A critical and often overlooked aspect of doing business in another country is the act and art of negotiating. This paper will make the following assumption. That the negotiator is an American named Ben, who is young, intelligent but has never traveled outside the United States. Ben has been given two challenges: to sell a new type of software to family-owned businesses in China and Saudi Arabia. Ben has been successful negotiating in the American way. He is known for being specific, firm, and desirous of getting to the bottom line.
According to Harris and Moran (1996) "The Chinese have always held themselves in high esteem. The name of their country translates to 'center of the world' for they saw themselves, their country, and culture as the center of human civilization" (Harris & Moran, 1996, 253). In many respects, that attitude carries over into the way they do business, particular negotiating. For instance, the Chinese are fond of controlling the schedule and the location, a fact that Ben found out when his plan of meeting at the hotel so he could get the deal done -- after all, the Chinese had already agreed to the proposal. However, his contact, Mr. Chen, had left a message for Ben at the hotel. Instead of meeting in the hotel, the meeting would be held at the company headquarters, and it would have to be postponed until Tuesday. Since Ben had arrived on a Sunday, he had some time to kill.
When Tuesday finally came, Ben had planned on taking a taxi to the meeting, and was surprised when Mr. Chen sent a message to the hotel saying he would pick Ben up. This was fine with Ben since they could get down to business. Mr. Chen arrived, and Ben was pleased to see that Mr. Chen had a limousine and a driver waiting. Instead of driving to the office, however, the driver took a short drive outside of Beijing and pulled up at a cafe. Mr. Chen said that this was the favorite cafe of the pe
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