The influence of different cultures on international business negotiations & Strategies

Abstract

International business negotiation is an indispensable part of cross-border and foreign trade. Strategy, psychology, and social context are three important factors in international business negotiation. The strategy includes the preparatory work before the negotiation; the psychological element includes how to understand the mental activities of the other party; the social context also includes the negotiator's country and cultural background. This paper focuses on the analysis of these three elements. It covers the different negotiating priorities and habits of Eastern and Western people or negotiating teams due to cultural differences and includes strategies and countermeasures when facing economic situations. Two strategies are also provided: distributive strategy and comprehensive strategy. Those two refer to people who use both of them in the negotiation, but with different intentions and behaviors. Brett's Model provides a good connection between cultural differences and negotiation priorities for a more in-depth analysis of negotiations throughout the text. From the perspective of limitations, international business negotiations will always be affected by inherent factors, such as cultural differences, different ways of thinking, etc. From a future perspective, this area deserves further research to break the existing inherent problems.