TY - JOUR
T1 - Negotiation style, speech accommodation, and small talk in Sino-Western business negotiations
T2 - A Hong Kong case study
AU - Ladegaard, Hans J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research reported in this article was supported by a Hong Kong Baptist University Faculty Research Grant [FRG/06-07/I36]. I am greatly indebted to M and the Asian sales people for agreeing to record their negotiation encounters and allowing me to analyze them. I am also grateful to Petra Kwong, who transcribed the data, and to Twiggy Chung and Amina Perveen, who doublechecked the accuracy of the transcriptions. I am also indebted to my colleagues Dr. Ester Leung and Dr. Suying Yang who discussed particularly Excerpt 1 with me in great detail and suggested different meanings in Chinese of the English adverbs used in this negotiation. Finally, I wish to thank Prof. John Edwards (St. Francis Xavier University) who made useful comments on an earlier version of this article. Any shortcomings that remain are of course my responsibility.
PY - 2011/5
Y1 - 2011/5
N2 - This article analyzes authentic negotiation encounters between a Danish buyer and several predominantly Chinese sellers at a jewelry fair in China. Three recurring themes were identified in the data: different negotiation styles (a preference for an indirect mitigated style in the Chinese negotiators as opposed to a preference for a direct unmitigated approach in the Western negotiator), linguistic accommodation, and small talk about the interlocutor's place of residence, which is interpreted as strategic communication in which negotiators are allowed to check the interlocutor's financial viability without loss of face. The article acknowledges that claims about the importance of negotiators' cultural backgrounds need to be demonstrated rather than presumed, but it also argues that an analysis of predominant Chinese cultural value systems (such as face and the guanxi-concept) is likely to lead to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Sino-Western negotiations. The article advocates a combination of in-depth discourse analysis and studies of micro- as well as macro-contextual value and norms - i.e., a truly pragmatic approach to cross-cultural encounters - as the way forward in the study of business negotiations.
AB - This article analyzes authentic negotiation encounters between a Danish buyer and several predominantly Chinese sellers at a jewelry fair in China. Three recurring themes were identified in the data: different negotiation styles (a preference for an indirect mitigated style in the Chinese negotiators as opposed to a preference for a direct unmitigated approach in the Western negotiator), linguistic accommodation, and small talk about the interlocutor's place of residence, which is interpreted as strategic communication in which negotiators are allowed to check the interlocutor's financial viability without loss of face. The article acknowledges that claims about the importance of negotiators' cultural backgrounds need to be demonstrated rather than presumed, but it also argues that an analysis of predominant Chinese cultural value systems (such as face and the guanxi-concept) is likely to lead to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Sino-Western negotiations. The article advocates a combination of in-depth discourse analysis and studies of micro- as well as macro-contextual value and norms - i.e., a truly pragmatic approach to cross-cultural encounters - as the way forward in the study of business negotiations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79955693042&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1515/IPRG.2011.010
DO - 10.1515/IPRG.2011.010
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:79955693042
SN - 1612-295X
VL - 8
SP - 197
EP - 226
JO - Intercultural Pragmatics
JF - Intercultural Pragmatics
IS - 2
ER -