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Research by Joydeep Srivastava
Because of globalization, business people around the
world increasingly find themselves negotiating with people
from other countries and cultures. Scholars have been
divided on the effects of a person’s culture on the
negotiation process. One school of thought suggests that
culture is always important and always influences bargaining
outcomes. The second school takes the other extreme—that
culture never matters and is irrelevant. Recent research by
Joydeep Srivastava, associate professor of marketing, shows
that neither view is quite correct. “Culture matters, but it
interacts with bargaining outcomes in a dynamic way. Some
bargaining situations will evoke universal human reactions,
whereas some may evoke culture-based responses,” says
Srivastava.
In his paper “The role of cultural orientation in
bargaining under incomplete information: Differences in
causal attributions,” Joydeep Srivastava, associate
professor of marketing, with co-authors Ana Valenzuela,
Baruch College, and Seonsu Lee, Wonkwang University, South
Korea, explore the role that culture plays in how people
bargain in situations with incomplete information. They used
undergraduate university students in the U.S. and Korea to
test whether culture affects the outcome in bargaining
situations.
The study was conducted simultaneously in both countries.
Study participants were told that they were randomly
selected to receive offers from another student, who
proposed dividing a given amount of money between them. The
amount of money being divided was known exactly to the
proposer, but responders were only told the amount was
between 10 and 40. If the offer was accepted, then the money
was divided between the proposer and the responder along the
lines of the offer made. The study lasted 30 minutes and no
communication between groups was allowed during the duration
of the study.
Srivastava found that as long as the context or situation
is not made clear, people from both the U.S. and Korea tend
to attribute the cause of a particular behavior to an
individual or personality. However, once the context is made
clear, the Koreans tended to discount the individual or
personality-based explanations in favor of contextual or
situation-based explanations.
Srivastava’s study demonstrates how a person’s cultural
background may play a role in their perceptions during a
bargaining situation. Western cultures, such as those of
North American and Europe, are more focused on the
individual. Because of this pervasive focus on the
individual, in bargaining situations Westerners are more
likely to attribute the cause of a particular behavior to an
individual or personality. For example, a Westerner may
think, “She is offering me such a small slice of the pie
because she wants to have a bigger piece of the pie than
me.”
On the other hand, Eastern cultures such as those of Asia
and the Near East tend to be more collectivist; the society
focuses less on the role of individuals and more on the role
of the group. This makes people from Asian cultures more
likely to attribute the cause of a particular behavior to
the situation or the context rather than the individual:
“She is offering me such a small slice of the pie because
the pie is small, or maybe she has to share her slice with
several other people.”
Both Koreans and Americans were likely to attribute their
bargaining counterpart’s behavior to their personality if
the situation or context was not highlighted. However, once
the situation was made clear, Koreans were more likely to
modify their initial personality-based attribution in favor
or a more situation-based one, whereas the Americans were
more likely to continue to persist with their
personality-based attribution.
Another noteworthy result to emerge from the study was
the effect of the “group” on bargaining outcomes. While the
Americans tended to remain relatively unaffected by whether
the person making the offer was making it solely on behalf
of herself or whether she was representing a group, the
Koreans were sensitive to this change and tended to discount
a personality-based explanation in favor of a group-based
one. If told that that the person making the low offer was
representing the interests of his or her group, then the
Koreans tended to be more accepting of the offer.
“When negotiating with your global counterparts,” says
Srivastava, “try and put yourself in the other person’s
shoes. Do not focus on any one piece of information, but
instead consider the entire gamut of possibilities.
Similarly, be sensitive to whether your bargaining
counterpart is a part of a group or is only representing
herself.”
Srivastava’s paper was published in Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes. For more
information, contact
srivasta@rhsmith.umd.edu. |
