毕业论文课题相关文献综述

Before doing any research, we need to understand the main terms of the study. The definition of cultural is first acquired to be realized while the relevant theories of cross-cultural negotiations are discussed.

In the domestic and foreign research, the discussion of the definition of culture aroused the interest of many scholars. Lots of humanities such as sociology, political science, philosophy is more or less referring to culture research. In real life, as a high frequency vocabulary, culture is mentioned by more and more people. Therefore, culture has become one of the most controversial term, which is difficult to reach consensus for centuries.

Lots of definitions have been formulated for the word culture. In accordance with the Concise Oxford Dictionary, culture is the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. It relates to intellectual perspective, for instance, dance, art, music etc. when we are talking about Van Gogh, Mozart and so on; we are just talking about culture.

Researchers have given miscellaneous definitions of cultural in different viewpoints. E.B. Tylor (1871) defined culture as a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) says Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture system may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand as conditioning elements of further actions. This definition is accepted by many people. We can know from the definition that social ideas and values is actually the fundamental of culture.

Its really difficult to define culture due to the large and encompassing concept. But even the three definitions provided above reveal some commonality. Its generally agreed that culture is not intrinsic or congenital. Most scholars believe that culture is shared by members of a group. Hofstede, (1989) defined the culture as the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another. This definition is more related to this study in the case of understanding the cultural differences in the intercultural business negotiations.

When defining negotiation, its both simple and complex. In the real life, in fact, everyone will come across negotiations. In a simple word, negotiation is a communicative activity of human.

Hendon, (1996) mentioned that the word negotiation stems from the Roman word negotiari meaning to carry on business or to trade. It is derived from the Latin root words neg(not) and otium(ease or leisure). Obviously, the ancient Roman business man would deny leisure until the business has been settled.

Ikle has defined negotiation as: a process in which explicit proposals are put forward ostensibly for the purpose of reaching an agreement on an exchange or the realization of a common interest where conflicting interests are present.

Business negotiation is a type of negotiation. Any successful business negotiation can not be inseparable from the external environment, internal environment and the influence of three factors and negotiation process. The main elements of the external environment include legal, political situation, exchange rate, foreign government control, ideological and cultural differences. The main factors of the internal environment contain the negotiators bargaining power and the nature of the interdependence between each other, the potential conflict in the negotiation, the relationship between the negotiators, the expected result of the negotiations, the direct influence of stakeholders and the style of negotiations.