International Business Negotiations

Business on both a local and international scale depends on negotiations; they are an everyday factor of the business world, and their importance shows on the bottom line of every company’s accounts. Without successful negotiations, businesses will ultimately fail and, unfortunately, negotiations breakdown with disturbing regularity (Bazerman, 1986). In addition, negotiation, a task that is already considered to be one of the most difficult in business, becomes even more difficult when accompanied by the complexity of culture (Tse and Francis, 1994). Nevertheless, as globalisation increases, both MNCs and SMEs are entering into international negotiations, and the increase in globalisation has resulted in an increased volume of negotiations between members of different cultures (George et al., 1998). This issue of International Marketing Review examines some of the topics that are being considered by researchers looking at international business negotiations. The papers in this Special Issue on “International business negotiations” address some important aspects of the subject. Starting with a review of the published research in the area over the last decade Reynolds et al., in “International business negotiations: present knowledge and direction for future research” give an overview of current knowledge in the area. This content analysis of the literature looks at what is considered as vital to international negotiations researchers, identifying five critical areas from the models in the literature and considering how researchers have addressed each area. They conclude that, while many individual contributions are beneficial to knowledge in the field, without the explicit use of an overall framework, research in international business negotiations lacks coherence. The next two papers both look at international business negotiations between western and Chinese negotiators. The first paper by Kumar and Worm – “Social capital and the dynamics of business negotiations between the northern Europeans and the Chinese” – considers how the negotiation process is shaped by the negotiators’ level of shared understanding, their affective bonding and the nature of the relationship between negotiators. Their findings challenge some accepted wisdom, for instance, that Chinese negotiators are unwilling to share information, and highlight some intra-cultural differences, specifically between older and younger Chinese negotiators. The second of the papers examining western and Chinese negotiations – “Negotiation approaches: direct and indirect effect of national culture” by Lin and Miller – finds that culture acts upon the negotiation approach assumed directly, as well as acting indirectly through relationship commitment and the relative power of negotiators. Relationship commitment, for instance, leads to a more integrated approach to ongoing negotiations and a more open exchange of