Abstract

International business negotiation plays an important role in the import and export trade. Many powerful companies fail in international business negotiations mainly because they lack of investigations about the local culture, and ignore the influence of cultural differences in business negotiations. Cultural differences have become the main obstacles which need to overcome in business negotiations. Based on Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, the study analyzes the cultural differences and its application in international business negotiation from a cross-cultural perspective, stating that culture differ in power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity and long/short-term orientation. The research discovers that cultural differences influence business negotiation in several aspects, including decision-making mode, negotiating process and negotiating goal. Some suggestions are drawn in order to avoid or solve the international barriers from a cross-cultural perspective.

Key Words: international business negotiation  cultural dimensions  Hofstede

摘 要

国际商务谈判在进出口贸易中起着重要的作用。许多公司在国际商务谈判中的失败主要是因为谈判人员缺乏对谈判对手的当地文化了解，忽略了文化差异对商务谈判的影响。文化差异渐渐成为了国际商务谈判中需要克服的主要障碍。文本以Hofstede的五个文化维度为基础，从跨文化的角度分析文化差异以及其在商务谈判中的影响。研究发现，文化差异表现在权力距离、不确定性规避、个人主义/集体主义、男性化/女性化和长期/短期取向这五个方面，并且，文化差异会影响商务谈判的决策模式、谈判过程和谈判目标。为避免或解决这些国际商务谈判的隐性壁垒，本文从文化差异的角度提出了一些建议。

关键词：国际商务谈判 文化差异 Hofstede

1 Introduction
With the advancement of the economic globalization, international economy and trade growth, negotiation has become an important part of trade activities. International trade negotiation is an inevitable step of the trade activities and cross-border activities, which frequently encounter cultural differences. Cultural differences may lead to conflicts and failure of negotiation, hence are getting more attention. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the cultural backgrounds and differences of countries, so as to make a reasonable negotiation strategy. Consequently, learning the cultures among countries and getting familiar with the cultural differences in the trade activities are the guarantee for successful cross-cultural trade negotiation.