Google and the Government of China: A Case Study in Cross-Cultural Negotiations

This case study explores the cross-cultural negotiation between Google and the Chinese government. It discusses the interests, positions, and alternatives of both parties and the ethical dilemmas faced by Google.

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Leadership and Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
Google and the Government of China: A Case Study in Cross-Cultural Negotiations
What were Google's interests and positions? What were its alternatives and how good
were they?
In China, Google had limited presence. The Chinese government a counterpart to
Google’s search engine known as Baidu.com. Due government interference, the search
results of Google were extremely slow and Google is unable to provide efficient and fast
service that they intend to provide (Ahammad et al., 2016). Along with that they also wanted
to uphold their organization principle of ‘don’t be evil’. In the negotiation, Google had both
financial and non-financial interest. They wanted to tap the vast internet user market of China
on which they had limited access to and to provide the Chinese users, uncensored information
from their server. Their position in the negotiation was quite questionable as one of the few
things that they had to offer to China was their efficient server system and technology and
employment. This too, was dependent on Dr. Lee and his impact. Google had two alternative
outcome expectations from the negotiation. They wanted the government’s approval on
building a Chinese domain so that Google becomes available to Chinese users. Alternatively,
if the government did not allow that, they wanted to acquire a Baidu’s share so that are able
to provide their service to China. The alternatives that they had decided were good but quite
uncertain as Chinese government takes their censorship and flow of information that
contradict their interest quite seriously (Rieder & Sire, 2014).
What were China's interests and positions? What were the government's alternatives
and how good were they?
The Chinese government had two interests in the negotiation as well. First of all,
Google had appointed Dr. Kai-fu Lee who was well respected in China and the Chinese

2LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
government expects that with Google coming to China, the Chinese ‘brain-drain’ will cease.
Alternatively, they wanted to acquire the technological advancements of Google and ensure
advancement to their own country. The government was in a better position than Google as
they already had Baidu.cn that was already one of the most popular search engines and had
almost similar performance to Google (Jiang, 2013). They also wanted to improve the
political and power position of China. The government was also not keen on releasing their
hold on censorship as it gave them control over people’s opinion. The alternative was to
Reject the license of Google for a .cn domain and use Baidu. This decision has a possibility
that the political reputation in China will decrease in the world.
What were the two parties most concerned about during the negotiations? How was this
evident? What ethical dilemmas do you foresee for Google? How could they resolve
them?
The two parties involved in the negotiation, Google and Chinese government were
concerned about whether they would be able to reach to a decision that would beneficial to
both (Moosmayer et al., 2013). Google was concerned with aligning their profit motives with
organization principles whereas the government was concerned with how far were they
willing to release the ban on internet usage to facilitate the entry of Google to the Chinese
market. It was evident from the fact that both parties were quite aware of the conditions that
the negotiations would have posed. Both have collected extensive data and have prepared for
it. Both have already prepared strategies and conditions on which they are willing to work.
The main ethical dilemma that that Google have is to uphold their principle of doing no evil
which will seriously jeopardized by accepting the censorship terms of China. The only way to
resolve the issue was to come to a situation where both the parties gain something. Through
Google, china would gain important technology and employment opportunity for youth and if

3LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
China relents some of their boundaries Google will be able to do business with them while
upholding their organizational principle.
References
Ahammad, M. F., Tarba, S. Y., Liu, Y., Glaister, K. W., & Cooper, C. L. (2016). Exploring
the factors influencing the negotiation process in cross-border M&A. International
Business Review, 25(2), 445-457.
Jiang, Y. (2013). Business negotiation culture in China a game theoretic
approach. International Business Research, 6(3), 109.
Moosmayer, D. C., Chong, A. Y. L., Liu, M. J., & Schuppar, B. (2013). A neural network
approach to predicting price negotiation outcomes in business-to-business
contexts. Expert Systems with Applications, 40(8), 3028-3035.
Rieder, B., & Sire, G. (2014). Conflicts of interest and incentives to bias: A microeconomic
critique of Google’s tangled position on the Web. New media & society, 16(2), 195-
211.