East Asians’ Social Heterogeneity: Differences in Norms among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Negotiators

Abstract

East Asian cultures are widely held to be fairly homogeneous in that they highly value harmonious social relationships. We propose, however, that the focus (dyadic versus group) and the nature (emotional versus instrumental) of social relations vary among the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures in ways that have important implications for the negotiation tactics typically employed by managers from these three cultures. Our data are from a web survey administered to three hundred eighty‐eight managers from China, Japan, and South Korea. In this article, we discuss how the differences in the focus and the nature of business relationships in China, Japan, and Korea are manifested in the different norms for negotiation tactics endorsed by managers from these three countries.