International Journal of Business Communication

While a new, market-driven China has been emerging fast in the global market place, Western companies have often reported frustration and confusion when negotiating in China. To identify the roots of the problems, this study investigated what Chinese negotiators are trained to do in the global marketplace by examin ing China's international business negotiation textbooks used in their training pro grams. The results indicate the following: (a) The win-win, win-lose, cooperative egoism, and concessive negotiation strategies are taught in China with the win-win recommended and the cooperative egoism controversially recommended, and Chi nese negotiators are also trained to probe the counterparts' strategies and then act accordingly; (b) Chinese negotiators are taught a large variety of communication techniques for negotiation arrayed along a continuum from the relationship-based win-win strategy to the pure competition-based win-lose mentality; however, the win-win techniques are taught and used far more frequently; and (c) the Chinese textbooks clearly reflect China's foreign trade and economic cooperation principles: equality, mutual understanding, mutual trust, mutual benefit, and long-term coop eration. At the same time, the textbook authors may see a need to emphasize the win-win strategy because in nearly half the cited real-life cases it was not used.

This research report compares three differing explanations of the dynamic interre lationships between internal and external innovation-related communication in a new organizational form. In the functional specialization explanation, individuals are said to focus on the mix of internal and/or external communication dictated by their formal positions. The communication stars explanation suggests that indi viduals maintain similar levels of communication in both networks. The cyclical model posits a more dynamic pattern that shifts back and forth between internal and external communication, depending on the consequences of their prior commu nication behavior. The new organizational form examined for three years was the Cancer Information Service, a geographically dispersed federal government health information program. Our results indicated that there was a lagged effect for the communication stars explanation.

This study evolved out of an ethnographic approach to teaching, learning, and researching the different ways that business and cultural frames of reference can affect decision making in groups consisting of Austrian, Finnish, and Swedish business students. The data is based on videotaped and audio taped recordings, post-exercise debriefings and discussions, and post-exercise written reflections on two decision-making exercises. The business-related Carter Racing exercise, which imitates the developments leading to the space shuttle Challenger catastrophe, pro duced conclusion-driven groupthink in every multicultural group of students. The students' shared "business-is-taking-risks" frame of reference was salient, with few cultural differences within the groups. In contrast, an exercise requiring the same students to decide the appropriate degree of subordinate participation in decision- making when a nuclear power plant needed repair produced only one example of conclusion-driven discourse. Analyses of three groups illustrates (a) an example of groupthink (Austrians and Swedes) in both exercises, (b) an example of national culture interference (Austrians and Swedes) that paralyzed group decision-making and (c) an example of national culture interference (Austrians and Finns) that demonstrated the importance of a "cultural negotiator" in finding common ground for different national assumptions about social relationships and preferences for communication styles.

A global economy requires business organizations to cultivate their international holdings by respecting the national differences of their host countries and coordi nating efforts for rapid innovation. In this essay we first review relevant literature in the areas of communication and innovation and explore how efforts toward innovative practices are directly related to globalism and business strategy. We then focus on issues associated with national culture, corporate culture, and pro fessional culture that are relevant to strategies for researching business communi cation in global contexts. Finally, we suggest directions for future work.