Negotiator’s Profile
By Wu Ting, Wang Yangyang, Qu Yi, Wang Yuting, Qi Rui
Along with the development of international business, more researches about
handling international business negotiations are in progress. Most of them focus on
teaching negotiators to use the strategies, skills, and tools to achieve their goals，but
few pay attention to negotiators themselves, like profile and character. In this essay,
some characters of negotiators, which refer to the five references, can be linked to
three orientations, including relationship orientation, group orientation, and
individualism, that we decided after synthesizing each kind of standard.
The first type is relationship orientation, referring to the situation where
attaching great value to social communities. Both parties focus on mutual interest and
a potential script with multiple issues and options. The second is group orientation,
paying more attention to internal team relationship, and making the team as a whole
to deal with the other side. The third is individualism-the negotiator always gives
priority to benefits of individual.
RELATIONSHIP ORIENTATION
Most of the international negotiations are cross-border negotiations. In
relationship negotiation, cross-border negotiators should make efforts to put their
relationship in harmony. For cross-border negotiation, there should always be
different national culture in one specific negotiation. Every national culture describes
the central tendencies of the people’s conducts and conflicts between cultures always
exist. Therefore, cross-border negotiators must remember that they negotiate with
individuals, not averages. In order to obtain a win-win outcome, they must reject
stereotyping of assuming that individual will exhibit the most likely group
characteristic and avoid over-attribution to national culture. Besides, negotiators
should avoid self-fulfilling prophesies in cross-cultural situations. In conclusion, it is
rather important for cross-border negotiators to treat national culture properly and
establish friendly relationship with the other party.
Of course, relationship orientation can sometimes be gained naturally as a result
of history, for example, when is analyzed in the dual concern model. We can see the
profile of Philippine Chinese as relational orientation because they are more willing to
use styles of accommodation and withdrawal because of the fact that the Philippines
were formerly ruled by the USA and Spain.
GROUP ORIENTATION
It is reported that trust is the basis of successful negotiations with others, who
want to make a friendly relationship and seek long-term interest. And trust is also one
of the most important factors to group-negotiation. How make it out and manage it in
order to push the relationship firmly?
As article “Changing success and failure factors in business negotiations with
PRC” said, if the foreign party is perceived as sincere toward the Chinese, the Chinese
will likely reciprocate by being sincere toward the foreign party——in this way, trust
can be created. When trust is in a high degree, the party may adopt cooperation
strategy and take a “win-win” approach to negotiations. When trust is in a low level,
the party may use competitive strategy, take the “win-lose” approach to negotiation.
INDIVIDUALISM
Level of self- and other-concerns: a focal negotiator’s outcome is affected by level
of self- and other-concerns of himself, the opponent’s levels of self- and
other-concerns, and the interactions between them. Apparently this is one of the most
important individual effects of negotiation. Just as The Dual Concern Model, one
must concern self and others in a negotiations and how much one concern either affect
negotiation behaviors or then outcomes. However, is it better to concern self-more or
others more? It depends. A scientific research gives the answer that it’s related to
“who you meet”—opponents from egoistic society or prosaically society. Those with
egoistic motives and positive aspiration differentiation have higher profits only when
negotiating with prosocial opponents such as the PRC or Japan. And those with
prosocial motives and negative aspiration differentiation have lower profits only when
negotiating with egoistic opponents such as the US.
Like relationship negotiation, individualism can also be seen as a result of history
in some countries, for example, Taiwanese used competition more often as a result of
living in a more democratic and more prosperous society.