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Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This chapter reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this chapter outlines what we need to learn – and to unlearn – to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.

In this age of the global economy, cross‐cultural negotiation is becoming an increasingly important part of the management and marketing process for nearly every firm. Compares the cross‐cultural negotiation behaviour and differences in the perceived processes between those firms which consider themselves North American‐focused and those firms which report a worldwide or international outlook. Proposes several hypotheses, reports significant differences between the two groups and provides analysis.

The art of negotiation has been explored in a number of bestsellers over the last decade. With the advent of a truly global economy, international and cross‐cultural relationships are forming out of necessity. The potential for error when talking between cultures is considerable and many negotiations have failed owing to cross‐cultural communications breakdown. Pointers are presented of the pitfalls to watch out for when undergoing cross‐cultural negotiations and how to avoid them so as successfully to complete agreements with those from other cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implicitly assumed universality of the best seller negotiation literature Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury.

Existing cross-cultural negotiation literature was systematically searched for findings indicating either a higher or lower likelihood of successfully applying the authors’ advice in different cultural environments, as defined in the Hofstede framework or The Globe Study. The findings were aggregated, categorized into a matrix, synthesized and analyzed.

This paper finds that the assumed universality of the method of Getting to Yes and its single principles is not supported by research. Instead, a dichotomy of the four principles’ applicability along the Individuality dimension of Hofstede was found. Hence, the western orientation of Getting to Yes is reality, inhibiting its use in non-western cultures. However, in one principle – Invent options for mutual gain – the findings refute a successful application in western cultures. Additional findings and research gaps are presented.

Practitioners should apply Getting to Yes with caution, if at all, in a non-western environment. For the teaching of negotiations, alternative approaches for conducting negotiations in the non-western world are needed.

Although widely used in research, scholars only addressed sporadic comments concerning the limitations of Getting to Yes across cultures. Often the universality of Getting to Yes is either implicitly or explicitly assumed in research and practice. This paper approaches this topic systematically by providing evidence that Getting to Yes is not universal and conceptually sees negotiations through a western shaped perspective that provides considerable implications for research, practice and teaching.

This paper aims to explore cross-cultural differences in perceived ethicality of negotiation strategies among China, Taiwan and Canada by examining five categories of strategies often used in business negotiations.

This paper uses a survey method to investigate a group of over 600 business students’ opinions on the ethicality of a variety of negotiation strategies often used during the bargaining process.

The results show that the Chinese both from the mainland and from Taiwan consider it more appropriate to use ethically questionable negotiation strategies than Canadians. In addition, significant gender differences are found for Canadians, in that male Canadians are more likely to consider it appropriate to use ethically questionable strategies in all five categories than females, while no gender differences are found for mainland Chinese in all but one category, with a moderate level of gender differences found for the Taiwanese.

The findings of this paper help explain why there are different understandings toward what is ethical and what is not in negotiations, which can be used to better equip practitioners to accurately label and understand negotiation strategies they may otherwise deem unethical. A better understanding of cross-cultural differences in business ethics can also help practitioners avoid the feelings of anger and mistrust toward their opponents and thus avoid using tactics that might incite more anger and hatred from the other party.

This paper contributes to the cross-cultural literature on ethical attitudes and behaviors and helps us better understand cross-cultural differences in business ethics in a negotiation context. This paper narrows this gap by empirically validating some of the Western findings in China and Taiwan. The results also provide support for a set of commonly accepted strategies to be used in business negotiation.

In this age of the global economy, cross‐cultural negotiation is becoming an increasingly important part of the management and marketing process for nearly every firm. Compares the cross‐cultural negotiations behavior and differences in the perceived processes between industrial product firms and consumer product firms. Proposes and tests hypotheses and analyzes results.

Internationalization, the buzzword of the 1980s, has become the necessity for firms to survive in the 1990s. Contact with foreign firms is a given for US businesses. With this contact comes the issue of cross‐cultural negotiations. How do US businesses prepare themselves and conduct such negotiations? Examines the use of external agents, translators, bicultural brokers, and prenegotiating briefers/experts in the cross‐cultural negotiation process and looks at those factors which relate to success or failure in cross‐cultural negotiations.

States that the involvement of a sales organisation in international business requires sales interactions that transcend national boundaries. Understanding the complexities of cross‐cultural sales negotiations is most important and is a difficult task for sales managers. States that despite the importance and complex nature of cross‐cultural negotiations, the literature is normative and largely disjointed. By using the negotiation process as an analytical framework, this study examines the relevant literature, offers research propositions and indicates additional areas necessitating further research.