DEBATED ISSUES
An important debate relates to the very object of the research: the strategic or the cognitive dimension of the conflict. Both are essential for developing knowledge but now the cognitive approach tends to be of a growing importance in current research (Avruch, 1998; Faure, 2003).
The point is to grasp images, representations, and conceptions, which is what will organize the understanding that the actor has of the situation and his motivations and which will as a consequence influence his behavior. Thus, there is an evolution in research from the strategic approach inherited from Morgenthau, based on objective criteria in terms of cost benefits, to a system of interpretation inherited from the Weberian tradition which puts the emphasis on the meaning that actors give to their actions. Lederach (1995) insists on the fact that culture provides the logic by which people reason, and thus define problems and deal with them.A number of researchers contend that most of the conflicts grounded in cultural differences are about definition andperception of social reality (Avruch, 1998; Kimmel, 2000). Ross (1997b) argues, “The most widely cited weakness of rational choice theory is its inattention to context specific interests and cross-cultural differences in how interests are conceptualized.” The importance of the language used in international meetings is emphasized by Kimmel (2000). With its grammatical construction of subject-predicate, “English creates a world of objects with fixed relations between things and their attributes. English speakers think of a causal world of actors-actions-results” (Stewart, 1987). Attitudes by themselves do not give a clear idea about real intentions unless understood through the cultural prism. Jehn and Weldon (1997), while studying conflict handling in China, observe that, for instance, an attitude expressing a care for avoiding conflict in one culture, such as keeping silent, can be viewed as aggressive in another culture.
On the concept of culture
The concept itself raises problems as culture is, according to Weiss, “neither consistently nor adequately defined” (1999: 70).
Anthropologists such as Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1963) have collected more than 160 different definitions of culture. Weiss also observes that authors such as Avruch and Black (1991), and Poortinga and Hendriks (1989) have picked up on very different uses of the term culture. Janosik (1987) has identified four basic approaches, each one related to a specific understanding of the concept and its whereabouts. The first, culture as learned behavior, refers to what people do rather than what they think. The second defines it as shared values; the third views culture as a bundle of components “in tension” with each other; while the fourth contends that culture has to be approached within a context (personal, social) to fully reach its meaningful aspects. Studying culture within negotiation raises an important point about the nature of negotiation. Should negotiation be simply viewed as “a communication process to resolve some matter over which parties are in conflict,” as stated by Adair and Brett (2004: 158)?
Zartman (1993) contends also that culture, viewed as a sum of behavioral traits of a collectivity, remains a vague concept, a “cultural basket,” and even a “ghost” whose significance is never clearly defined. For this author, culturalists do not seriously substantiate their assertions and, in no case, “relate distinct behavior in a common process to independent cultural traits” (1993: 18). Zartman underlines the difficulty in identifying the cultural roots of a negotiator, as each person belongs at the same time to a national culture, possibly an ethnic one, a religious system of values, a professional one, a family one, and an organizational one. Relying excessively on such a tool as culture runs the risk of stereotyping the counterpart, thus reducing the potential for creativity in devising a solution (see Zartman in this book).
On methodology
In the domain of international relations, Ross (1997a) observes that political scientists are simply reluctant to resort to concepts such as culture. He provides an explanation by pointing out that for them, culture violates canons of methodological individualism while raising serious unit of analysis problems for which there are no easy answers. For those who go beyond this reservation, other essential questions are asked. Should research still focus on “national character” as it has been done since early anthropological studies, or should it be limited to “negotiating styles” as suggested by Avruch (1998: 31)? Taking an opposite stance, Adair and Brett (2004: 159) resort to “national boundaries to identify cultures, because national boundaries define institutional bound, and as a result provide an objective way to distinguish cultural groups.”
Most of what we know about cultural styles in conflict resolution is based on observations made in individuals’ and groups' practices in intracultural negotiations. We should not take for granted that in intercultural negotiations, behaviors should be alike (Frances, 1991; Weiss, 1987). How representative of a group is an individual? How much of the norms of his or her social group has he or she internalized? Knowing the cultural norms of a group does not always help to predict the behavior of one of its members, which reduces the usefulness of national taxonomies such as “Chinese negotiators tend to do that and that in such a situation...” In international negotiations, there is a tendency to overestimate the homogeneity of the outgroup (Jonsson, 1990), which introduces a bias when compared with reality. If “no negotiator is a cultural robot” as stated by Salacuse (1993, 201), if the range of options he or she can take at some stage of the conflict resolution process is too wide, there is no room for predictability.
Grasping the attitude of the parties during the conflict resolution process with an objective and universal tool is another challenge.
What is essential is not so much the behaviors as such but the meanings they carry in the minds of their authors. Does the simple fact of never objecting to an offer in a negotiation imply a positive attitude? An objective observation does not guarantee the scientific quality of what has been found.Should similar tools be used to investigate an analytical culture such as the Western one and a holistic culture such as the Chinese? Until now, research has only implemented analytical approaches, which ultimately lead to try to understand a culture exclusively through the lenses of another. Are, for instance, Western personality constructs relevant in a Chinese context? This is a question that requires digging deeper in this domain (Liu, Friedman and Chi, 2002).
“Emic” aspects of culture are what make a culture unique as opposed to “etic” aspects, being what provides ground for comparisons. Emics are especially of interest to the social anthropologist and etics to the cross-cultural psychologist. Research tends to resort to etic measurements of emic constructs, for instance, social distance in various societies. However, the basis of social distance is often an emic attribute such as tribe, religion, social group, nationality. Then, what is used as an indicator in one culture to measure social distance may not make sense in another culture. For instance, asking an American if “he would mind having a Turk touch his earthenware,” which is a question that only makes sense in India (Triandis, 1994, p. 72). In fact, research should go in an opposite direction and use emic measurements of etic constructs by first building separately parallel scales by members of each culture and only afterward compare and standardize them.
What experimentalists often call negotiators are not negotiators but students who are asked to negotiate in an artificial setting. Thus, the findings when any should not be labeled, for instance, US negotiators vs Brazilian negotiators but US students vs Brazilian students, put in an artificial negotiation situation. Clearly, these experiments do not have much in common with the work of diplomats or business people dealing with international issues.