East Asians’ Social Heterogeneity: Differences in Norms among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Negotiators

Abstract

East Asian cultures are widely held to be fairly homogeneous in that they highly value harmonious social relationships. We propose, however, that the focus (dyadic versus group) and the nature (emotional versus instrumental) of social relations vary among the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures in ways that have important implications for the negotiation tactics typically employed by managers from these three cultures. Our data are from a web survey administered to three hundred eighty‐eight managers from China, Japan, and South Korea. In this article, we discuss how the differences in the focus and the nature of business relationships in China, Japan, and Korea are manifested in the different norms for negotiation tactics endorsed by managers from these three countries.

Interpersonal relations in China: Expatriates’ perspective on the development and use of guanxi

“…The process of building interpersonal relations varies across cultural settings, for example, guanxi in China, blat in Russia (Panina & Bierman, 2013), wasta in the Arab world (Khakhar & Rammal, 2013), wa in Japan, and inhwa in Korea (Lee, Brett, & Park, 2012).…”

Ethical negotiation values of Chinese negotiators

“…Some scholars have observed that attitudes regarding various negotiation tactics will be nuanced and diverse even within high-context cultures (Lee, Brett, & Park, 2012). For example, Chinese negotiators tend to employ emotional-appeal distributive tactics, while their Japanese counterparts tend to approve the use of integrative and distributive tactics (Lee et al, 2012). Other scholars noted that there are few empirical researches regarding the negotiation values of the Chinese (Sardy, Munoz, Sun, & Alon, 2010), hence making it challenging to understand how the Chinese perceive ethical negotiation concerns.…”

“…Some scholars have observed that attitudes regarding various negotiation tactics will be nuanced and diverse even within high-context cultures (Lee, Brett, & Park, 2012). For example, Chinese negotiators tend to employ emotional-appeal distributive tactics, while their Japanese counterparts tend to approve the use of integrative and distributive tactics (Lee et al, 2012).…”

Cross‐cultural validation of the factor structure for theKorean version of theClassroomClimateInventory

“…Deletion of all items of the Equity construct can be explained by cultural differences between Korea and Japan. According to recent previous studies (e.g., Lee, Brett, & Park, 2012), Koreans tend to be more and more individualistic toward organizations, whereas the Japanese still tend to be collectivistic toward organizations. Because groups with underlying individualistic values tend to appreciate harmony and equity less than collectivistic groups (Hofstede, 1980;Kim, Park, & Suzuki, 1990), it seemed that the Equity construct in the Korean sample was not detected as a salient factor as in the Japanese one.…”