A Research On The Differences Between Business Negotiation Styles Of Turkish And American Managers

Abstract

It is a well-proven evidence that national culturesof international business managers affect theirnegotiation styles. There are also cross-nationalstudies suggesting that Turkish and Americancultures have unique characteristics and differ inmany ways. Combining these two premises, thisresearch compares the key negotiation tendenciesof 108 Turkish and American managers who havebeen somewhat involved in business negotiationson behalf of their organizations. Data was obtainedthrough quantitative ranking style questionnairesand interviews administrated in the CaliforniaState of America and major cities in Turkey. In thequalitative part, utilizing the mutual assessmentsof experienced Turkish negotiators on Americannegotiation styles and vice versa, the study givesinsights into the debate on the determinants ofcross-cultural business negotiations in the caseof these two distinct cultures. Results from theindependent-samples t-test which compared themeans of quantitative scores reveal that althoughthe negotiation styles of Turkish and Americanmanagers working for fully-domestic businessesdiffer significantly, both American and Turkishmanagers of multinational businesses tend touse similar negotiation styles. Coherently, somequalitative assessments were also found supportingthe convergence trajectory towards cultureindependent‘common’ principles in internationalbusiness and cooperation negotiations.