Cross Cultural Business Negotiation: Impact of Cultural Intelligence on Business Negotiation - Research Project

Research Project
Impact of cultural intelligence on the business
negotiation
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................3
1.1 Overview of the topic.......................................................................................................3
1.2 Overview of the study......................................................................................................3
1.3 Problem statement............................................................................................................4
1.4 Rationale of research........................................................................................................4
1.5 Research aim....................................................................................................................5
1.6 Research Objectives.........................................................................................................5
1.7 Research Questions..........................................................................................................5
1.8 Scope of research and limitation......................................................................................5
1.9 Research structure............................................................................................................5
CHAPTER 2- LITERATURE REVIEW.........................................................................................7
2.1 Introduction......................................................................................................................7
2.2 Theories of culture............................................................................................................7
2.3 The role of cultural intelligence on business negotiation in the company.......................8
2.4 Factors impacting the business negotiation due to cultural intelligence at workplace?.10
CHAPTER 3-RESEARCH METHODOLOGY............................................................................13
2.1 Saunders research onion framework..............................................................................13
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CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION
1.1 Overview of the topic
Cross cultural negotiation refers to the communication which enable a firm to craft better
deals or agreement with workers, employees, customers, business parties, suppliers and other
stakeholders (Angouri, 2018). Cross culture is determined as different language, beliefs, value,
morale, ethics, point of view and background. After globalisation many companies work with
people who belong to different nations, cultures, different languages and understanding related to
various business concepts. sometimes, it creates issues for firms to collaborate with them for
working because of cross culture differences.
Cultural intelligence is defined as the capability of the company to recognise and adapt the
different culture. By adapting the different culture, it provides the confidence among the
organisation to operate their business successfully within the nation. Culture intelligence has four
main components that are Strategic thinking, knowledge, motivation and behaviour. All these
helps the company to function outside the boundary of the home country in effective way.
Moreover, in the Unilever, there are large number of employee work whose come from
different society, nation, background, religion and know different language which leads to
increase in misunderstanding, miscommunication, conflict and delay in work that hinder the
growth of company. culture is most essential element which affects how top management and
business executives organise their personality or skills to negotiate an agreement. business
negotiations mean negotiations, interactions and communications among corporate firms, their
employees and their vendors for the achievement of the goals of organisation. In an organisation,
the leader and manager must understand that perception and strengths or weaknesses of their
employees in order to negotiate with them about the task and its importance for their
organisation which motivate employees to work with their best abilities. The project covers
about the influence of cross cultural business environment on the business negotiation within the
organisation.
1.2 Overview of the study
Cross culture effect how corporation organise themselves to negotiate the deal or
agreement with other interested stakeholders. To define the concept of cross culture and its
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impact the selected organisation is Unilever. It was established in 1929 by George Schictt,
Jurgens, Samuel van den Bergh, Antonius Johannes Jurgens. It is one of the biggest British
multinational consumer goods company which deals in Grocery items, ice cream, food items,
house hold items, personal care products and many more (CONAC, 2020). The main aim of the
firm is providing fresh and best quality items to the people across the world in order to increase
customer experience. There various branch of the company among the whole world as well as
more than 150,000 employees works in the company. It has been determining these employees
belong to different background, culture and language which need to generate clear understanding
to work as a team (Unilever at a glance, 2022).
1.3 Problem statement
The problem recognised within current study of Unilever is that organisation faces
difficulty in negotiating between cross culture due to which it becomes difficult to crack the deal
and improve their business performance. It has been identified that cross culture negotiation is
challenging, as many issues are faced while communicating with individuals who belong to a
different culture. Thus, cross culture negotiation is always going to be challenging. It has been
identified that the company has huge workforce which come from different culture and mind-sets
that leads to create misunderstanding and miscommunication among working which delays the
work and reduce productivity of company (Unilever at a glance, 2022). for that reason, the
company lose various profitable deals with many other big organisations. As the employees of
company did not complete the task due to language barriers and cross culture issues. it has been
seen that the employees of one branch found difficulties the ideas and concepts of employees
who work in another branch in other nation due to communication gap and different culture
followed by organisation (Goddard, et.al, 2021). They faced various difficulties to work with
other team on a project which leads to decrease in productivity and increase in waste of time,
cost and other resources to complete a project effectively.
1.4 Rationale of research
The rationale and benefit behind conducting research on the case of Unilever, is that it
focuses on detecting the influence of cross cultural on the business negotiation among the
establishment. Cross cultural negotiation commonly makes a great effect on the business
productivity and performance as the firms have to arrange themselves in such a way to negotiate
the agreement and deal. The current research is imperative for the researcher as it emphases on
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