Cultural Differences In Negotiation

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, described by everything from language, religion, cuisine, art, social habits, music and so on. Cultural differences effect on negotiation styles and these differences can cause problems in negotiations. We should know that some of the tactics and behaviors are specific to our country or culture, but the strange for the other nationalities. That is why if we do not want to find ourselves in an awkward situation during the negotiation it is important to perform such negotiations with a certain amount of knowledge and preparation beforehand.
The first obvious barrier in negotiation between the different nationalities could be a language. Even English language which is

Thumbs up is mostly used in most western countries where it means - okay. However, this gesture does not mean the same thing everywhere. Also it is commonly used to express number one in some countries like Russia, Germany or France. Putting your thumb and index finger of one hand together that means perfect, but it has completely different meanings in some countries, such as in Japan it means money and in France it means zero or useless. In Arab countries, it can be quite offensive gesture. To Point something out with your finger is bad manners all around the world. In the Middle East and Far East the index and middle fingers together or the whole hand is used to point something out. In the USA it can be a friendly gesture that can mean "you're cool".
The significant differences between individual cultures allow us to describe each nation negotiation skills. One of the visible examples of the cultural impact on the negotiation behavior is the systematic study of international negotiation behavior over the last three decades, which aims to study and compare the negotiation styles of more than 1,500 business people in 17 countries. The work included the interviews, simulations and video recordings with experienced executives and participant observations in the

They have very polite conversational style and instead of the emphasize warnings they use the more positive promises, recommendations, and commitments. Also they us more frequent silent periods. The quite similar to the Japanese style is Russian style, which is quite different from that of any other European groups. They use "no" and "you" infrequently and use the most silent periods only after Japanese. French negotiators style is more aggressive than all other groups. In particular, they use the highest percentage of threats and warnings. And compared with the other groups they also use interruptions, facial gazing and "no" and "you" very frequently. The behaviors of the British negotiators are very similar to the Americans in all respects. For the British negotiators the protocol is very important and the most of them has a strong sense of the right and wrong way to negotiate. The Germans are characterized by the high percentage of self-disclosures and the low percentage of questions while only the Chinese ask a greater percentage of questions. The Americans fell in the middle of most continua. They interrupt one another less frequently than all the others, but that is their sole distinction. Americans give more value on time than the other nations and have less patience when things slow