Intercultural Communication: Business negotiations in Kazakhstan

Abstract

-The paper sets forth the need for an increase in research in intercultural business communication in Kazakhstan, particularly business negotiations. The Republic of Kazakhstan is quite a young country which is about 20 years since it has got its independence. It is one of the former USSR countries. Kazakhstan is a multicultural country; there are more than 140 various nationalities that live in peace and agreement. When we speak of various nationalities we mean different cultures, different mentalities, different languages as well as different norms and standards of communication. Hence, living in such a variety of cultures in order to communicate and interact successfully, people improve their intercultural communication skills, literacy and competence. Along with the growth of economics and commerce in Kazakhstan the level of intercultural communication competence increases also. Thus, we can state that people living in a multilingual country obtain high level of intercultural communication skills, as well as intercultural literacy and competence. This is particularly critical for business dealers during their business trips, negotiations, signing agreements and contracts, etc. There are many cases in the world when misunderstandings due to lack of knowledge in the culture of business partners or communicative (cultural) barriers prevent from signing an agreement or even lead to failure of the business. And that is why intercultural communication is such an important and critical subject to study in the business sector nowadays. The paper tries to describe some specific features of Kazakhstani people in business negotiations, provides some cultural values of the Kazakh people and some cases of cultural misunderstandings that resulted in failure of business negotiation.

Developing Intercultural Negotiations Skills to Meet Current Challenges of Diverse Eu Business Environment as Part of University Social Responsibility

“…Gesteland (2005) developed the typology of negotiator profiles that is of a special importance for the present study (see Table 1). We can mention also research devoted to the specific features related to the negotiators' country of origin (Akizhanova, 2013;Gardaševic and Vapa-Tankosic, 2015;Rammal, 2005;Varner, 2013). Majority of theoreticians and practitioners agree in that knowledge and training (skills development) are basic factors for the successful intercultural negotiations.…”