Monday, November 29, 2010

Chapter 11: International and Cross-Cultural Negotiation


This chapter is organized in the following manner. First we discuss the art and science of cross-cultural negotiation. Next, we consider some of the factors that make international negotiation different, including both the environmental context and the immediate context. We discussion of the most frequently studied aspect of international negotiation: the effect of culture, be it national, regional, or organizational.
The chapter concludes with a discussion of culturally responsive strategies available to the international negotiator. Understanding the role of factors in both the environmental and immediate contexts is important to grasping the complexity of international negotiation processes and outcomes.
Recent research finding have provided some specific advice about how to negotiate cross-culturally. Rubin and Sander suggest that during preparation, negotiators should concentrate on understanding three things: (1) their own biases, strengths, and weaknesses; (2) the other negotiators as an individual; and (3) the other negotiator’s cultural context.
Stephen Weiss has proposed a useful way of thinking about the options we have negotiating with someone from another culture. Weiss’s culturally responsive strategies may be arranged into three groups, base on the level of familiarity (low, moderate, high) that a  negotiators has with the other party’s culture. Within each group there are some strategies that the negotiator may use individually (unilateral strategies) and others that involve that participation of the other party (joint strategies).
However, even those with high familiarity with another culture are faced with a daunting task if they want to modify their strategy completely when they deal with the other culture.

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