Negotiation Culture & Negotiating Styles Salacuse Top 10 Model[sav lecture c1]

Editor's Notes

• #5: Goal: American’s Want to Get Down to Business, Japanese want to know the other side.Japanese, Chinese, and other cultural groups in Asia, it is said, oftenconsider that the goal of a negotiation is not a signed contract, but the creationof a relationship between the two sides (e.g., see Pye 1982).American executives, the goal of a negotiation, first andforemost, is to arrive at a signed contract between the parties. Americansconsider a signed contract as a definitive set of rights and duties that strictlybinds the two sides and determines their interaction thereafter.Strategy: Whereas 100 percent of the Japanese viewed negotiation as a win-win process, only 36.8 percent of the Spanish were so inclined. The Chinese and Indians, the other two Asian cultures represented in the survey, also claimed that negotiation for them was win-win, and the French, alone among Europeans, took a similarly pronounced position on the questionA negotiation is either a process in which both can gain (win-win) or a struggle in which, of necessity, one side wins and the other side loses (win-lose). Win-win negotiators see deal making as a collaborative and problem-solving process; win-lose negotiators see it as confrontational.
• #6: Personal Style: Personal style concerns the forms a negotiator uses to interact with counterparts at the table. Germans have a moreformal style than Americans (Hall and Hall 1990: 48). A negotiator with a formalstyle insists on addressing counterparts by their titles, avoids personalanecdotes, and refrains from questions touching on the private or family lifeof members of the other negotiating team. An negotiator with an informalstyle, on the other hand, may try to start the discussion on a first-name basis,quickly seek to develop a personal, friendly relationship with the otherteam, and (if male) may take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves.Communication: Methods of communication vary among cultures. Some emphasison direct and simple methods of communication; others rely heavily onindirect and complex methods. It has been observed, for example, thatwhereas Germans and Americans are direct, the French and the Japanese areindirect (Hall and Hall 1990: 102).
• #7: Sensitivity to Time: Germans are punctual, Latin’s are habitually late, Japanese negotiate slowly and Americans are quick to make a deal.Data may be weak, Brazilians may be sensitive to a low consideration.Emotionalism: Accounts of negotiating behavior in other cultures almost always point to a particular group’s tendency or lack thereof to display emotions. Accordingto the stereotype, Latin Americans show their emotions at the negotiatingtable, while Japanese and many other Asians hide their feelings.Among all respondents, 65 percent claimed to tend toward high emotionalismwhile 35 percent indicated a tendency to low emotionalism
• #8: Form Factor: Details or Generalities? Legal System, Judicial System reliability? History.Americans prefer detailed contracts that attempt to anticipate all possible circumstances and eventualities, no matter how unlikely. Why? Because the “deal” is the contract itself, and one must refer to the contract to handle new situations that may arise in the future.Other cultural groups, such as the Chinese, prefer a contract in the form ofgeneral principles rather than detailed rules. Why? Because, it is claimed, theessence of the deal is the relationship between the parties. If unexpected circumstances arise, the parties should look to their relationship, not the detailsof the contract, to solve the problem.Agreement Creation:Related to the form of the agreement is the question of whether negotiatinga business deal is an inductive or a deductive process. Does it start fromagreement on general principles and proceed to specific items, or does itbegin with agreement on specifics, such as price, delivery date, and productquality, the sum total of which becomes the contract?
• #9: Individual or Group Decision Making:Related to the form of the agreement is the question of whether negotiatinga business deal is an inductive or a deductive process. Does it start fromagreement on general principles and proceed to specific items, or does itbegin with agreement on specifics, such as price, delivery date, and productQuality, the sum total of which becomes the contract?The cultural group with the strongest preference for consensus organization was the French. Many studies have noted French individualism (e.g., Hall and Hall 1990), and perhaps a consensus arrangement in a French person’s eyes is the best way to protect that individualism. Despite the Japanese reputation for consensus arrangements,only 45 percent of the Japanese respondents claimed to prefer a negotiatingteam based on consensus. The Brazilians, Chinese, and Mexicans, to a fargreater degree than any other groups, preferred one-person leadership, areflection perhaps of the political traditions in those countries. The results ofthe survey on this point are summarized in Table 14.Risk Taking:70 percent claimed a tendency toward risk taking while only 30 percent characterized themselves as low risk takers. Here too, the distribution among men and women was similar and tended to follow that of all respondents as a group. However, among cultures, the responses to this question showed significant variations. The Japanese are said to be highly risk-averse in negotiations, and this tendency was affirmed by the survey which found Japanese respondents to be the most risk-averse of the twelve cultures. Americans in the survey, by comparison, considered themselves to be risk takers, but an even higher percentage of French, British, and Indians claimed to be risk takers