When Dignity and Honor Cultures Negotiate: Finding Common Ground

Abstract

Dignity and honor cultures are thought to yield dramatically different processes and outcomes in cross‐cultural negotiations. We challenge this conceptual dichotomy through the qualitative analysis of negotiation accounts by practitioners and graduate students. Drawing on self‐worth theory, we reexamine the delineation and contrast of dignity and honor cultures as they manifest in negotiations between French and Latin American people. According to our set of interviews and written narratives, negotiators on the two sides share a large set of perceptions of French negotiating behavior, coalescing into three main components—conventionality, pride in historical legacy, and conflict proneness. This French behavior falls into neither cultural category, but rather demonstrates the possibility of hybrids between them. We discuss implications for theory, practice, and teaching of cross‐cultural understanding, and, specifically, of the French negotiating style.

Distributive/integrative negotiation strategies in cross-cultural contexts: a comparative study of the USA and Italy

“…Our results, however, imply that is not necessarily the case, as the new type of Italian integrative negotiator makes all the moves to increase mutual value (a key principle), but also handles emotions in a constructive way. These findings contribute to the debate over whether Latin Europe is indeed a 'dignity' culture (Fosse, Ogliastri, & Rendon, 2017;Ogliastri, Rendón, & Fosse, 2017); our analysis suggests that Italy does not share negotiation prototypes with the US dignity culture, and confirms Harinck, Shafa, Ellemers, and Beersma's (2013) finding that cooperative negotiation behaviors exist in honor cultures. However, our dataset does not include key details, so this remains an interesting topic for future research.…”

“…An enlarged study would surely lead to more robust results, allow for wider cross-cultural comparison, and support a deeper understanding of the key cultural features that bring about different attitudes, strategies, reactions, and final outcomes during the negotiation process. Moreover, it would be of great interest to incorporate interactions of negotiators from specific cultural backgrounds to study the effects on the outcomes (Cai, Wilson, & Drake, 2000;Fosse, Ogliastri, & Rendon, 2017). Starting from our findings, these extensions could give managers in multicultural environments a more comprehensive map of the complex world of cross-cultural negotiation and maximize the chances to reach agreements for joint gains.…”

“…First, our results are drawn by the accounts of past experiences of negotiating with Italian and American negotiators, and as such are unavoidably subject to perceptions and the bias of recall (Fischhoff & Beyth, 1975). Furthermore, qualitative data collections and analyses are intrinsically affected by subjectivity, which we tried to limit by having a cross-cultural approach and adopting a diverse and large pool of informants and interviewers (Fosse, Ogliastri, & Rendon, 2017). These issues are very common in negotiation research (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2020), and we call for future studies to continue in methodological advancements that allow for better proxies of real negotiations.…”

Negociación a la francesa: un enfoque cualitativo

“…La cultura formal y protocolaria apoya que la negociación no se salga de cauce, limita el conflicto, evita ofensas, y así ayuda a resolverlo. La cultura francesa tiene algo de "honor" y algo de "dignidad", lo que explica comportamientos negociadores contradictorios de agresión y encanto (Fosse et al, 2017).…”

Weaving Together Theory, Research, Practice, and Teaching: A Four‐dimensional Approach to Negotiation and Conflict Management Work

“…Categorizing these same papers by their perceived essence results in a slightly altered picture. We might suggest that Fosse, Ogliastri, & Rendon, is essentially a research paper, Borbely and Caputo's work is essentially a conceptual theory paper, and Fisher and Fisher‐Yoshida's article is essentially a teaching paper.…”