COMMUNICATION ACROSS CULTURES

Communication across Cultures



Letter of Transmittal

Mr. X

In today's global market, one of the major frustrations facing businesses is that cross-cultural negotiations are difficult. Deals are getting done, but not without misunderstandings and frustration that may have both short- and long term implications. As the top bosses of five foremost U.S. business-to-business companies that landed deals to penetrate the Japanese market in the fall of 2000 noted, their biggest concerns involved cultural differences (Clark, 2000, pp. 1-36). One of the first places where cultural differences arise in Crossnational business is when East and West meet at the negotiation table.

Sincerely,

X-Y-Z

Communication across Cultures

Introduction

There are many aspects of culture that may contribute to an East-West culture clash at the negotiation table. Negotiators may have different goals or different ideas about whether the other party is friend or foe (Hofstede, 1980, pp.121; Triandis, 1995, pp.506-520). Negotiators may have different expectations for the role of status and the use of power in negotiations (Hofstede, 1980, pp.121; Schwarte, 1994, pp.109). Negotiators with different communication styles may have trouble understanding each other (Erez & Earley, 1993, pp. 1513-1537).

Negotiation

Negotiation is a process of communication involving the exchange of information on parties' Crossests, positions, and needs. Communication that reveals the relative importance of issues, the relative preferences for issue options, and similar preferences across parties is relevant to creating value in negotiations (Bakeman, Gottman, 1997, pp.98) because such information can be used to make trade-offs and identify compatible issues that are fundamental to the development of an integrative agreement (Wallon & McKersie, 1965, pp.89). An integrative agreement is one in which both parties are satisfied and is usually measured in terms of joint gains, or the sum of the value of the deal for both parties.

In negotiation, integrative behaviors that convey information about priorities, similarities, and differences, can be direct or indirect. Without broaching the question of culture, Pruitt (1981, pp.111) defined priority statements as a direct strategy for generating joint gains, and offered heuristic trial and error as an indirect strategy, though not necessarily reflecting a motivated search. It is clear why explicit information on priorities can help negotiators identify trade-offs and compatible issues. How offers convey this data, on the other hand, is more complex. Information on priorities and commonalities can be extracted from the offer context; how offers change over time conveys where a negotiator is more willing to move (less valuable issues) and less willing to move (more valuable issues). Adair et al. (2001, pp145) found evidence of these direct and indirect information-sharing strategies in U.S. and Japanese negotiations consistent with Hall's (1976) low/high context classification.

Low and High Context Cultures

Low versus high context captures a culture's reliance on context in connection and data processing. Low context negotiators rely primarily on explicit verbal messages, while high context negotiators are more skilled in inferring meaning from context(Kim, 1988, pp.23). Therefore, communication tends to be more direct in low context cultures and indirect in high context cultures. Accordingly, Adair and colleagues (2001) found that low ...