Successful Sino-Western business negotiation: Participants' accounts of national and professional cultures

Chinese and Western interviewees related their experiences of culture in Sino-Western business negotiation focusing on the Chinese. Regarding Chinese cultural influences on negotiations, both groups pointed to the Chinese cultural value of personal relationship and Chinese business practices as major factors and considered communication and social etiquette as a minor factor. Chinese interviewees but not Westerners further identified system constraints as a main factor. Professional culture elements also emerged as important to Sino-Western business negotiations. The Chinese wanted improvements in their standard procedures, professional symbolic systems, instrumental relationships, and professional ethics, whereas Westerners expressed their need to adapt. Successful strategies by Chinese negotiators focused primarily on rational, professional approaches while those by Westerners centered on effective coping with Chinese social values.