Intercultural Negotiations in Global Business: A Contemporary and Comprehensive Literature Review

Cross-Cultural Issues And Negotiations

The world has been globalized much more than ever before and culture is a globalizing phenomenon. Globalization is the convergence and interconnectedness of national economies, politics, business and culture as well as declining trade barriers before international trade. As a matter of fact, resting on the definition made above, cultures in the world globalize along with economics, business, politics and commerce. With the improvement of the business relations, cultures are interrelated, and negotiation has become a permanent activity. Culture is the identity of a group of people which is made up of values, manners, customs, language, living styles and religion. Culture is learned, developed and transformed from one generation to the next. Therefore, culture is not static. It is dynamic. Moreover, business negotiations and negotiation styles differ according to culture and evolve in the globalized world. Negotiation is a pure human activity which is intended to settle down subjects or solve conflicts through dialogue. The issue of negotiation has long been regarded as an art dedicated to diplomacy. However, today, it is possible to negotiate across cultures on business, economics, commerce and politics. Culture has been always respected as an ambiguous concept which is difficult to define or at least there is no real agreement from all the different approaches and disciplines correlated along with this concept (Alovoine, 2005; Tinsley et al., 1999; Fox, 2006).