Do Negotiators From Different Cultures Use Negotiation Strategies Similarly?

Substantial research documenting the fre­quency of Q&A and S&O usage in six cultures indicates that negotiators from dif­ferent cultures use both Q&A and S&O in negotiation but that they use them with different frequency and effects (Adair et al., 2004).

Overall, comparative, cross-cultural research provides two important qualifications to our knowledge of negotiation strategy based on Western data. First, Q&A is not the only set of behaviors that underlie integrative strat­egy. Some negotiators (e.g., the Japanese) can use S&O to generate insight and joint gains. Second, S&O behaviors do not exclusively serve a distributive strategy. These results raise three questions: (1) How do Japanese negotia­tors gain insight through S&O? (2) To what degree are the prototypical S&O (Japanese) and Q&A (American) strategies emblematic of other cultures’ strategies? (3) Why do Japanese negotiators rely on S&O to generate joint gains, while American negotiators rely on Q&A?

1. How do Japanese negotiators gain insight through S&O? Three observations about Japanese negotiators’ approach seem to explain their effective use of S&O.

2. To what degree are the prototypical S&O (Japanese) and Q&A (American) strategies emblematic of other cultures’ strategies? Adair and Brett (2005) investigated the relation­ship between S&O, Q&A, and communica­tion style across Western and Eastern cultures. Communication norms in Western cultures stress direct communication and are considered “low context.” In contrast, communication norms in East Asian cultures are indirect and considered “high context” (Gibson, 1998; Hall, 1976). Communication in low-context cul­tures is relatively explicit, with meaning clearly contained in the words or the surface of a mes­sage. Communication in high-context cultures is more implicit, with subtle meaning embed­ded behind and around the spoken or written words. Deriving meaning from communication in high-context culture requires second-level inferential skills. For example, when a negotia­tor makes a multi-issue proposal, a low-context counterpart will hear the explicit words and extract direct information about what the first negotiator wants.

Comparing intracultural negotiators among eight cultures that prior theory and research (e.g., Gibson, 1998; Hall, 1976) had characterized as low context (Germany, Israel, Sweden, and the United States) or high context (Hong Kong-ethnic Chinese, Japan, Russia, and Thailand), Adair and Brett (2005) reported significant differences between the two groups in the use of S&O and Q&A throughout the negotiation. Specifically, nego­tiators from low-context cultures used Q&A more frequently than negotiators from high- context cultures. Moreover, negotiators from high-context cultures used offers more fre­quently in the first three quarters of the nego­tiation than negotiators from low-context cultures did (Adair & Brett, 2005). Findings regarding substantiation were less clear-cut. Negotiators from low-context cultures paired information sharing with affective persuasion (i.e., emotional appeals or references to social norms) early in the negotiation more than negotiators from high-context cultures did. In contrast, negotiators from high-context cul­tures paired rational influence (appeals based on task-relevant factors like market data) with offers, particularly in the negotiations’ third quarter, and more than low-context culture negotiators did.

Despite these differences in Q&A and S&O usage, Adair and Brett (2005) did not find significant differences in joint gains between negotiators from high- and low-context com­munication cultures. The key to insight and joint gains across cultures was “getting off on the right foot”: that is, the use of cultur­ally appropriate information-sharing methods in the first quarter of the negotiation (Brett, 2007).

3. Why do Japanese negotiators rely on S&O to generate insight, while American negotiators rely on Q&A? A culture’s reliance on one versus another negotiation strategy seems to derive from the norms that govern communication style and predilection to trust. In the section below, we first present more detail on how cultural communication styles may influence the application of Q&A and S&O. Next, we discuss how trust in general affects the use of Q&A and S&O. Last, we review recent research on the cultural norms underlying trust and their impact on negotia­tors’ behaviors.

Culture, Mind-Set, and Negotiation Strategy. Many East Asian cultures are high context, and most Western cultures are considered low-context cultures (Hall, 1976). The low-/ high-context dimension captures differences not only in verbal communication but also in nonverbal communication and cognitive functioning (Gibson, 1998). Theorizing and research on the cognitive functions underlying cultural differences in language usage describe East Asians as relational thinkers with a holis­tic mind-set and Americans as analytic thinkers with a linear mind-set (Ji, Zhang, & Nisbett, 2004). According to this line of theorizing and research, East Asians pay particular attention to the field (or context) and to the relation­ships between objects and events. In contrast, Americans pay attention to objects, decontex­tualize the objects from the field, and focus on their properties to establish category member­ship (Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001).

The holistic mind-set associated with high- context culture seems to facilitate a search process that can transform the information contained in patterns of offers and substanti­ation into the insights necessary for realizing joint gains (Brett, 2007). A holistic mind-set seems to deter negotiators from separating an issue from the context of the other issues. It focuses negotiators’ attention on the relation­ships between issues. Thus, negotiators with a holistic mind-set do not need to (and may not want to) engage in direct Q&A to infer others’ interests and detect possible trade­offs. They can continue to see the forest of interests from the trees of S&O.

In contrast, the linear mind-set associated with communication patterns in low-context cultures may help negotiators detect possible trade-offs from Q&A. Linear thinkers are com­fortable moving sequentially and systematically through a set of issues. Because Q&A presents information in a sequential and systematic fashion, it may “fit” with a linear mind-set, allowing negotiators to discover fundamental interests rather than surface-level positions. Thus, negotiators with a linear mind-set may need to engage in Q&A to discover underlying interests (Adair & Brett, 2005).

Culture, Trust, and Negotiation Strategy. Whether Q&A or S&O are normative in a culture may depend on trust (Gunia et al., 2011). Trust is one party’s willingness to accept vulnerability based on favorable expec­tations of the other party’s behavior (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). Trust is critical in negotiation because negotiators are usually vulnerable to the actions of their counterpart; the counterpart can typically exploit the infor­mation that a negotiator shares (Butler, 1999). In our previous example, if one sister learns that the other prefers the apple to the pear and banana, she can demand extreme terms on the less preferred fruits (the full pear and banana) in return for giving up the most preferred fruit (the apple).

Q&A would seem to require trust because both questions and answers could allow the counterpart to take advantage (Butler, 1999). Questions reveal what a negotiator does not know; they also make it more likely, based on the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) that the questioner will eventually have to answer questions (Pruitt & Lewis, 1975). Answers reveal the potentially sensitive information that the negotiator does know (Kimmel et al., 1980; Pruitt & Lewis, 1975). As the research above has shown, negotiators need to under­stand each other’s priorities to reach insight and achieve joint gains. High trust should sup­port the use of Q&A by making vulnerability more palatable.

Low trust should discourage the use of Q&A by making vulnerability seem danger­ous. Indeed, low-trust negotiators may see Q&A as an ill-advised invitation to take advantage of them. If asking questions reveals incomplete knowledge, and the counterpart will not answer honestly anyway, then ask­ing makes little sense. If answering questions reveals private preferences, and the coun­terpart will probably take advantage of that information, then neither would answer. By withholding information, low-trust negotia­tors can avoid risk, but risk avoidance may carry the cost of insufficient Q&A and low insight (Butler, 1995).

In contrast, neither substantiation nor offers require trust, because neither reveals anything particularly telling about the negotiator (Adair et al., 2007; Brett, 2007; Kimmel et al., 1980; Pruitt & Lewis, 1975). Rather than a glimpse at the negotiator’s Achilles heel, S&O may simply offer a glimpse at the negotiator’s competitive stance (Bazerman & Neale, 1992; Fisher & Ury, 1981). In sum, high trust may encourage Q&A and low trust S&O.

People from different national cultures vary in their willingness to trust one another (Ferrin & Gillespie, 2010; Inglehart, Basanez, & Menendez Moreno, 1998; Johnson & Cullen, 2002). Broadly speaking, Westerners (i.e., North Americans, Western Europeans) tend to make the “swift trust” assumption in many situations: that others deserve to be trusted until they prove otherwise (Dirks, Lewicki, & Zaheer, 2009; Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer, 1996; Weber, Malhotra, & Murnighan, 2005). Easterners (i.e., East and South Asians) generally not only display less trust (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994) but also base their trust decisions on the situation (Branzei, Vertinsky, & Camp, 2007).

Gunia and colleagues (2011) tested proposi­tions about culture, trust, and strategy by com­paring the negotiation behavior of Indians and Americans. They found that Indian negotiators trusted their counterparts less than American negotiators, that low trust was strongly related to S&O and high trust (less strongly) to Q&A, and that Q&A positively predicted and S&O did not predict insight and joint gains. These studies offered little evidence that negotiators (from either culture) who used S&O could infer priorities and negotiate trade-offs to cre­ate joint gains. Conversely, both Indian and American negotiators who relied on Q&A routinely generated insight and joint gains. Thus, the major cultural difference in this study was a reliance on S&O by Indian but not American negotiators—a difference that could be explained by trust. Overall, Indian negotia­tors’ widespread reluctance to trust and result­ing reliance on S&O produced relatively poor joint gains. The Gunia et al. (2011) study pro­vides initial support for the proposition that a culture’s propensity to trust helps explain rela­tionships among culture, negotiation strategy, and joint gains.

Two other studies, albeit with Japanese data, provide further evidence on the impor­tance of trust in mediating these relation­ships. Adair et al. (2007) have argued that Japan, like India, is a low-trust culture in negotiations. Japanese negotiators’ heavy reliance on S&O is consistent with this con­clusion. In addition, when Japanese do use Q&A, it does not seem to generate insight and joint gains. Indeed, Japanese who used early Q&A in the Adair et al. (2007) study realized low insight and joint gains. In an earlier study, Japanese and American nego­tiators negotiating interculturally used about as much Q&A as American negotiators did intraculturally (Adair et al., 2001). However, intercultural negotiators failed to generate insight or joint gains comparable to intracul- tural negotiators from either culture. Brett (2007) suggested that the Japanese in these studies may not have trusted information gathered via Q&A, again reinforcing the link between trust and Q&A.

In sum, research strongly suggests that cultural factors, like trust, and direct ver­sus indirect communication, dictate the most appropriate behaviors in intracultural negotia­tions and so shape the way that negotiators interact. In general, low trust in negotiations will lead negotiators to use S&O and high trust to use Q&A. Negotiators use Q&A exchange information that benefits them in terms of joint gains. The benefits of using S&O seem to depend on whether negotia­tors are from high- or low-context cultures. Negotiators from high-context cultures seem capable of inferring priorities from offer pat­terns and using that information to negotiate joint gains. Negotiators from low-context cultures do not seem to do so.

The Time Lens:

Negotiation Strategy Dynamics

Although the IBM-Lenovo deal became public in late 2004, it began in private as early as 2002. The lengthy negotiations between IBM and Lenovo saw many offers and coun­teroffers between the two companies (Hamm et al., 2005). The temporal dynamics of nego­tiation strategies are the focus of this section.

The negotiation framework in Figure 11.1 is static. However, some of the cul­tural research that we have been reviewing suggests that the strategy-insight-outcome relationship unfolds over time. Thus, the cur­rent section reviews research on negotiation strategy dynamics, considering how and why strategies change through time. Research on this topic studies negotiations with integra­tive potential and examines how the elements of integrative and distributive strategy ebb, flow, and develop (Putnam, 1990). The early game theory and economic approaches to negotiation assumed that either integrative or distributive strategy would dominate negotia­tions. However, subsequent research taking a communications or psychological perspective demonstrates that the opposing imperatives to create and claim value cause strategies to shift throughout the negotiation (Gulliver, 1979; Lax & Sebenius, 1986).

Empirical research on negotiation dynam­ics has taken two main approaches: qualitative case studies of real-world negotiations and quantitative analyses of behavior in nego­tiation simulations. Case studies of not only labor-management negotiations (Douglas, 1957, 1962; Putnam, Wilson, & Turner, 1990; Putnam, Wilson, Waltman, & Turner, 1986; Stephenson, Kniveton, & Moreley, 1977) but also hostage negotiations (Donohue, Ramesh, & Borgrevink, 1991; Donohue & Roberto, 1993) and marital disputes (Gottman, Markman, & Notarius, 1977) have informed our understanding of the phases or stages that characterize negotiations. The more recent quantitative research using coded transcripts of simulated buyer-seller negotiations (Olekalns, Smith, & Walsh, 1996), dispute resolution negotiations (Lytle, Brett, & Shapiro, 1999), and multiparty negotiations (Olekalns, Brett, & Weingart, 2004; Weingart et al., 2007) has informed our understanding of both phases and stages, and of smaller units like reciprocal, complementary, and transformational inter­actions, explained below. A third approach, computational modeling (which we will not review) has only recently been applied to nego­tiations and remains nascent.⁸ Computational modeling dynamically models data from the second approach and/or introduces experi­mental conditions to predict the relationships between behaviors and outcomes (see Hulin, Miner, & Seitz, 2002, for an overview of use of computational modeling in organizational research).

Three major research questions guide the study of negotiation strategy dynamics: What strategy is likely to dominate each stage of the negotiation? What causes negotiators to change strategy? What causes particular strategy patterns to dominate negotiations? The next sections review research offering initial answers to these questions.