The Impact Of Four Cross-cultural Negotiation Variables On International Business Negotiation

International business negotiations are always the good subjects for cross-cultural studies. A lot of research on the international business negotiations has been done. Studies conducted by those scholars indicate that culture can exert great influence on international business negotiation. Negotiators from different countries view and value negotiation differently. If we ignore the cultural factor in the negotiation process, negotiation process could be impeded or even broken down. Culture can influence negotiation in numerous ways. In this paper, the author tries to analyze cultural influence from the perspective of cross-cultural negotiation variables. Through case analysis, this paper wants to prove that understanding the cross-cultural negotiation variables will provide a useful tool to help control the negotiating results.In this paper, the author first cites an example to illustrate the role that culture plays in a cross-cultural negotiation. The previous cultural studies on negotiation are reviewed. Faure and Sjostedt point out that cultural influence on negotiation is displayed in five factors; J.M.Brett mentions that culture influences the strategies that the negotiators bring to the table; Salacuse gives ten factors; and Weiss gives twelve cross-cultural negotiation variables which are very comprehensive. So the author of this paper selects four of the variables as her theoretical framework in her study. Then the author hypothesizes that awareness of the cross-cultural negotiation variables will help the negotiators to avoid insufficient understanding and get better negotiation results.The author discusses the four variables one by one. The first variable in this paper is the basic concept of negotiating process, negotiators from different cultures view the purpose and the process of negotiation differently. There are two major perspectives which are distributive perspective and integrative perspective. The second variable is concern of protocol, in different cultures, the degree of importance to which protocol, or the formality of the relations between the two negotiating parties is different. The third variable is orientation toward time, time is related to the structure of negotiation, and also influences negotiation strategies. There...