InterNeg Seminars

11:00 AM, December 20, 2007 Room GM 725
J. Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montreal

What Happened to Cross-Cultural Dyadic E-Negotiation?

Wan-Jung Lin

Ever since the boom in global e-business, and the resulting intensification of competition, cross-cultural e-negotiation has increased in popularity.  Understanding how national cultures affect negotiation behaviour is becoming more and more critical for businesses.  This research will explore how a negotiator’s cultural background impacts its behaviour.  There are four major findings:  firstly, that Eastern and Western businesses have unique negotiation behaviours; secondly, that the negotiation behaviours of both Eastern and Western negotiators are impacted by their counterparts’ cultural background; thirdly, that when Easterners negotiate with Westerners, there were more instances of task behaviour and persuasive behaviour, but fewer instances of procedural behaviour and private communication; and finally, that when Westerner negotiates with Easterner, there are more instances of task behaviour but fewer of private communication.  In spite of the similarities, however, Western negotiators have more consistent negotiation behaviour than do their Eastern equivalents, regardless of cultural differences between the dyadic negotiators.  The following research uses the content analysis method, which is more thorough than the questionnaire in terms of qualitative criteria.  The total set of thought units can be analyzed from further viewpoints in the future.

Wan-Jung Lin is a Ph.D. student of Information Management at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan. Currently, she is in the fourth year program and has been the Ph.D. candidate. She is a visiting student at Concordia University since September 2007 and will stay for one year. Her present major research focuses on the issues of cross-cultural, language usage and system support in e-negotiation.

For more information contact: Ms. Norma Paradis, nparadis(at)jmsb.concordia.ca