You ignore cultural differences in negotiations at your own peril. I have seen seemingly innocuous lapses in cultural understanding from our perspective cost clients millions of dollars, One would think this only happened with cultures far different from our own, but that is not always the case. I recall a negotiation for a Canadian company with Norwegian/Swedish counterparts – some misplaced bravado on the part of one of the Canadian team-members cost the company over $20 million. It was just a little more exuberance than the Scandinavians found in good taste – so extracted a punishment.
Read source article here.
Another major difference … was that Americans tended to exchange information more openly with each other, trying to make clear their needs… This may be due to differing levels of trust in negotiations in dignity versus honor cultures, says Aslani. “There is a notion in Western culture called swift trust: when first interacting, people trust each other, unless their counterpart proves to be untrustworthy,” he explains. “In Middle Eastern culture, trust is a commodity you have to earn through repeated social interactions. So when interacting for the first time, usually the Middle Easterner’s assumption is ‘I’d better not trust you too much, until you prove yourself trustworthy.’”
The researchers also found that the Qataris were more likely than the Americans to use emotional tactics—such as showing anger, frustration, or sympathy—to influence the outcome of the negotiation. “People in honor cultures have strong norms for hospitality and warmth, but in a competitive situation like negotiations, in which their self-worth could be threatened, they are more inclined to get emotional and use aggressive negotiation tactics than Americans,” Aslani explains.