The culture-negotiation link..

Abstract

Scholars have only recently begun to assess the strength with which culture affects negotiator communication, as compared with contextual or structural features of business negotiations. Although prior studies reveal important cross-cultural differences in national negotiating style, they may not help us understand intercultural (mixed-culture) settings. The crucial question is how heavily are international negotiators influenced by their own cultural values? When negotiating with a culturally disparate partner, what are the separate and cumulative effects of culture and contextual variables on negotiator communication? To answer these questions, the effect of culture (here, individualism-collectivism) on integrative (information exchange) and distributive (fixed-sum errors) negotiating is assessed in 32 intercultural dyads. In addition, the contextual effects of role (buyer vs. seller), preconceptions about negotiating (anticipated competition), and mutual adaptation (interdependence in information exchange) are examined. Preliminary results suggest that role requirements influence negotiators more heavily than culture. Supplemental analyses point to some potentially interesting buyer-seller differences and suggest that information exchange is more a function of reciprocity than of cultural values.