Negotiation is one of the most common and essential activities in human social life, it generally refers to the social consultation of two parties with the purpose of meeting their own needs and safeguarding their own interests to solve a problem.“Business negotiation” is an act where the involved parties strive to achieve a commodity trading and consult on a variety of trading conditions. In different countries, negotiations are handled in different ways due to the differences in regions, ethnics, societies and cultures. Therefore, when engaged in business activities, especially cross-border business activities, we must understand and master the links and differences between different cultures. During the preparation and organization of the negotiations, only when understanding the impact of these differences on the negotiations, can we achieve the desired objectives.
So, the goal of this thesis is to analyze the main differences between the characteristics of different regions on the Sino-US business negotiation style, we analyze the impact of geographical and cultural differences between China and the US on business negotiations by giving some suggestions from a cross-cultural perspective.
In business negotiations , we must be familiar with other parties’ cultures, enhance sensitivity to cultural differences, reduce the instability caused by the geographical and cultural differences in order to increase the predictability of other sides behavior and to formulate relevant negotiation strategies. Thus being more active in the negotiation process will increase the probability of successful business negotiations.
2. Literature Review
In the economic globalization today, especially since China joined the WTO, China’s economy has gradually integrated into the world economic tide. And as the world's leading economic power, the United States and China has a closer economic communication. With the deepening of Sino-US economic exchanges, cross-cultural business negotiations between China and the US are facing an important process of economic cooperation in the inevitable. "Cross cultural business negotiation is not only a kind of economic activity, but also an intercultural communication." (He 42). In the process of negotiations, negotiators’ negotiating attitudes, language expression, ways of thinking are influenced by the cultural background. In order to push the Sino-US trades into the healthy and long-term development, we must pay attention to the differences in business negotiating styles, admit the existence of differences, find the differences, the production of differences that causes, especially the influences of cultural factors on Sino-US business negotiating style. Only in this way can we approach the right way to overcome these differences, even take the advantages of these differences to make negotiation business more perfect.来!自~751论-文|网www.751com.cn
In recent years, there are many researches on the factors in the business negotiation style. Many experts and scholars have put forward their own views. "The style of a country mainly depends on the level of development of the national traditional culture and economy. The negotiators from different cultural backgrounds, their values and negotiation behaviors are different." (Miu 96). "The different cultural backgrounds determine the different business negotiation styles, different styles of business negotiation also reflect the different cultural backgrounds." (He 44). It can be
seen that the current scholars admit that cultural differences lead to differences in negotiating skills,but the cultural difference is an important factor affecting Sino-US negotiation style ,which is the service identification of the negotiating style factors. Therefore, in the study of Sino-US business negotiation styles, we must also pay much attention to study the cultural background in order to better understand and overcome differences in business negotiating style and to promote the healthy development of Sino-US business.