Intra-organizational negotiations as cross-cultural interactions

Abstract

Today’s economy is producing a competitive business landscape that is growing increasingly complex, dynamic and ambiguous for organizations operating across borders. As a result, negotiations within and between organizations become more and more challenging. Growing cultural diversity calls for abilities to adapt to the unfamiliar environment and to learn how to communicate and negotiate with people from different cultural backgrounds. This chapter presents the unique results of in-depth semi-structured interviews with expatriate managers from the United States working in Poland. It contributes to the ongoing debates on intra-organizational negotiation between expatriates and local managers. While there is a large body of research that compares national negotiation styles, Poland’s presence in it is still rather scarce. Since Poland is rapidly becoming an important place where many expatriate managers perform daily operations, there is a strong need for that type of research. As the author’s research discovered, intra-organizational negotiation difficulties between expatriates and local managers in Poland were often influenced by the following factors: hierarchy, formality and context of communication, an approach to planning and improvisation, a division between personal and professional life, and many others. The research also stresses that since diverse cultures may lead to differences in cognition as well as understanding and evaluation, a single approach to negotiations cannot be applied everywhere.