Toward a culture-by-context perspective on negotiation: Negotiating teams in the United States and Taiwan.

Abstract

Within the United States, teams outperform solos in negotiation (Thompson, Peterson, & Brodt, 1996). The current research examined whether this team advantage generalizes to negotiators from a collectivist culture (Taiwan). Because different cultures have different social norms, and because the team context may amplify the norms that are salient in a particular culture (Gelfand & Realo, 1999), we predicted that the effect of teams on negotiation would differ across cultures. Specifically, we predicted that since harmony norms predominate in collectivist cultures like Taiwan, the team context would amplify a concern with harmony, leading Taiwanese teams to negotiate especially suboptimal outcomes. In support, 2 studies showed that Taiwanese teams negotiated less-optimal outcomes than Taiwanese solos. We also used a moderated-mediation analysis to investigate the mechanism (Hayes, 2012), documenting that the interactive effect of culture and context on outcomes was mediated by harmony norms. By showing that the same situational conditions (team negotiations) can have divergent effects on negotiation outcomes across cultures, our results point toward a nuanced, sociocontextual view that moves beyond the culture-as-main-effect approach to studying culture and negotiations.

Context-Dependent Cheating: Experimental Evidence from 16 Countries

“…As our sample includes substantial cultural variation -including participants from Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Germanic, Nordic and Asiatic countries -one would expect substantial heterogeneity in cheating. In addition, and consistent with a social constructionist view, the effects of culture depend on the specifics of the choice context (Gelfand et al, 2013;Kramer and Messick, 1995).…”

Normology: Integrating insights about social norms to understand cultural dynamics

“…Norms are social patterns that govern behavior. Because norms are conceptualized as context-specific regulators of behavior rather than as traits, they may offer more potential to understand how cultural patterns vary across situations and contexts both for individuals (Bagozzi, Wong, Abe, & Bergami, 2000;Henrich et al, 2005) and for teams (Gelfand, Brett, Imai, Tsai, & Huang, 2013). Models of behavior as hinging on social perceptions of other people offer more insights into how cultural patterns change, such as why some longstanding practices persist while others degrade or spread to new populations (e.g., Berger & Heath, 2008;Gelfand et al, 2011;Kuran & Sunstein, 1999;Richerson & Boyd, 2005).…”

Trust after violations: Are collectivists more or less forgiving?

“…In our examination of the effect of collectivism, we adopt a culture-by-context perspective and move beyond main effects of culture on trust dissolution and restoration (Gelfand & Cai, 2004;Gelfand et al, 2013;Hong, Morris, Chiu, & BenetMartínez, 2000). It should be recognised that collectivism, denoting specific attitudes, beliefs, values and norms (Triandis, 1993), influences individuals' cognition, motivation and emotion, but is a dynamic construct which is affected by the situation.…”