Cross-cultural Negotiations

One of the major challenges in negotiating cross-culturally is to establish open and constructive discourse and develop relationships based on mutual trust and commitment that value but transcend social and cultural differences. For example, the aim of negotiations between representatives of management undergoing a cross-border merger is to identify, integrate, and leverage the best aspects of each organization and their respective cultures. To optimize this process, the negotiating parties in the merger must collaborate and establish an open relationship in which mutual understanding, trust, and learning prevail.

Productive relationships and negotiations can be fostered through focusing on personal identity and language issues, developing common experiences by using an effective negotiation process that leads to deeper understanding and resolves issues while evolving relationships, and designing an environmental context conducive to productive negotiations. This article examines cross-border mergers at Nordea—a financial services company in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark—and presents a collaborative strategy for cross-cultural negotiations that can be used as a vehicle for socio-cultural integration in corporate and nongovernmental organization (NGO) mergers.

Warzynski, Sidle, Gasser, and Basten (2006) A Collaborative Strategy for Cross-Cultural Negotiations: Facilitating Socio-Cultural Integration in Mergers, Global Forum “Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Management Knowledge Leading Positive Change”, Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, Ohio October 23-25, 2006