Group Decis Negot 2013 22389405DOI 101007s1072601192724Cultural

Group Decis Negot (2013) 22:389–405
DOI 10.1007/s10726-011-9272-4

Cultural Perspective Taking in Cross-Cultural
Negotiation
Sujin Lee · Wendi L. Adair · Seong-Jee Seo

Published online: 2 November 2011
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract This study introduces the construct cultural perspective taking in negotiation, the active consideration of the other party’s culturally-normative negotiation behaviors prior to negotiation, and compares the effect of cultural perspective taking
(CPT) versus alternative-focused perspective taking (PT) in cross-cultural negotiations. 160 undergraduate students of North American and East Asian ethnicity in the United States and Canada participated in a simulated cross-cultural buyer-seller negotiation in a laboratory study. Participants were randomly assigned to CPT or PT condition. Results show that negotiators who engaged in CPT claimed more value than those who engaged in PT. And when both East Asian and North American negotiators engaged in CPT, East Asian negotiators claimed more value. CPT had no effect on value creation. This study highlights that learning about the other culture before a cross-cultural encounter benefits value claiming, but not necessarily value creation.

We thank Ethan Burris, Adam Galinsky, and Elizabeth Mannix for their insightful comments on previous versions of this manuscript and Michele Castaldi and Jenesis Squires for their valuable assistance with the project. Data collection was partially funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada.
S. Lee (B)
Department of Management Science, Graduate School of Innovation and Technology Management,
KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea e-mail: [e-mail]
W. L. Adair
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave., West Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1,
Canada
e-mail: [e-mail]
S.-J. Seo
Graduate School of Innovation and Technology Management, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

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