1. Chapter 11 Different Business Culture and Negotiation
Understanding different cultures
How do cultures vary?
What are the implications of differences?
Adopting culture-specific strategies
in four types of cultures

2. Questions in focus What are the implications of cultural differences?
How do cultures vary?
What are the implications of cultural differences?
How to overcome the differences?

3. The culture differences are the major barriers to cross-culture negotiations
One of the biggest mistakes in any discussions of negotiation practices is to ignore differences between cultures, and different social groups have different ideas of what is proper protocol and procedure.

4. How do cultures vary? Fons Tronpenaars’ research:
When a close friend is potential in serous trouble with the law
North American and most North European think they have no right or some right to protect their friends and lie to the police
So do 70% of the French and the Japanese people, while over 1/3 of the respondents think they have no right
More than half of respondents in Russia, Venezuela, Indonesia and China would lie to police to protect their friends

5. How do cultures vary?
Geert Hofstede’s study shows: people from different cultures have very different views of what is fair, reasonable and proper behavior
Four key factors to explains:
Power distance:
High: Portugal, Greece, France, and Belgium
Low : Denmark, Norway, UK
Masculinity:
Feminine: Scandinavian countries
Moderate: USA
High masculine: Japan and Austria

6. How do cultures vary? Individualism:
High: Anglo-Saxon countries, Italy, Belgium
Low: Span, Greece, Portugal, France, Latin American countries and Japan
Uncertainty avoidance plotted against the Power distance index such as Latin American and European, but Singapore, Hong Kong and India combine lager power distance with weak uncertainty avoidance while Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon countries combine small power distance and weak uncertainty avoidance

7. How do cultures vary? Belgium High moderate high Germany Low
Typical countries
Power distance
Masculinity
Individualism
Uncertainty avoidance
Belgium
High
moderate
high
Germany
Low
Netherlands
France
Italy
Moderate
Denmark
low UK

8. How do cultures vary? Andre Laurent’s survey:
It is important for a manager to have at hand precise answer to most of the questions that his subordinates may raise about their work
13% of both Swedish and American managers agreed
59% of both French and Italian mangers agreed
30% and 50% of managers from UK, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium agreed

9. How do cultures vary? Michael Bond:
Short-term: West European and North America
And most short-term: UK, Nigeria and Pakistan
Long-term: East Asian
Confucian dimension: Non-Asian countries such as Brazil, Netherlands

10. How do cultures vary? Trompenaars’ study on looking at time
>: be more important than
=: be equal to or connect
Russia: future>present>past
Belgium and British: present >>past
French : future=present=past
Germans: present = future

11. What are the implications of differences?
We are not aware of our cultural bias
We become blind to our own cultural norm
Other culture are implicitly perceived as unfortunate deviations from the norm
Stereotyping is common