Intercultural business negotiations

The paper presents an analysis of a video tape-recorded negotiation and follow-up interviews with the Australian and Japanese business personnel in the negotiation. The findings indicate that in such intercultural situations interactants apply a variety of disparate communicative and sociocultural norms, particularly with regard to the function of an encounter, and the structuring and content of the proposal. This norm disparity sometimes results in one party evaluating the interaction of the other as inadequate. Although the analysis confirms some of the general stereotypes about Japanese business communication, others are negated.