A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Business Negotiation Styles From A Cross-cultural Perspective

International business negotiation is taking a really important part in modernsociety. Business negotiation, the all important content as well as the all essentialmeans, is really necessary to commercial activities, because the success or failure ofthe business activity relies on the result of negotiation and therefore it impacts thesurvival and development of the enterprise. A successful negotiation may greatlyprofit the entire economy and even the whole society. It is obvious that differentpeople perform differently during the process of negotiating. In particular, negotiatingstyles can be affected by culture. With the rapid development of economic and traderelations between China and America, business negotiation is becoming increasinglyfrequent. Due to the different cultural background, behaviors of Chinese andAmericans in the negotiations are very different.In this thesis, Chinese and American negotiation styles will be compared indetails from a cross-cultural perspective. Many factors may impact the style ofnegotiating, but cultural difference is one of the most important one. Themethodology of comparison and case study will be adopted in the thesis. The thesisbegins with the introduction of culture and different characteristics of Chinese cultureand America culture, and then analyzes the influence of cultural difference onnegotiation styles in Sino-US business negotiations. Some strategies for effectiveintercultural business negotiation are put forward in the end of the study.The purpose of the thesis is to make negotiators from both China and Americahave a better understanding of their cultural characteristics and differences tominimize unnecessary misunderstandings, propose some suggestions for negotiatorsinvolved in Sino-US business negotiations, and thus contribute to the bilateraleconomic cooperation between China and America.