Our world is facing a new situation in history with its technological development.
It has considerably brought men closer to each other, suppressed distances, shortened transportation time, and increased opportunities for communicating and interacting. With the development of Third World economies, the multiplication of foreign investments, and the huge growth of exchanges, the world economy has gone one step further in achieving a higher degree of integration.
Even countries that were for so long out of the global trend are now strongly part of this movement. As a consequence, opportunities for conflicts and for negotiation dramatically increase and intercultural encounters are multiplied. Concerns for the common heritage of our planet, such as scarce resource management and threats to the environment, nuclear proliferation, natural disasters, danger of wars, also contribute to getting people of all countries to meet and seek solutions.With the modern media and the growing interdependence between nations, the visibility of national cultures has been considerably increased. In turn, two contrasting trends could be considered: either this interdependence will lead to relationships transcending the bounds of culture or to people becoming more sensitive towards the differentiating effects of cultures.
Understanding a negotiation is to apprehend the sense that actors attach to their actions and the significance they give to what they observe. Many events that take place in a negotiation cannot be explained by a theory such as that of rational choice because from one culture to another, rationality is developed through different ways and processes, sometimes integrating intangible interests, turning intercultural negotiation into a very complex process.
The current intellectual challenge is to grasp in its functional aspect the quicksilver concept of culture and to analyze under which circumstances it becomes a causal variable. Then, the subsequent point is to shed light on how and with what consequences this happens. In addition, the encounter between two or more cultures takes research to another level of complexity: what may come out of this uncertain chemistry, of this “correlation of cultures”?
This query on the role of culture and its distinctive effects may bear another fruit than mere knowledge. It could help to build predictive instruments concerning negotiators’ behaviors and provide means for a better control of the conflict resolution process and subsequently of its outcome.