Building intercultural alliances: a study of moves and strategies in initial business negotiation meetings

Abstract

This paper proposes a conceptual model to study the discourse of initial negotiation meetings between members of New Zealand and Chinese corporations. It attempts to make two contributions to existing cross-cultural negotiation research, especially to rapport management. Firstly, it develops a conceptual position where negotiation meetings require mutual effort for building intercultural alliances. Secondly, the application and further division of initial moves (initiating moves-relational [IM-R] and initiating move-transactional [IM-T]), responding moves (responding move-cooperative [RM-C] and responding move-uncooperative [RM-UC]), and strategies into politeness strategies (PS) and uncooperative strategies (UC-S) offer an in-depth analysis of the nuances of positioning construction between parties. The findings indicate that a successful negotiation meeting establishes and develops intercultural alliances through appropriate use of moves and strategies. Negotiations, however, derail if inappropriate moves and strategies are used, and potential conflicts and communication breakdowns are not addressed in time.