The art and economics of international negotiations: Haggling meets hurrying and hanging on in buyer–seller negotiations

Abstract

This paper offers a theoretical model which focuses on cultural bargaining behavior. It is based on an intercultural negotiation framework of activity-based cultural types (Ott, 2011). The complexities of international negotiations are analyzed from a multi-active bargaining perspective which considers negotiation-is-an-art model. The results show the multi-active bargaining types from a seller and a buyer perspective. The differences in international negotiation behavior show the problems of cultural collisions. The possibility to circumvent these clashes is at the core of this article. The analysis proves useful as the different time perceptions, cultural activity levels and the resulting strategic behavior are clearly related to the deadlocks, stalemates, break-ups and agreements experienced in real-life scenarios. The application of the model to UK-Malaysian negotiation experiments is an example of the robustness of the theoretical results. This paper offers solutions to negotiations in an intercultural context and opens the black box of the uncertainty about cultural incompatibilities.