Group and Individual Level Cultural Influences in Intra-Cultural and Intercultural Negotiation between German and Chinese Negotiators

Abstract

The present study analyzes the impact of culture on negotiation behavior in German and Chinese intra- and intercultural business negotiations mainly focusing on the seller role. We find more distributive and less integrative negotiation behavior among intracultural Chinese compared to intracultural German negotiations. While confirming that the national cultural value scores from the GLOBE project apply to our samples we also find evidence that horizontal collectivism and vertical individualism as individual cultural values are suitable to reflect intracultural diversity and add considerable explanatory power to predict observed negotiation behavior compared to national affiliation only. We also show how adaptation processes from intra- to intercultural negotiations on the part of the seller happen: While the German seller adapts his/her level of distributive behavior to Chinese levels, s/he maintains the higher level of integrative behavior used in intracultural German negotiations.