of conflict, and relationship between negotiators, desired outcomes, and immediate stakeholders.

These factors are very good devices for guiding our thinking about international negotiation. Negotiators need to understand that these factors influence the negotiation process and can change over time. Therefore, international negotiation needs to be prepared and planned by monitoring the environmental and immediate contexts.

There are 10 different ways that culture can influence negotiations as following:

v The way each culture defines negotiation

v Culture influences the way negotiators perceive an opportunity as   distributive versus integrative

v The criterion used to select who will participate in a negotiation is different across cultures.

v Cultures differ in the degree to which protocol, or the formality of the relations between the two negotiating parties, is important.

v Cultures influence how people communicate, both verbally and nonverbally.

v Cultures largely determine what time means and how it affects negotiations.

v Cultures vary in the extent to which they are willing to take risks.

v Groups versus Individuals.

v Nature of agreements.

v Culture appears to influence the extent to which negotiators display emotions.

In conclusion, the best way to manage cross-cultural negotiations is to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the other negotiator and to modify one’s strategy to be consistent with behaviors that occur in that culture.