Cross-cultural project negotiations in the consulting engineering industry: A study of Canadian-Indonesian negotiations

摘要

This is an exploratory study of cross-cultural project negotiations between Canadian consulting engineering firms and Indonesian government agencies. Because cross-cultural negotiations are such a complex phenomenon, three methods--questionnaire, field study, and observation--were used to obtain a more complete picture. The model guiding the research consisted of culture, negotiator characteristics, and conditions affecting the process (five stages of contact initiation, preparation and rapport building, bargaining, closure attempts, and implementation), which in turn affects the outcome.;In addition to the main objective of gaining a better understanding of cross-cultural project negotiations, more specific questions dealt with cultural differences and the possible effect of these on the perceptions of negotiations, and what factors differentiated between success and failure.;The results showed Canadians and Indonesians differing on three of Hofstede's four cultural dimensions. The study replicated Hofstede's results for Canada on all but the power dimension, but failed to replicate them for Indonesia, strengthening the idea that he was tapping into a Chinese subculture. The differences in culture had a significant effect on Canadian and Indonesian views of success in negotiations and how they ranked different factors in negotiation, but not on their negotiation goals.;The field studies gave support for the general model, but the specific factors differentiating between success and failure were not as clear. Relationship building at the second stage of negotiations appears to be necessary, but not sufficient alone. Confrontational tactics appear to lead to failure. Other factors, not included in the original model, with an apparent effect are conditions such as joint venture with another foreign firm, prior relationship with local partner, and local political environment.;General learning from this study includes the influence an external agency had on the process of negotiation, the prevalence of renegotiations after a contract had been signed, the number of parties and issues involved, cooperative tactics used which are not mentioned in the traditional literature, as well as some competitive tactics well-known in the literature which were not used, the influence of culture on perceptions of negotiation, and the importance of relationships.