毕业论文课题相关文献综述

Approach to Cultural Differences and Its Impacts in Sino-U.S. Business Negotiation

中美商务谈判中的文化差异及其影响探析

Introduction

As the development of globalization, bilateral business has happened much more frequently between different countries and there is no doubt that business will become more and more intercultural. After more than three decades years development since the opening and reforming policy, China, the largest developing country of the world, has become an important business partner of the United States. The two countries have business cooperation in almost all aspects and communication plays a significant role in solving the differences between the two sides. The United States and China, as the two large cultural groups, will unavoidably encounter cultural differences in their communication. The study will focus on the differences and impacts of the culture in their business negotiation and providing some reasonable suggestions to make the negotiation goes smoothly.

The meaning of culture is abstract and multifaceted. The literal meaning of culture explained in the Oxford Dictionary (2006) is the customs and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country or group. And as what is said in the work of Bodley (2005) is that culture rest in learned behavior and also in some shaping consciousness that is preceding the behavior. Actually, culture contains in language, custom, arts, and so on. As a result cultural differences can be divided into many parts (Bert Scholtens, Lammertjan Dam, 2007).

The study of cultural differences in business negotiation will be divided into three parts: verbal behavior, nonverbal behavior pattern and thinking pattern. The verbal behavior mainly focuses on the study of connotative differences that contain in the same language of Chinese and the English. The nonverbal behavior pattern differences are studied by the four parts: gesture, facial expression, eye contact and greeting behavior. Thinking pattern is a quite wide concept and it will be analyzed from three aspects.

Literature Review

As the globalization has been kept for decades of year, cultural differences in business negotiation is no longer a new topic and there are many studies and famous works on this field. And the following will show them in a reasonable system.

There are many researches on this topic about the influence of culture in business negotiation; some study the American and Chinese cultural influence in business negotiation in specialty, while others study American and Chinese as an example to help his study on cultural influence in business talks. The essay will review these research results from two parts: the study at home and the study abroad.

There are many viewpoints about the significance of finding the cultural differences and its impacts before the start of the business negotiation. When the talk is happened between people from different cultures, the two sides will unconsciously put their culture in the desk, in this process, the culture will inevitably affect peoples communication attitude and behaviors. It is uneasy to reach a consensus or even will bring conflicts, if we use our cultural pattern to evaluate the behavior, viewpoint and customs of other cultures (Gao Yuqing, Sun Yue, 2003). So spending much energy on the study of cultural influence on communication before and during the negotiation is necessary. When studying the negotiation styles of the opposite culture, the negotiators can be familiar with the culture and this will make them have the ability to forecast the probable performance, reaction and strategies of the opposite negotiators (Wang Panpan, 2010). In the business negotiation, the more we know about other negotiators culture, the more strategies can we have to make the talk goes success.