Organizational Cultures

Organizational Cultures

As both organizations approach each other to begin their negotiation, it is quite observational that both groups have different cultures. There were 2 types of organizations, the first one was Blues (I was part of this one) and the second one was Green. Starting off with Blues, we were the ones trying to sell a water filter to the Greens. Our objective was that we cannot sell our product for below 1 million dollars. The norms given to us were:

* We must shake with our left hands

* Women must introduce their team members before the rest can speak

* We must be shoeless

* The oldest person is the boss

* We must treat the person with the lightest hair color as a high status.

Throughout the negotiation, it was really hard to reach the bargaining zone because both groups had a different price in mind. It began with the Blues asking at least 1.2 million dollars, whereas the Greens didn’t want to spend over 500 thousand dollars. Obviously there was no deal that had been made.

As I was an observer for the Blues team, I kept trying to figure out what the norms were for the other group. There were some that were very simple to detect. For example every time we would introduce ourselves to the Greens, they would always turn around and show their backs to us before shaking our hands. And even then, it seemed like they would not shake the hands of people of the opposite sex. Also, whenever a question had arise, the Greenies would always huddle up into a group and discuss about what had been asked of them, no matter how small or how big the question.

As we kept negotiating for a price on the water filter, I realized that there were only 2 people from the Greenies would were speaking aloud. One of them was the tallest of the group so it made me believe that he was the boss of his organization, whereas our boss was the oldest person. The other person of the Greenies who was speaking was the shortest person in their group. To me it...