Electronic business negotiation : some experimental studies on the interaction between medium, innovation context and culture

Negotiating a deal with a new client, customer, or supplier has traditionally meant meeting in person, sometimes enduring long hours in transit. Today, business people find themselves with an ever-increasing array of technologies for communicating and initiating relationships, many of which do not involve leaving the office. But one wonders: when am I better served by a face-to-face (FTF) meeting, and when by an email exchange? With the globalization of the world economy, it is imperative that managers, both present and future, be sensitive to differences in business communication between cultures such as the Anglo, Nordic or Latin cultures or, more specifically, Dutch and German cultures. As the Internet becomes the common vehicle (95 % of the business have access today), this new force demands an adaptation from traditional commerce to electronic commerce, including all the tasks that were previously conducted in a traditional fashion. Internet technologies allow for communication across the cultural frontiers. While the communication is not as rich as in the case of FTF discussions, it allows subjects to negotiate in an asynchronous mode and at their own pace. This study explores the implications of electronic-based media such as email and negotiation support systems (NSSs) on cross-cultural business negotiations. It considers those implications from an innovation management (IM) perspective in two ways: First, it investigates how innovative new media such as email and NSSs are applied in an cross- and inter-cultural negotiation context (the difference between cross- and inter-cultural contexts will be explained in the following section) and second, it tries to find out how an innovative context triggers the use of those innovative media. In an effort to reduce several concepts to the bare minimum, a "classic" metaphor has been used: that of the iceberg. The written contract of a negotiation, etc. and an invisible bottom of emotions, the human relation, the unspoken and unconscious rules of behavior. This study comprises both a theoretical approach by investigating the current literature and an empirical approach by conducting several experiments with international student negotiators.