Guidelines for effective intercultural business negotiations

Abstract

Purpose For managers and senior executives who find themselves negotiating with international partners who differ in terms of culture, communication style, time orientation, as well as personal and professional backgrounds, understanding the complex range of factors that impact intercultural business negotiations (ICBN) for short – is a fundamentally important skill. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on an organised review of literature on culture and business negotiations in Usunier (2019), systematically examining the interface of culture with dispositional (e.g. negotiator’s gender) and situational variable (e.g. type of contract, one-shot versus repeated deals). Findings Empathy is not all, culture overlaps and interacts with other key negotiation variables. The paper derives a set of guidelines for effective ICBN. Originality/value Many approaches to ICBN emphasise culture as a stand-alone variable. The approach helps to avoid naïve behaviour and proposes a framework for linking cultural aspects to other major situational and dispositional variables in the ICBN process.