Cell Phone Negotiation Essay Example
Cell Phone Negotiation Essay Example

Cell Phone Negotiation Essay Example

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  • Pages: 5 (1313 words)
  • Published: September 7, 2017
  • Type: Essay
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An all-male negotiating team from the United States is negotiating with an all-female team from China for a cell phone contract. The American team is looking for a price of six dollars per unit while the Chinese team is offering nine dollar per unit. In order for the teams to come to an agreement, gender, the relationship and cultural dynamics personalities, perceptions cognitions and emotions will affect the negotiations.

Gender as a Factor: Chinese Women

There is a large gender gap in negotiating between men and women. Women will work towards a more cooperative negotiation than men. Women also are more aware of the complete relationship among the parties who are negotiating and are more likely to perceive negotiation as part of the larger context within which it takes place than to focus only on the content

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of the issues being discussed.

This will affect the negotiations in the American men will want to go straight into negotiations while the Chinese women will want to build a relationship of doing business together first. This also has cultural impacts in that Chinese will rarely do business without establishing a relationship first. Women are more likely to perceive conflict episodes in relationship terms, whereas males were more likely to perceive the task characteristics of conflict episodes.

The focus on relationships and task characteristics will be used by the Chinese team to produce better relationship outcomes and task outcomes. The Chinese women will be highly aware of the men's ego in the negotiations, making sure they do not offend them, while using this to their advantage by playing the role of frail women who the en's ego

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will try not to offend with harsh negotiation tactics. The Chinese team will not negotiate directly fearing a more negative outcome. They will try and coerce the American Men into arriving at a term suitable for the Chinese team.

Most of the hard bargaining by the women's team may occur by email or WAC, due to women seeing this as a level ground when dealing with the opposite sex. Gender as a Factor: American Men American men are the most aggressive negotiators seeking direct interaction on the task at hand without regard to building a relationship. American men are individualistic negotiators, who perceive that the proper people will be empowered to negotiate and that time is a precious commodity for a successful negotiation.

Men will use all power they are given to achieve their own goals or to force the other party to capitulate to their point of view. Men tend to used discussions to focus on why they are right and how to persuade the other side into seeing that they are correct. Men will use the information given to help their own position even if it harms the other side's position in a competitive negotiation. This is dangerous in a cultural society like China where the group must be the overall winner and saving face is a priority. Men also tend to make greater demands and overly controlling when negotiating with the opposite sex.

The American team will try to insist on face to face negotiations with a time limit to encourage fast negotiations. This will backfire because in Chinese cultures it is rare that time is an asset. Also few meeting will

have all of the empowered people involved in the negotiation. Most likely several meeting will have to occur Just to have the correct people involved. Cultural Personalities: American Men vs. Chinese women American negotiators are extravert's focusing on the tasks at hand to achieve a common goal. Trust and cooperativeness are key factors to negotiations.

The Chinese women will look for a harmonious negotiation in which all parties establish a relationship before negotiation. Adding new people into the negotiations may cause a set back until a group relationship is reestablished. Culture as a Factor: China vs. American China it is important to establish relationship connections early in the negotiation recess. Each team should exchange formal business cards during the initial meeting. The Chinese place great value in saving "face" in their central role of social interaction.

Losing Face occurs when individuals act in a manner inconsistent with their role or fails to fulfill their obligations. Face is so valuable that saving it is the primary force that ensures fulfillment of obligations and continuous relational hierarchy. Chinese are natural born business people and they love a good bargain. Therefore, their business model is to set a high price first and make concessions lowly. The American team will have to be overly patient in order to achieve the best price and not give in due to time.

China stress group rights more than individual rights and public investment as a better allocation of resources than private investment. They also have different prescriptions for earning and sharing profit. The Americans and Chinese must reduce ideological clashes that increase the communication challenges. Chinese negotiators are expected to make group

decisions, defend the group above the individual, and take strong stands on issues important to the group. When the Americans and Chinese teams negotiate, each team must identify how the individualism/collectivism cultural value influences negotiations.

This may occur when the Chinese take more time when negotiating because they have to gain the consensus of their group before they strike a deal or the Chinese use of multiple lines of authority that may lead to mixed signals about the true needs of the group, where no one person may understand all the requirements. Finally, power that is shared by many different people and offices, may cause the Americans to not be able to determine who their appropriate counterpart in the Chinese team is. Chinese will withhold bad news that may affect the contract signing in roger to establish a relationship.

In order to reduce possible risks during the initial stages of a negotiation, The Americans will clearly state that new negotiations would be needed when something unexpected has happened that changes the agreements. Perception, Cognition, and Emotions as a Factor During negotiations perception of the other side's power, expertise, and negotiating style will be perceived by the other side. The Americans may be perceived by the Chinese as controlled by time because it is carefully guarded as a valuable resource.

Also, Americans may be perceived as always being in a hurry and rushing from one task to another, while the Chinese negotiators may appear to Americans to be doing nothing and wasting time. Foster notes that the Chinese frequently use memorandums of an agreement to formalize a relationship and to signal the start of negotiations. Frequently,

however, Americans will interpret the same memorandum of agreement as the completion of the negotiations that is enforceable in a court of law.

Power is an equalizing factor in a negotiation in the sense that men and women tend to use it similarly and benefit from it equally. Women assume in a negotiation to "reduce the extent to which women feel constrained to conform to gender role" Cognition is how each side used their information to make decisions about tactics and strategy. Women tend to be more intimidated than men about negotiating, however, when empowered with experience and knowledge, their apprehension about negotiating is reduced. The emotions involved in negotiating can become overly aggressive and if possible

American men will try to intimidate Chinese women into reducing their rates. Men are seen by women as overly aggressive and also American negotiators are more aggressive than their Chinese counterparts, due to the group/individualism cultural differences. Summary I believe the American men and Chinese women will come to an agreement of the cellophane contract. The American will believe it took too long to establish and the Chinese will complain about the overly aggressive style of the Americans. I believe that the sales price will come out around 7 dollars.

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