Crucial to every business alliance are the face‐to‐face negotiations that occur during the formulation and maintenance of the commercial relationship. Our study of American and Chinese businesspeople in simulated intracultural negotiations suggests both similarities and differences in style. For example, negotiators in both cultures were more successful when taking a problem‐solving approach. Alternatively, the Chinese negotiators tended to ask many more questions and to interrupt one another more frequently than their American counterparts. Such subtle differences in style may cause problems in Sino‐American negotiations, which may, in turn, sour otherwise fruitful commercial alliances.

This paper explores some fundamental changes in market dynamics that are unfolding in the new competitive landscape as a result of aggressive industrial intervention by nation'states. The thesis is that national targeting policies are likely, under identifiable conditions, to cause rivalry in high‐technology industries to become excessively competitive, strictly defined in terms of producer welfare. The paper analyzes why this is likely to occur in high‐technology sectors rather than in other types of industries, and how excessive competition is likely to be manifested in specific dimensions of competitive rivalry. The paper also discusses research opportunities for further development of a theory of the political economy of excessive competition and for strategy scholars to make new contributions to trade policy debates.

U.S. managers and business academics alike have been slow to recognize some of the fundamental differences between domestic and international industrial competition. This article examines one particularly salient difference, the role of national institutional systems in shaping economic action across national markets. The article initially reviews four relevant bodies of literature on competitive strategy and international competition and finds that, despite progress in this direction, none of them adequately account for the institutional embeddedness of corporate strategy. The nature of national institutional systems and their impact on international business strategies are then theoretically described. Finally, some fundamental strategic implications of the institutional embeddedness approach are explored for U.S. firms.

No abstract