Q&A Hero

Q: Islamic Law is based on the Koran

Q: The best thing for an international manager to do is to call in a lawyer from headquarters for all disputes.

Q: Jurisdiction of dispute settlements should be a part of contract negotiations.

Q: In high-context cultures both the firm that brings a suit and the firm that is being sued can lose face.

Q: Compare and contrast various cultural attitudes towards trademarks and patents.

Q: Discuss how the different approaches to unions and labor-management relations in Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States illustrate different cultural views on settling disputes.

Q: a. getting results b. giving their team members equal speaking time c. establishing trust for a sound relationship d. speaking through interpreters Ans: c Page 332, following Difficulty: Easy

Q: Which of the following is NOT a role played by team members in collectivist-culture teams? a. leader b. skeptic c. implementer d. specialist

Q: a. personal effectiveness (sense of satisfaction) b. task effectiveness (achieving a satisfactory outcome from the teams work) c. relational effectiveness (achieving cooperation that enables members to work together in the future) d. global effectiveness (achieving an organizational presence in international environments) Ans: d Page 341 Difficulty: Moderate

Q: When collectivist and individualist teams negotiate: a. both teams, regardless of culture, rank issues the same b. both teams have the same attitude about using time efficiently c. both teams have a desire to "win" d. both teams begin with generalities and continue using general references

Q: Expectations for negotiation outcomes may include: a. long-term relationships b. winning c. written contracts d. all of the above

Q: Members of negotiating teams are chosen for these reasons, EXCEPT: a. relationships to high-status people in the organization/country b. technical expertise c. friendly openness to a foreign culture d. language proficiency

Q: The physical location of negotiations can impact their outcome because: a. the host team has an advantage: all their resources are available to them. b. the guest team has an advantage: they are free from the stress of the demands of daily work c. the host team is exhausted from preparations, which gives the guest team an advantage d. the guest team may have adjustments to make for time, climate, and food, which puts the host team at a disadvantage

Q: How communication is worded in negotiation can affect outcomes because: a. negotiators may become offended if they believe their group's honor is being criticized b. negotiators may become offended if they believe enough attention is being paid to correct form c. negotiators may become offended if words are too long d. all of the above

Q: The phases of negotiation, regardless of culture, include: a. quickly establishing a relationship with the other side so both sides can go on to the real substance of the negotiations b. exchanging information about objectives so each side can go on to try to persuade the other c. getting concessions so an airtight, detailed contract can be drawn up thus successfully concluding the negotiations d. all of the above

Q: Identify the major legal systems and briefly discuss their origins and how they function.

Q: Discuss the cultural implications for dispute settlements. Give specific examples.

Q: Why does a manager need to have a basic understanding of the law in order to be an effective intercultural communicator?

Q: Skilled Western negotiators use a technique called enlarging the pieadding items to what is already on the table as a way of enabling the other side to win, too.

Q: Which statement is NOT true of negotiating? a. it is value free b. it is a special communication task c. it occurs when two or more groups have common interests and disagreements about achieving them d. it is not static but is dynamic

Q: In considering task effectiveness, we can see that often communication among members of teams from collectivist cultures often leads to other-face concerns being considered in choice of topic for discussion.

Q: Own-goal concerns prevail in the communication of collectivist-culture teams.

Q: Everybody around a negotiating table understands compromise: each party gives a little and gains a little, in a fifty-fifty agreement that is fair to both sides.

Q: Translators do not need to know the terminology of an industry, as long as they have a general competence in the countrys official language.

Q: Members can be chosen for a negotiating team because they are relatives of someone of high status.

Q: Negotiators who are guests in another country have the advantages of convenience and well being, since they are treated specially.

Q: All negotiating teams want to diffuse conflict.

Q: A team is composed of two or more people who interact and coordinate their work to achieve a shared goal.

Q: Organizations form teams in order to have better results for their strategies and goals than they would get from individuals.

Q: Organizations employ teams frequently, although they do not see effective decision-making with teams.

Q: Individuals value being on teams because they want to develop a record of cooperative achievement.

Q: A record of cooperative achievement shows relational effectiveness, according to some scholars.

Q: In individualist cultures, team members can fill between 5 and 9 roles.

Q: In collectivist cultures, team members can fill between 10 and 15 roles.

Q: The role of consultanta person who confers with other team members outside of meetings to ensure their opinions are addressedis a typical role on teams from individualist cultures.

Q: Note-taking and keeping a record of all that has been said and decided is not as important in collectivist teams.

Q: Businesspeople around the world agree a sequential approach to items is the way to negotiate.

Q: It appears that members of cultures in which harmony has a high priority will negotiate with frequent reference to what has already been agreed.

Q: The Chinese had an interdependent self-construal; team members viewed themselves as part of a single unit made up of the individual people on the team, who in turn represented a larger unit. They believed themselves to be part of a collective. Canadians had an independent self-construal and came from an individualist culture. They acted as independent spokesmen for their company, and each had a viewpoint that was expressed.

Q: The Chinese appeared more flexible about uncertainty and were able to explore a relationship with Canwall without tying it to a deal. The Canadians had less willingness to tolerate uncertainty, and indeed had convinced themselves they had successfully closed the deal by the time they left China.

Q: Discuss differences in the roles taken by members of negotiating teams from individualist cultures and compare them with roles on teams from collectivist cultures. In particular, refer to roles of leader-surrogate, suggestion-maker and consultant in a collectivist-culture team, and skeptic, recorder, and gatekeeper in a team from an individualist culture.

Q: Discuss expectations for negotiation outcomes. The three components you should address are goals, notions of fairness, and the three outcomes.

Q: Discuss how the team orientationstrategic or synergisticand the criteria for selecting members (high status, special expertise, translator) reflect cultural values.

Q: Describe how three nonverbal factors--site/space, agenda, and use of time--affect negotiation outcomes.

Q: Negotiation is a special communication task that has specific characteristics and factors. Six factors include focus, honor, verbal style (direct or indirect), form, emotion, and silence. Discuss two with reference to two contrasted cultures.

Q: Define and discuss the four phases in negotiation. Use examples to show how cultures view each phase differently.

Q: Discuss argumentation styles for persuasion that vary from culture to culture. Use specific examples from different cultures.

Q: Negotiation boils down to mere differences in style; approaches to negotiating are value-free.

Q: Cultures that emphasize relationships may negotiate differently from cultures that emphasize results.

Q: In the Canwall case, approximately ten of the 24 cultural dimensions from Chapters 3 and 4 came into play. Discuss at least 5 of them, explaining the Chinese or Canadian position on each cultural dimension.

Q: The hierarchy that ranks team members in Chinese culture was not clear to the Canadians, who viewed themselves as two equals. That, in turn, puzzled the Chinese.

Q: Access to authority is mediated in Chinese culture, so the authority figures with the most power were not actually present at the negotiations all the time. They had the greatest face to lose, after all. The two Canadians, on the other hand, had full authority to enter into an agreement that met Canwalls goals.

Q: High-context cultures a. rely on information that comes in measurable units b. view information as externalized, outside of people c. view information with reference to the context d. prefer information that is quantifiable

Q: Formal information comes from all EXCEPT a. observation b. opinion c. published sources d. survey

Q: Informal information is a. always subjective b. usually quantified c. often from a "grapevine" d. always verifiable

Q: Criteria for assessing business information include: a. verifiability, frequency, accuracy, and repeatability b. verifiability, accuracy, trustworthiness, and frequency c. credibility, accuracy, verifiability, and trustworthiness d. credibility, verifiability, trustworthiness, and repeatability

Q: People in ends-oriented cultures make decisions: a. that are often the result of cause-and-effect thinking b. that put group goals before individual goals c. that take into account the honor of the organization d. that reflect the importance of trustworthiness

Q: Problems in organizations: a. can be defined the same way in all cultures b. are often blamed on the most high-status person in collectivist cultures c. are often externalized and objectified in low-context cultures d. are quickly solved by discussion in all cultures

Q: A generalization about conflicts in individualist organizations is that they can involve: a. disagreements over tasks, resources, personalities, and hierarchies b. open discussion about the conflict c. efforts above all to preserve harmony d. agreement by junior members with the most senior members

Q: The mode of managing conflict that high-context cultures tend to prefer more than low-context cultures is a. competing b. accommodating c. winning d. achieving

Q: Strategies for communication in conflict across cultures, when members of high-context cultures disagree with members of low-context cultures, are: a. encouraging both sides to make statements about what they see is wrong b. getting both sides to listen, express agreement where they can, and identify common goals c. using the ringi-seido process d. using only hard data to validate information

Q: How can knowledge of culture help a negotiating team reach a successful outcome? Using cultural values from the dimensions you have already learned, discuss the negotiating behavior in the Canwell case.

Q: Americans groupthink is preferable to conflict.

Q: The best way to handle conflict in any culture is to talk it out frankly and openly.

Q: In results cultures like the United States, conflict is not usually viewed as having the potential to damage relationships.

Q: Collaborating is a conflict management mode that is encouraged in individualist cultures.

Q: Obliging communication is typical in the mode of conflict management termed avoiding.

Q: Which of the following was NOT a key decision made by Brittanica that was critical to keeping its information business going? a. to allow anyone to edit its encyclopedia online b. to publish the entire encyclopedia on the internet c. to keep the quality of its information at the highest level d. to make Brittanica available as an application for iPhone, Blackberry and others

Q: One way to look at cultures effect on decision making is whether decisions are made based on ends or on beginnings.

Q: No decision-making style discussed in the textbook can be found in just about every culture.

Q: A problem is a problem, defined the same way no matter what the culture.

Q: All problems are conflicts.

Q: Business information in any culture is defined the same way.

Q: Informal, subjective information does not come from the grapevine.

Q: In low-context cultures, information is contained in measurable units.

Q: Two key criteria for assessing information are validity and reliability

Q: Low-context managers think that information that is objective has a greater degree of accuracy.

Q: Information that is verifiable is information that has been verified by the source.

Q: Formal information is not information that is found online.

Q: Informal information sources are not very reliable.