The need for understanding cultural differences, diversity of needs and competing interests is paramount to be successful in the current age of globalization. Business dealings have evolved into cross border … and business executives are required to deal with counterparts for from different parts of the world. A high level of cross cultural negotiation skills becomes a prerequisite for success. Thus the importance of understanding cultural diffences becomes critical.
Cross cultural negotiations are complex and involve both personal and cultural – they have an impact on both perception of conflicts and the methods used to solve them.
Many factors influence the outcome of cross-cultural negotiations and should be considered before entering into negotiations with another culture. Negotiators who understand certain aspects of cross-culture negotiations have the advantage over the negotiator who is not well prepared to negotiate with their foreign counterpart. I will discuss a few negotiation factors which constitute a basic framework for identifying cultural differences that was presented during the cross cultural team presentations.
Cultures have different views and reasons for setting their goals in negotiations; for example in North America the goal of any business negotiation is to reach a substantive outcome; time is money and the outcome of reaching an agreement is quick and formal. In Italy, quite the contrary is true; the goal for a negotiation is to focus on building long lasting and trustful relationships. Don’t expect to reach an agreement quickly; negotiations with Italians take long, fostering trust comes before reaching an agreement. Communication, both verbal and non-verbal play a very important part of the negotiation process and can hinder the progress of a successful negotiation if one or both parties do not know or understand things such as