COMM 373/3.0 - International Business Negotiation

Dr. Brian Holdstock

Negotiation can often be theatrical – after all it does involve posturing and play acting to some extent!  It also involves trying to second guess how the other party will play their hand.  If the other party is from a totally different national and cultural background then the second guessing adopts a wholly new dimension.  In this course we look in detail at how cross cultural differences affect negotiation.  We do this by extensive use of case studies from the world of commerce and we use role play too.  Countries which feature in the case studies include China, Ecuador, Malaysia, Finland, France and the USA among others.

As a student you will learn something about yourself as well as about other cultures and a part of the assessment is a reflective statement on what you have learned.  There is no exam and the remaining elements of the assessment are an essay plus peer-reviewed marking of participation in a major role play exercise (which is video recorded) over several days as the final stage of the course.

There is reading involved in this course, much of it related to preparation of the case studies discussed in class.  Some additional country-specific research is also required.  The academic texts this course uses in depth are mostly quite brief and based on the authors’ practical experience so they constitute something of a set of hand books.

Field Study trips will be to London based international organisations plus some local visits to one or more organisations with international connections.

The reading list is at the foot of the page and these are some of the indicative lecture titles:

• International trade operational arrangements
• National stereotypes – how true are they?
• Case study: Negotiation in China (Google and Universal Studios)
• The Silent Language in Overseas Business
• Learning to listen and observe
• Global multicultural negotiation
• Case study: Gold Peak Electronics (HK audio company acquires a UK company)
• Hofstede’s four dimensions of national culture
• Case study: Reed Oilwell – YPEC  (US company selling drill bits to Ecuador)
• Case study: Nora – Sakari  (Finnish – Malaysian Joint Venture)
• Preparation for ‘Frost in France’ – a business negotiation simulation and role play where a US company tries to negotiate with French bureaucats the terms on which it can lawfully trade in France.

 

Key Readings

Fisher, G (1980) International Negotiation: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Revised version of a discussion paper prepared for the Foreign Service Institute,  Library of Congress No: 81-85716, ISBN: 0-933662-24-6

Fisher, G., Ury, W. and Patton, B. (1991) Getting to Yes,  London, Random House Business Books

Hall E.T. (1960),The Silent Language in Overseas Business, Harvard Business Review, May, 9 pages

Hofstede, G (1983) “National Cultures in Four Dimensions: A Research-based Theory of Cultural Differences among Nations”, International Studies of Management and Organsiation, Vol. Xlll. No. 1-2, pp. 46-74

Moore, C.W. and Woodrow, P.J. (2010)  Handbook of Global and Multicultural Negotiation,Jossey-Bass

Tan, J.S. and Lim, E.N.K. (2004) Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Negotiation: the F.R.A.M.E. approach, McGraw Hill