Cultural Values And Conflict Resolution Styles In Sino-U.S. Business Negotiation: An Intercultural Perspective

In view of the development of the global economy and China's entry into the WTO, Sino-U.S. business negotiations occur in multiple-level environments more frequently than ever before. Conflicts over scarce resources, goals and procedures are often intensified by cultural divergences. Therefore, in an international business environment, negotiators with an understanding of cultural differences, who can utilize conflict resolution fundamentals, have a decidedly large advantage at the bargaining table. To this end, this thesis focuses on the cultural impacts of the varying methods of conflict resolution commonly used by American and Chinese negotiators and makes a comprehensive comparison of the different conflict resolution styles commonly found in the two cultures. The first chapter is a conceptual and theoretical review about cultural values and conflict. Based on Brett's (2000) cultural value dimensions and Thomas-Kilmann's (1974) Conflict Style Model, the theoretical framework and research model for this study are manifested. In virtue of the previous groundwork, Chapter 3 makes an in-depth cultural analysis of conflict resolving styles adopted by American and Chinese negotiators from three aspects: individualism vs. collectivism, hierarchy vs. egalitarianism, high context vs. low context. Much emphasis has been put on Chapter 4, which presents a questionnaire survey designed based on Thomas-Kilmann's Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) and conducted among American managerial employees and Chinese executives of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to test two hypotheses about conflict resolving preferences. After analyzing collected data, case studies are carried out as a supplement to further analyze conflict resolution in the actual Sino-US business negotiations. By means of quantitative and qualitative studies, this thesis reveals that American negotiators and Chinese negotiators do show the distinct conflict resolving preferences in business negotiations. Furthermore, this study indicates that conflict styles are not exclusively unchanging and both American negotiators and Chinese negotiators may strategically adopt conflict styles at the negotiating table. According to this finding, the concluding chapter also offers the concrete advices for Chinese negotiators and points out some limitations about the research results, which would hopefully help future studies in this field.