Jm Jan Ulijn

Innovation, Corporate Strategy, and Cultural Context: What Is the Mission for International Business Communication?

A global economy requires business organizations to cultivate their international holdings by respecting the national differences of their host countries and coordi nating efforts for rapid innovation. In this essay we first review relevant literature in the areas of communication and innovation and explore how efforts toward innovative practices are directly related to globalism and business strategy. We then focus on issues associated with national culture, corporate culture, and pro fessional culture that are relevant to strategies for researching business communi cation in global contexts. Finally, we suggest directions for future work.

Non-face-to face international business negotiation: how is national culture reflected in this medium

With the globalization of the world economy, it is imperative that managers, both present and future, be sensitive to differences in intercultural business communication. In particular, the context of global electronic commerce leads to an increasing use of email in negotiating deals, which to this point has been carried out almost exclusively via face-to-face (FTF) or other high-feedback media (e.g., telephone) but not of non-FTF media. This study, involving 20 participants, uses speech act theory and psycholinguistic analysis to explore the effects of culture on non-FTF communication.

THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL, CORPORATE AND PROFESSIONAL CULTURES ON INNOVATION: GERMAN AND DUTCH FIRMS COMPARED

Innovation literature advocates the transition from a technological orientation to market orientation on the part of innovator and entrepreneur. However, the transition requires a change in mindset on the part of these innovation agents, who may be affected by their national contexts. This paper reports a study is to example factors that account for a different transition from a Technological Orientation (TO) towards a Market Orientation (MO) and the impact of national cultures. To analyse possible intercultural differences, the study involved two independent samples from Germany and the Netherlands. The study found that the orientation to versus MO of the Dutch engineer is not different from that of the German engineer, probably because of a common professional culture (PC), which is different from an MO. The transition from technological orientation towards market orientation occurred earlier for the Dutch engineers than for the German engineers. However German engineers demonstrated less MO than Dutch firms. A plausible reason for this is that the strong feminine values of Dutch national and corporate culture (NC and CC, Hofstede, 1980a and b and 1991) might lead more easily to a customer orientation (Market Pull) than the more masculine German values keeping a strong technological base. In sum, firms might consider carefully an optimal CC x PC interaction instead of NC-differences to reach effective technological innovation in the global market.

Innovation and international business communication : can European research help to increase the validity and reliability for our business and teaching practice?

We can improve the validity and reliability of business communication research by using both quantitative and qualitative methods and studying both real life and simulations. Studies should build on both American research on strategy and innovation and European research on psycholinguistics and perception. Studies of culture need to consider not only national culture but also corporate and professional culture; studies need to investigate new media. Quantitative simulated repeated multiple-case research might increase reliability. Studying real-life events increases ecological validity. Studying psychology, language, and the right culture provides content validity. These principles are illustrated with research about intercultural negotiations.

Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Culture, A Matter of Interaction between Technology, Progress and Economic Growth? An Introduction

Not all technological innovations lead to start-ups, whereas an estimated 75 per cent of the new employment is created there. This is a global phenomenon. Why are there no more entrepreneurial successes? Are innovators just too technology driven, so that they forget about the market for their ideas? Failing to prepare for the market, is preparing to fail your business. Or are innovators predominantly hidden in research and development (RD in fact, many of them fail. How does the entrepreneur learn more quickly from his/her mistakes? To initiate the creation of new venture, you may need a special culture, climate or mindset. Underneath this progress there are interactions

Questioning Behaviour in Monocultural and Intercultural Technical Business Negotiations: The Dutch—Spanish Connection

This article addresses the issue of asking questions as an important element of international business negotiation where there are differences in cultural background. A Dutch-Spanish difference in questioning was related to differences between the two parties in uncertainty reduction and negotiation goals. All 480 questions in 8 simulated Kelley game negotiations were reviewed: both monocultural (3 Dutch-Dutch in Dutch and 2 Spanish-Spanish in Spanish) and intercultural (3 Spanish-Dutch in English), i.e. 2 cultures and 3 languages (average duration of 30 min of recording per negotiation). This analysis may also allow an illustration of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (Sapir, 1949 and Whorf, 1956) which holds, at least in its weak version, that culture frames language and language frames culture. It may also be possible to determine the extent to which intercultural differences between Dutch and Spanish questioning behaviours - assuming they can be ascertained in comparison with monocultural Dutch and Spanish behaviour - are language bound. In other words, do negotiators use a different typology of questions in their native language (L1: Dutch or Spanish) than in a neutral language (L2)? A comparison of the monocultural and intercultural data makes it possible to illustrate the above hypothesis, and to establish how far the L1-culture connection differs from that of the L2-culture. For another similar test on culture-language relations in South African mathematics texts and their readers, see Prins and Ulijn (1998). The uncertainty reduction theory (UR) of Berger (1979) and the negotiation models developed by Fisher and Ury (1981) and Mastenbroek (1989) are related to question behaviour, which is analysed with the Verbal Response Mode Taxonomy of Stiles (1981). Pre- and post-negotiation questionnaires (using Likert-scales) were developed and administered to relate the results of the linguistic analysis to the perceptions of the negotiators in order to test the ecological validity of UR. Asking questions appeared to be a critical success factor in both monocultural and intercultural business negotiation on the basis of their relation with UR variables and Kelley game profit levels, but in a different sense to Gudykunst et al. (see Gudykunst, 1985, 1988; Gudykunst and Nishida, 1984), who suggest that questions reduce uncertainty by increasing attributional confidence in a general way, seemingly irrespective of a national cultural background (see Van Dalen, 1995). In this study the Dutch, starting from a higher level of issue-related global confidence, used questions significantly less than the Spanish to attribute confidence to the person, indicating a cultural difference. Most questioning differences appeared to be language - as well as culture-bound. The Spanish asked significantly more for acknowledgement, and the Dutch asked more indirect questions with disclosure, but the two groups did not differ in global uncertainty and attributional confidence after their negotiations. They seemed to reduce uncertainty by adopting a passive, unobtrusive observation strategy. It may be that the type of information needed to become more confident depends on the communicators personality rather than on his or her cultural background. Dutch and Spanish managers would therefore be advised to balance openness and vagueness to reach their negotiation goals in maximizing profits by using a combination of clear and ambiguous questions and answers and to be aware of the linguistic differences in questioning between Spanish and Dutch, which may even be carried over to English when it is used as a tool of communication.

Patterns of feelings in face‐to‐face negotiation: a Sino‐Dutch pilot study

We conducted a pilot study to compare the emotions experienced by Dutch and Chinese students during a face‐to‐face negotiation role play. Emotions play an important role in negotiations because they influence the behaviour and judgments of negotiators. The Data Printer case developed by Greenhalgh was used to examine the patterns of feelings that emerge during negotiations. One hundred and four participants (62 Chinese and 42 Dutch post graduate students) role‐played two different characters who were confronted with a payment dispute regarding the servicing of a defective printer. The results of the MANOVA and of the Factorial Analysis demonstrates that culture as a carrier of social values and norms did influence the emotional reactions of the people socialised in different cultural contexts. The paper concludes that in order to facilitate conflict resolution and interpersonal communication amongst protagonists in mono as well as in inter‐cultural negotiation context individuals should learn to manage their emotions constructively.

Teaching Business Plan Negotiation: Fostering Entrepreneurship among Business and Engineering Students

FROM PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS to complex business dealings, negotiations are essential forms of communication. But negotiation skills are often neglected in university courses. One reason for this neglect is the difficulty of teaching negotiations effectively. Such teaching requires both an underlying theoretical base and activities that provide students with direct practice in negotiating. In this article, we describe a new approach to teaching negotiation through personalized situated learning. After a brief introduction to the approach, we present the scenario for a negotiation that helps engineering students become more entrepreneurial as they develop a business plan to secure funding from venture capitalists for a start-up IT company.

The contribution of electronic communication media to the design process: communicative and cultural implications

Innovation in a companys design process is increasingly a matter of cooperation between the company and its customers. New information and communication technology (ICT) possibilities such as electronic communication (EC) media generate even more opportunities for companies to collaborate with customers during the early stages of research and development. This exploratory study examined the design process of five Dutch firms and the cultural and communicative implications of cooperation in the design process between the supplier and the customer using EC media. We found that the selected use of EC media for communication between R&D and customers has a positive effect on the design process. We also discovered that the characteristics of the most suitable EC media depend on the design activity and that the corporate and professional cultures of both the company and its customers involved in the cooperation seem to affect the communication media used. Finally, the future use of new ICT in the design area is discussed.

The entrepreneurship debate in Europe : a matter of history and culture?

In this introductory chapter, we would like to talk about the richness and the specifici-ties of the European research in entrepreneurship. First we will approach entrepreneur-ship research from historical perspective thus positioning and identifying the European cultural roots and re-emergence for entrepreneurship debates. This positioning also ad-dresses attention to the specificities that characterise the current European research. In the second section we will explore these specificities aiming to advance the debate of the future European approach to entrepreneurship research. Finally, in the last section we will present how this book participates to these debates by introducing our authors and their studies. As a result we wish to provide some new insights into the landscape of entrepreneurship research in Europe and thus advance the European specific debate on entrepreneurship research.