Guanxi in Jeopardy
Autor: jiangzheng7 • October 30, 2017 • Case Study • 477 Words (2 Pages) • 839 Views
Business Negotiations
Case Analysis – GUANXI IN JEOPARDY
The case illustrates how characteristics of Chinese culture is different from the US culture. For the Chinese culture, it is centered around relationship and is pretty weak when it comes to making immediate responses. Chinese do not give much attention to women in business matters, and do not have a fixed schedule for business meetings. While for the US, it is centered on individualistic values and is strong in making immediate decisions. US culture treats men and women equally in business and have pretty fixed timings for meetings. Such differences in these characteristics affect the negotiation process between the two parties. Since the US culture is direct to the point and the Chinese culture is indirect, problem will inevitably arise when they negotiate.
This shows how understanding cultural backgrounds and characteristics of countries involved in the negotiation is critical to its success. In this case, most of the criteria for successful establishment of the JV are not met because of the following reasons, including lack of understanding of TOS cultural backgrounds, late involvement of lawyers in the discussion, poor understanding of TOS objectives, lack of agreement on the negotiation protocols etc.
For Tom, he is 55 year old with limited international experience. He has two team members to help negotiation the JV. He was leader of the team but unfortunately, he was not familiar with either the Chinese culture or language. While negotiating in China, he failed in convincing the Chinese counterpart to accept the terms of the JV. Barb Morgan can speak conversational Chinese. She was a supporter for Tom but did not actively participate in the negotiation as the Chinese did not involve her. Mark was could not make sense of the behavior of the Chinese counterparts. Motosuzhou team, on the other hand, was very poor in English and did not understand the business culture of the US. In fact, neither team has prior experience in this kind of JV negotiation.
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