Culture on Negotiation
In the current digital world, negotiations have been made easier since individuals can communicate and agree upon business transactions while miles away. However, despite the breakthroughs brought about by technology, the four levels of problems in international negotiation still impact virtual negotiation significantly. Language, for instance, can be a significant problem, especially where the separate parties hold different meanings of the same words (Sobré-Denton, 2016). Without an exact and efficient language for use in virtual negotiations, there is a potential for misunderstandings between the negotiating parties, which negatively impacts the negotiation process.
Additionally, different international cultures have different interpretations of various non-verbal behaviors. Though a valid interpretation of non-verbal behavior facilitates virtual negotiation, having different interpretations of these behaviors poses significant challenges to virtual negotiation (Semnani-Azad & Nouri, 2015). For example, in India, shaking the head side-ways indicates agreeing with what is being said. In a different culture, however, for instance, America, doing the same, would signal disagreeing. Therefore, when a salesperson in America is negotiating virtually with a customer in India, misinterpretation of nonverbal behaviors could cause significant problems to negotiation. Finally, individual values play a vital role in influencing virtual negotiations across cultures (Marchi et al., 2020). Personal values manifest in various ways, including polite and rude responses to individuals. For example, one party in negotiation may write an email politely requesting clarification on a specific issue. However, on the other end, the recipient may interpret the message differently and feel that it was offensive. These different interpretations based on personal values, thus affect the negotiation.
References
Marchi, S., Targi, N., Liston, P. M., & Parlangeli, O. (2020). The possible role of empathy and emotions in virtual negotiation. Ergonomics, 63(3), 263-273.
Semnani-Azad, Z., & Nouri, E. (2015, August). Automatic Interpretation of Negotiators’ Affect and Involvement based on Their Non-verbal Behavior. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 520-529). Springer, Cham.
Sobré-Denton, M. (2016). Virtual intercultural bridgework: Social media, virtual cosmopolitanism, and activist community-building. New media & society, 18(8), 1715-1731.