The Book of Real-World Negotiations

IIInternational Business Cases

With the interconnected nature of the world, more and more companies are working internationally. As a result, an increasing number of negotiations are taking place across borders and between businesses stretching from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Business deals are happening everywhere, in some of the most unlikely places, and between some of the most unlikely partners.

Negotiation in this context has a number of added dimensions that negotiations in the domestic context need not consider. Just two examples will suffice. First, laws differ from country to country and it is often unclear which laws will be applicable in a given situation. Second, unique cultural norms undergird each negotiator's overall orientation. Unless those cultural differences are understood deeply, they can easily disrupt a process that otherwise would flow smoothly.

This section will cover a number of distinct cases that occur entirely within other countries (i.e. outside the United States) or between businesses from one country to another. The challenges are significant, as you will come to see, and rife with potential areas of trouble.

The first case has to do with a very interesting scenario of a company, called Innoagri, that needed to buy a certain piece of equipment in China from a company called Solantar. The problem Innoagri faced was that Solantar was the only one that produced this equipment in the entire country. When Innoagri approached Solantar about the purchase, ...