Cultural Impact on International Business Negotiation

Background: The increasing global business competitiveness thoroughly intensifies the demand for improvements of communication and negotiation skills in order to adjust competence to successfully conduct the work of getting treaties of cooperation and business development to work everywhere. It is simply a matter of survival for an increasing amount of multinational companies operating in all kinds of different locations and businesses around the world. This state of nature also holds for Swedish and Spanish companies, that both heavily depend on foreign trade, and whose negotiating behavior is going to be the focus of this study. For every international company facing the challenges of developing new business in foreign cultures it should be of interest to find out what would improve their business interactions. The study is therefore investigating possible ways of how to deal with cultural implications that might appear in international business negotiations.

Purpose: To study and analyze the presence of cultural impact on international business negotiations, with a special emphasis on Swedish-Spanish business negotiators.
Method: Considering negotiations as a process-oriented phenomenon observed from empirical studies of individual cases and drawing conclusions thereof, the study takes a hermeneutic qualitative-inductive interaction approach. The frame of references are constitued by a thorough spectra of well established theories developed within the fields of communication, negotiation and intercultural studies…

Contents

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
1.2 DISCUSSION AND FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM
1.3 PURPOSE
1.4 DELIMITATION
1.5 SOURCE CRITICISM
2. SCIENTIFIC METHODOLOGY
2.1 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES
2.1.1 POSITIVISM AND HERMENEUTIC
2.1.2 INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION
2.1.3 QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE METHODOLOGY
2.1.4 EXPLORATIVE AND CONCLUSIVE METHODOLOGY
2.1.5 OBTAINING AND COLLECTING INFORMATION
2.1.6 VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY
2.2 CHOICE AND RELEVANCE OF METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
3. THE PHENOMENON OF NEGOTIATION
3.1 THE NOTION OF CONFLICT
3.2 DEFINITION OF NEGOTIATION
3.3 INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS
3.4 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS
3.5 NEGOTIATING STRATEGY
3.5.1 ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON STRATEGY
3.5.2 SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON STRATEGY
3.5.3 THE BALANCE OF BARGAINING POWER
3.5.4 INFLUENCING BEHAVIOR IN NEGOTIATION
3.6 THE PROCESS OF NEGOTIATION
4. THE PHENOMENON OF COMMUNICATION
4.1 COMMUNICATION AND NEGOTIATION
4.2 THE VERBAL COMMUNICATION PROCESS
4.3 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
4.4 COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
4.4.1 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
4.4.2 CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
5. THE PHENOMENON OF CULTURE
5.1 CULTURE AND NEGOTIATION
5.1.1 CULTURAL INFLUENCE ON NEGOTIATING STRATEGY
5.2 DIMENSIONS OF CULTURE
5.2.1 INDIVIDUALISM VS. COLLECTIVISM
5.2.2 HIGH VS. LOW CONTEXT
5.2.3 IMMEDIACY AND EXPRESSIVENESS
5.2.4 MASCULINITY VS. FEMININITY
5.2.5 POWER DISTANCE
6. SWEDISH AND SPANISH CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS
6.1 HISTORICAL IMPACT
6.2 CULTURE-SPECIFIC WAYS OF THINKING AND BEHAVING
6.2.1 CHILD EDUCATION
6.2.2 COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR
6.2.3 SHOWING EMOTIONS IN PUBLIC
6.2.4 ASSERTIVENESS
6.2.5 SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
6.2.6 DIRECTEDNESS
6.2.7 ECONOMY OF SPEECH
6.2.8 CONCEPTION OF TIME
6.2.9 STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS
6.3 CULTURAL DIMENSION COMPARISON
6.4 CONVERSATIONAL ORGANIZATION
6.4.1 BACK-CHANNELING AND TURN-TAKING
6.4.2 FACE
6.4.3 FACE-WORK
6.5 CULTURALLY DETERMINED NEGOTIATING STYLES AND BEHAVIOR
6.5.1 PUSH AND PULL MOVES
6.6 CULTURALLY DETERMINED NEGOTIATING STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR
6.6.1 ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOR
6.6.2 ACCOMMODATED BEHAVIOR
6.6.3 AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR
7. ANALYSIS
7.1 ANALYTICAL APPROACH
7.2 UNDERLYING FACTORS AFFECTING NEGOTIATING BEHAVIOR
7.2.1 ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON PARTIES
7.2.2 SITUATIONAL INFLUENCES ON PARTIES
7.2.3 BEHAVIORAL PREDISPOSITION OF PARTIES
7.2.4 INFLUENCE STRATEGIES AND SKILLS OF PARTIES
7.3 FACTORS AFFECTING SWEDISH-SPANISH NEGOTIATION OUTCOMES
8. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
8.1 CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS ON NEGOTIATING BEHAVIOR
8.2 SWEDISH-SPANISH BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS
8.3 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE STUDIES AND RESEARCH
SOURCES AND LITERATURE*

Author: Thörnblom, Jonas

Source: Linköping University

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