Chapter 2 Ryo Tanitsu negotiation style and four basic dimensions.

Any country and any culture share the same basic problems. These problems are defined four basic problems by Inkeles and Levinson and empirically IBM found dimensions of cultures in the data. They have been named

1, power distance

2, collectivism versus individualism

3, feminity versus masculinity  and

4 uncertainty avoidance.

The character of each country is evaluated by each dimension’s score.

Our team’s symposium theme is “how do culture difference affect the outcome of the negotiation”. I already researched some information about it on paper and found that all above dimensions are related to the negotiation style of each country.

In terms of Individualism, the United States was the highest scorer on individualism in the IBM studies.  Asian countries are said to be the collective societies although all asian countries do not necessarily apply to collectivism. So Asian negotiation tend to focus on the long term cooperation in the human relationship to get win-win situations. On the other hand, American or other European countries tend to focus on the essential content of the negotiation or how they can maximize their profits in the negotiation.

Also in terms of power distance, western countries pursue the value view of equality and treat purchaser as people with the same status while Asian countries such as Japan tend to have unbalanced relationships between negotiators. These factors might affect the outcome of the negotiation because the inferior side might make a concession to the superior side psychologically.

Individual negotiator in one culture might change the attitude to the others by the fact as to whether they are men or women in terms of feminity or masculinity. Also the way of expression of their feeling is an important factor in influencing the negotiation when uncertain happenings occur during the negotiation process in terms of uncertainty avoidance.