An Empirical Study On Cultural Dimensions Of Sino-Japanese Business Negotiation

In recent years, with the huge development and progress of bilateral trade and investment, Sino-Japanese business negotiation has been playing an important role in promoting economic and trade relations and bringing benefits to people of both countries. However, when Chinese negotiators and Japanese negotiators sit together at the same table, the complexity of cultural differences and challenges of mutual understanding indicate the great necessity of enhancing cross-cultural sensitivity as well as improving cross-cultural communication and cooperation. Therefore, the author feels that it is priory to explore the Sino-Japanese business negotiation as an important topic in the field of Sino-Japanese business communication. More specifically, besides the study of Sino-Japanese business negotiation itself, relevant research on such a negotiation setting from the cultural perspective is also of great importance, which will achieve the purpose of effective business communication.Culture has always been an active element that can exert great influence on negotiation. Business negotiators become more aware of the fact that, to negotiate effectively, they should not only have a good understanding of the differences as well as similarities between the two cultures. More importantly, they should also know how negotiation is affected by culture. So that negotiators can predict the process and adjust their behaviors and strategies accordingly in order to reach a satisfactory agreement. Thus, this dissertation focuses on surveying the cultural dimensions in Sino-Japanese business negotiation and examining how cultural dimensions influence such a negotiation setting in profound ways. This dissertation is designed to analyze the cultural dimensions that are reported to play very important roles in Sino-Japanese business negotiation. Dutch professor Geert Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions, including power distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, and long-term orientation is the basic theoretical framework and research model of this dissertation. Since the cultural dimensions surveyed in Sino-Japanese business negotiation by means of an empirical study is the major concern of this dissertation, a 20-item questionnaire has been developed according to 11 general categories formulated by Professor Jeswald W. Salacuse and Mr. Zhou Yong, to provide a comprehensive assessment of cultural dimensions in Sino-Japanese business negotiation and to verify the applicability of Hofstede’s theory and the feasibility of index value rankings.This dissertation consists of six parts:The introduction gives a general survey of this dissertation, including background, aims, methodology, and structure of the research, indicating that this dissertation is an empirical study based on Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions.Chapter one reviews the development of cultural dimension theories, which is the theoretical basis of this empirical study.Chapter two consists of questionnaire investigation and data analysis to examine various aspects of Sino-Japanese business negotiation and obtain a general idea of how the cultural differences and similarities influence such a negotiation setting. In the questionnaire investigation, the participants, the research instruments, the contents and the survey procedures are processed with detailed statistics. The data of the questionnaire has been examined in detail to illustrate different behaviors that Chinese and Japanese business professionals show in negotiation and how these behaviors affect their negotiation. Chapter three describes cultural dimensions surveyed in the questionnaire by comparing these with Hofstede’s research results, in order to see whether these cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede can be used as a basic model to study the cultural issues in intercultural business negotiation.Chapter four furthers the understanding of how cultural dimensions influence Sino-Japanese business negotiation and, in particular, provides a comparison between Chinese business negotiators and Japanese business negotiators on their cultural preferences from four perspectives, including: (1) verbal and nonverbal communication; (2) form and substance of negotiation; (3) negotiation style; and (4) negotiation process.Chapter five presents the major findings of this research and offers culturally responsive suggestions to both Chinese and Japanese business professionals in their future negotiation. In the mean time, the author points out her future research methods for developing the present study.The concluding chapter summarizes the whole dissertation with the significance of cultural dimensions in Sino-Japanese business negotiation highlighted.