Indian Communication and Negotiation Style

„Babeş-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca

Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Indian Communication and Negotiation Style

Alexandra Cotae

Master A.C.I.A.

June 2014

Introduction

Culture is considered to be a process each of us undergoes immediately after birth, in a specific social environmnent characterterized by a distuinguished language/languages, history, religion, civilization, principles, customs, lifestyle, written or unwritten rules, communication style, organisational structure. What we learn in our specific national culture may be totally different from what others are taught in family and school within their community. The more we grow older, the more ethnocentrics we get: once we assimillate a set of „national” concepts as our guiding principles which are perfectly applicable in our own society, we regard them as normal and we assume they are the same in the other foreign societies. If this does not happen, which is the most likely scenario, we experience a culture shock and find the way other people behave eccentric and weird1.

Living in an increasingly globalizing world, with a growing interdependence among societies cultural differencies raise awareness among business communities. Nowadays, business ventures between companies from different countries and multinationals firms with subsidiaries in various locations on the globe are common realities. One company may use raw materials from a foreign country and may need to close a deal with the local supplier company. In a multinational company, one may be appoined manager or director of a foreign subsidiary. Online business interactions with various stakeholders (clients, partners, employees, etc.) makes intercultural awareness necessary even if one may not have to travel or live in another culture. Ignoring them may lead to communication failure in the negotiation process and subsequently, in partnerships and offshore ventures. Craig Storti identified the problems in which...