3. Career Success/Quality of Life

Hofstede found that cultures differed in the extent to which they held values that promoted career success or quality of life. Cultures promoting career success were characterized by “the acquisition of money and things, and not caring for others, the quality of life, or people.” Cultures promoting quality of life were characterized by concern for relationships and nurturing. According to Hofstede (1989), this dimension influences negotiation by increasing the competitiveness when negotiators from career success cultures meet negotiators from quality-of-life cultures that are more likely to have empathy for the other party and to seek compromise.

4. Uncertainty Avoidance

Uncertainty avoidance “indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations.” Unstructured situations are characterized by rapid change and new situations, whereas structured situations are stable and secure. Negotiators from high uncertainty avoidance cultures are less comfortable with ambiguous situations and are more likely to seek stable rules and procedures when they negotiate. Negotiators from low uncertainty avoidance cultures are likely to adapt to quickly changing situations and will be less uncomfortable when the rules of the negotiation are ambiguous or shifting.

Hofstede’s model has become a dominant force in cross-cultural research in international business, although the model is not without its skeptics. The most important criticism of the model is that the research was conducted with a sample of participants that was not truly representative of the richness of different cultures because there were proportionally too many males, members of the middle class were overrepresented, the education levels were higher than average, and the participants came from one company (IBM). In other words, there is some concern that Hofstede’s model underestimates the true richness of value differences across cultures.

The culture-as-shared-value perspective provides explanations for why cross-cultural negotiations are difficult and have a tendency to break down. For example, a central value in the United States is individualism. Americans are expected to make individual decisions, defend their points of view, and take strong stands on issues that are important to them. Contrast this with a central value of the Chinese – collectivism. Chinese negotiators are expected to make group decisions, defend the group above the individual, and take strong stands on issues important to the group. When Americans and Chinese negotiate, differences in the individualism/collectivism cultural value may influence negotiation in many ways.

Despite the influence and importance of the culture-as-values perspective, there is some concern that variation within cultural value dimensions is under recognized. For instance, Miyahara, Kim, Shin, and Yoon studied preferences for conflict resolution styles in Japan and Korea, both of which are collectivist cultures. Miyahara and colleagues found significant differences between Japanese and Koreans, with Koreans reporting more concern about avoiding impositions and avoiding dislike during conflict resolution, while Japanese reported more concern about obtaining clarity. For these reasons, interpretations of the effects of cultural value dimensions on negotiations should be treated with caution.