商务谈判作业1

Cultural Conflicts in Business Negotiation

between China and Western Countries

Abstract

With political and economic globalization, international trade is accelerating, and the business negotiation is becoming more and more frequent. However, because of the cultural differences in different nations or regions, some unnecessary misunderstandings between negotiators frequently appear, which influences the business negotiation process and even the outcomes of negotiation. So in the cross-cultural business negotiation, negotiators should accept the other parties’ culture, and try hard to make others accept themselves.

1. Introduction

Business negotiation refers to the association of different areas, different nations and different social culture. Then the cross-culture negotiation appears. Before negotiating, negotiators must know the influence of the cultural differences. Only facing the influence energetically can make the target come true.

2. Cultural differences

2.1 Definition of Culture

Culture is constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. Our written languages, buildings, and other man-made things are merely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves. For this reason, archaeologists cannot dig up culture directly in their excavations. The broken pots and other artifacts of ancient people that they uncover are only material remains that reflect cultural patterns--they are things that were made and used through cultural knowledge and skills

2.2 Causes of Cultural Differences

Regional difference is that people in different geographical regions have

different geographical environment, level of economic development and traditional customs etc. So they have different languages, lifestyles and hobbies, and this will influence their behavior. For example, people in Europe and America value the Christmas Day, but people in some eastern countries even don’t know what Christmas Day is.

Political difference is that in different countries, there are a variety of political systems and laws which stipulate peoples’ con duct. So people from different countries have different political perspectives. For instance, Chinese like the “golden mean”, so we don’t like aggressiveness war, but some countries in the world like to fight for scarce resources. That is because they have different political policies.

2.3 The definition of negotiation

Negotiation is a kind of basic human activity that we are involved every day. It is a process of giving and taking where both parties modify their offers and expectations in order to come closer to each other. It occurs on one of the two reasons: (1) to create something new that neither party could do on his or her own;

(2) to resolve a problem or dispute between the parties.

2.4 Importance of cultural difference to business negotiation

In t he practice of negotiation, many negotiators usually don’t understand value or mention the important influence of cultural difference to negotiation. On foreign negotiators’ culture, many negotiators maybe have observed the other side’s “different” or “obscure” way of negotiation, but they think that’s not important.

3. Influence of cultural differences on the international negotiation

Influence of culture on negotiation is extensive and profound. Different culture naturally divides people in various categories. So negotiators must accept each other’s culture, and by cultural difference, reveal and understand the other side’s purpose and conduction without any mistakes, and make the other side accept you. Finally, they can reach unanimous agreement.

Overall, the impact of culture on negotiations mainly reflects on the following areas:

3.1 Process of communication

Influence of cultural difference to the process of negotiation communication firstly shows up in the language communication process of negotiatio n. Difference