Cultivationof Students’Cross-cultural Communication Ability and BusinessNegotiation

楊雪梅 方 敏 高 雪

（上海電機學院商學院，中國 上海201306）

0 Introduction

We analyze the problems in intercultural business negotiations in order to improve students’skills to negotiate successfully in negotiations.

1 The importance of cross-cultural communication and the students’deficiencies

Cross-cultural communication is a form of global communication.It is used to describe the wide range of communication problems that naturally appear within an organization made up of individuals from different religious,social,ethnic,and educational backgrounds.Aside from language,cross-cultural communication focuses on social attributes,thought patterns,and the cultures of different groups of people.It also involves understanding the different cultures,languages and customs of people from other countries.

1.1 Importance

In the 20th century,human science and technology has been a breakthrough development,which has greatly changed the world pattern and human way of life.The huge earth is compressed into a small“global village”and the cross-cultural communication is becoming an important part in the whole world.[1]

1.2 Students’deficiencies

Cross-cultural communication is the necessary premise of successful international business activities,communicating efficiently is the basic starting point to complete the transaction.There are many factors that impact the university students’cross-cultural communication,such as the way of thinking,the values,the language and the nonverbal.[2]

2 The importance and the skills of business negotiation

Business negotiation is an activity which happens between the buyers and the sellers to promote

trades or a method to solve the dispute and achieve their economic interests.Under the condition of socialist market economy,business negotiation should follow the following principles:Win-win principle,equality principle,legal principle,timeliness principle and the principle of minimum target.Business negotiation is a means of enterprise to realize the economic goal and the important way for the enterprise to achieve market information.What’s more,it is also the main power for the enterprise to exploit the market.Achieving economic is its aim and value negotiation is its heart.It puts emphasis on the strictness and accuracy of the contract to bring about the success of some business trades.

2.1 Importance

Business negotiation is a means of enterprise to realize the economic goal and the important way for the enterprise to achieve market information.What’s more,it is also the main power for the enterprise to exploit the market.Achieving economic is its aim and value negotiation is its heart.It puts emphasis on the strictness and accuracy of the contract to bring about the success of some business trades.Business negotiation can add the enterprise’s profit.GM is one of the biggest car companies in the world.At an early age,the company hired Lopez as the manger of the purchasing department.When he took office half a year,he had created 20 billion dollars profit for the GM.How did he do it?The car is consists of various parts and most of them are imported.All what Lopez had done during this half a year was only one thing:negotiating with all the manufactures who provided the parts.He said the company had a good credit and a big demand so he wanted to review the price.If they couldn’t give a better price,they want to change the manufactures.After the negotiations,Lopez saves 20 billion dollars for the GM.It’s no wonder that negotiation is the fastest way to make money!

2.2 Skills

Business negotiation is the behavior process which is about the coordination of economic and trade relations.The successful business negotiation is the way to search for and get the demand.Therefore,people should be familiar with the knowledge and technique of the negotiation during the negotiation to achieve the goal.In order to improve the technique,the most basic is to have a good command of modern negotiation theory and related knowledge.At the same time,it’s also necessary to summarize the experience got from the negotiation.

During all the business negotiation,the attitude is the most important.We should adopt difference attitude toward different objects during the business activities.For an instance,we can take appreciate concession mentality to negotiate when we negotiate with the companies who we will cooperate for a long term.This means we should follow the companies’needs without too many losses and too bad effect and this will be good for the future cooperation.If the target and the result of the negotiation are both very important,we should take a friendly mentality to get win-win;If the target is not very important and the result has no bad effect to the company,we should not pay too much energy on the negotiations;If the result is very important,we should take positive attitude to win.

What’s more,we also need to fully understand the opponent.During the business negotiation,the more we know,the more we can grasp the initiative of the negotiation.Knowing the opponent not only means we should know their aims and base line but also their business circumstance,market quotations,the negotiator’s character,their companies’culture,the negotiator’s habit and taboo and so on.If we do this,we can prevent many contradictions because of the culture and habits and customs.On the other hand,we should acknowledge the competitors.In this way,we can timely provide some privilege to promote the treaty.When the opponents approve some demands which are more rigorous,we can provide the information about the competitors to let them know we are the best.

3 The intercultural business negotiation

As the “Sun Tzu’s Military Strategy”says,“Know the enemy and know yourself,and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat.”Getting a clear picture of cultural difference between China and the West and its impacts on negotiation is a guarantee for successful cross-cultural business negotiation.[3]business negotiation advantage for students majoring in International Trade

4 Improvements of the intercultural

To improve the intercultural business negotiation skills,first,we should understand the thinking way,the value,the language and the nonverbal of each other fully.For the thinking way,we can make concessions on details that won’t matter too much to us when we negotiate with westerners which may bring us a good business relationship.The westerners seem to put time at an important place,so we should talk directly into the topic while negotiating with them.Besides,we should focus on the social and the etiquette culture as different countries have different cultures and religious beliefs.We should know their cultures before the negotiation in order to avoid unnecessary loss.In this way,we can improve the success rate in negotiations and make a good behavior.[4]

Success is based on excellent preparation.We should make some business negotiation simulations so as to be calm while in the negotiation.It’s also very important to improve the negotiation skills.Basically,we have to master the modern negotiation theories and related knowledge and learn lessons from the business negotiations.Our university often organizes some activities to communicate with foreign students.We can make some simulations with them in business negotiations in order that we can experience their thinking way,their values and their languages to improve our skills.We are sure to make win-win negotiations in important intercultural business negotiations.

［1］http://www.51lunwen.org/kwhjjlw/org201407030916104525.html[OL].

［2］http://wenku.baidu.com/view/9ef0251d964bcf84b9d57bc6.html[OL].

［3］http://www.kekenet.com/kouyi/201407/309684.shtml[OL].

［4］http://biyelunwen.yjbys.com/fanwen/yingyu/409940.html[OL].