Lessons from Abroad: When Culture Affects Negotiating Style by Brett and Gelfand - Article Example

The paper "Lessons from Abroad: When Culture Affects Negotiating Style by Brett and Gelfand" is a good example of an article on business. In their article on negotiation, Brett and Gelfand talk about different approaches to negotiation, confrontation, and renegotiation as well as highlight different approaches used in different cultures to drawing information from the opposite party.  Majorly, this article focuses on the American and the Confucian i.e., China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand, ways of negotiation.  Firstly, Brett and Gelfand (p.1) describe the difference between American and Chinese ways of confrontation during renegotiation or any unexpected situation.  They explain that the American approach to confrontation is direct, which is quite opposite to that of the Asian cultures.  The latter considers direct confrontation as a blame-game while the former considers direct confrontation as a means surface issues through appropriate logic and reasoning.  Being highly individualistic, the Americans give greater priority to self-interests, unlike the Asians that put relationships at the forefront.  Further, the authors proceed to explain that negotiation and renegotiation processes are carried out through intermediaries in Asian cultures as they do not appreciate direct confrontation in order to avoid any shameful or aggressive interactions.  Asians prefer indirect confrontation by putting their viewpoints in different other ways, but direct.   Brett and Gelfand (p.4) advocate the usage of the right approach during negotiation activities, and the right approach would be usually that of the service provider’s rather than the service seeker’s approach. 

The article brought forward by Brett and Gelfand is of great significance in understanding business negotiations and renegotiations approach, especially with the examples of situations quoted in the article.  Brett and Gelfand support the multiple-proposals approach, which is the Asian style of renegotiations, as it provides options to look at the scenario from different perspectives (p.4).  However, Asians use this approach to derive more information about the opposite party in terms of their limitations, leverages, and possibilities.  Americans use logic and reasoning to renegotiate, while the Asians use relationships and hierarchy as the base to renegotiate.  This means, the former type involves revealing and reviewing all facts and situations to renegotiate and the latter type emphasizes the relationship between both the parties and/or higher hierarchical level of the opposite party in renegotiating processes.  Bringing hierarchical levels into question would mean that the party that is of higher-order in the hierarchy has a social responsibility to help the other lower-order party.  This is a typical Confucian principle followed in all East Asian nations (Graham & Lam, 6).
The article by Brett and Gelfand is a short analysis of differences between cultures that can have a significant impact on business decisions.  This article explains about approaches to be adopted during negotiation processes through simple situational examples; hence, its effectiveness in driving the point home has been exceptionally good.  However, this article alone would not suffice to understand the cultural impact on people’s behavior all by itself.  This limitation is addressed by Graham and Lam’s elaborate review on Chinese negotiation, which explains all critical elements that underpin Chinese behavior, relationships and thus business negotiation.