International Negotiation: Cultural Intelligence and Key Factors
Negotiation: A Voluntary Process
Negotiation is a voluntary process of give and take where both parties modify their offers and expectations in order to come closer to each other.
Cultural Intelligence (CQ) in Negotiations
Cultural intelligence (CQ) is the capability to relate and work effectively in culturally diverse situations. It goes beyond existing notions of cultural sensitivity and awareness to highlight a theoretically-based set of capabilities needed to successfully and respectfully accomplish your objectives in culturally diverse settings.
Factors Influencing International Negotiations
Two overall contexts influence international negotiations:
Environmental Context
Includes environmental forces that neither negotiator controls that influence the negotiation. Factors that make international negotiations more challenging than domestic negotiations include:
- Political and legal pluralism: different legal and political systems
- International economics: exchange value of the currency
- Foreign governments and bureaucracies: Countries differ in the extent to which the government regulates industries and organizations
- Instability: lack of resources, shortages of other goods and services, and political instability.
- Ideology: different ideology, clashes in ideology may lead to parties disagreeing at the most fundamental level about what is being negotiated
- Culture: people from different cultures interpret and negotiate differently
- External stakeholders
Immediate Context
Includes factors over which negotiators appear to have some control. Factors over which the negotiators have influence and some measure of control:
- Relative bargaining power: the amount of equity that each side is willing to invest in the new venture
- Levels of conflict: High conflict situations – those based on ethnicity, identity, or geography – are harder to resolve
- Relationship between negotiators: the history of relations between the parties will influence the current and future negotiations
- Desired outcomes
- Immediate stakeholders
Understanding Culture in Negotiation
Culture: Is a set of norms and values embedded in a human collective that gives it identity and makes sense for its behaviors.
Culture Determinants
Through top-down processes of socialization, individuals internalize the shared meaning system of the society to which they belong, and its values are represented in the individual self.
Bottom-up processes of aggregation and shared values, higher-level entities of culture are formed, at the group, organizational, and national levels.
Culture Features
- Culture is shared: Culture is something shared by members of a particular group.
- Culture is learned: Culture is not innate; it is learned and transferred through shared life and environment.
- Language
- Systems of government
- Religion
- Culture is systematic and organized
- Cultures are integrated coherent logical systems, the parts of which are interrelated
- Culture makes a system; the various aspects of culture are interrelated
Values and Norms
Values are abstract ideas about what a group believes to be good, right, and desirable; it is shared assumptions about how things ought to be (justice, democracy, loyalty, equality…).
Norms are the social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behavior in particular situations.