| Abstract [eng] |
Intercultural communication is gaining considerable importance in the today’s world, with processes of globalizations and increasing international interactions in business as well as other spheres of social life becoming somewhat of a daily life routine. However, knowing the language and having a possibility to communicate is by far not sufficient means for effective and productive communication, as many people note. International negotiations is one form of social interaction that causes all the same or even greater problems for negotiators, as difficulties frequently arise because of various misunderstandings and miscommunication. Therefore, it is essential to have at least basic knowledge of culture and intercultural communication in order to be prepared and to avoid problematic situations. Although there is significant amount of scientific literature, covering a wide range of topics of international communications, it is difficult to find a generalized and systematic approach, which would bring theory and practice together in order to help a negotiator to gain some basic knowledge and provide useful information as to what is to be know before getting to negotiation table. Therefore the main goal of this work is to provide a systematic overview of influence of culture in strategy and tactics of international negotiation. The aim to explain the validity of this structured approach when analyzing real life negotiations is of no less importance. These goals are achieved by analyzing theoretical literature as well as documented negotiation practice, comparing these two different sources to test the validity of theoretical conclusions on real life negotiations and vice versa. Another approach, which considers culture no more than one variable among many others in the context of negotiation, is also presented. This view is useful because it sets certain limitations on the structural and universal point. In conclusion it can be noted, that it is possible to predict the strategy and tactics in international negotiations to a certain level using various cultural dimensions. However, these sets of values only serve to form preferences towards some patterns of negotiating behaviour, but they do not provide conclusive knowledge, because contextual situation is no less important in modifying those preferences. Therefore, relying on the sole knowledge of culture is not enough if fluent communication at the negotiation table is sought. |
