Negotiation the Implementation of International

Negotiation The Implementation of International Negotiations The process of developing a strategy for negotiation in an international trade context must involve some level of immersion in the culture, political identity and social characteristics of the trade partner nation. The familiarity that parties coming to the negotiating table have with one another will help to clarify each party's starting position, its goals and its restraints. Moreover, the recommended cultural familiarity may help to reduce the danger of intervening offenses, miscommunications or other barriers to positive compromise.

In some instances, negotiation between two parties is simply too deeply confounded by the points of disagreement, cultural divergences or historical prejudices to be conducted without outside assistance. As Starkey et al. () note, "over time, the comparison of such troubled pairs as the Israelis and the Palestinians or Northern Irelands Catholics and Protestants with couples involved in hotly contested divorces represents a useful analogy: all seek to split while arguing fiercely about the common property.

Moreover, in the international arena, as in family disputes, third-party intervention, such as mediation or more binding arbitration, is sometimes the only way to bring parties to an agreement that will be fair and lasting." (Starkey et al., p. 3) This is frequently the case in the international trade to the extent that many negotiations are mediated by international trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund.

Therefore, in the planning stages for a negotiation on the international trade front, it is important to determine the necessity and, consequently, the role, of any possible mediating party. Perhaps the most important body of knowledge that parties can bring to the development of the international area of negotiation is a comprehensive understanding of the way that nation-states interact in a changing trade landscape.

For both firms from developed nations and those from the developing sphere, the decisions that accompany the process of international trade are shifting according to the conditions of globalization. Therefore, forecasting methods should center on the understanding that negotiating parties have of the economic and fiscal patterns correlated to global affairs and currency exchanges. Moreover, forecasting should be facilitated by a clear understanding on the part of each party of its role in the trade landscape. As Starkey et al.

report, "despite proclamations and forecasts to the contrary, neither the nation-state nor the international system of states is dead in the new millennium. What has changed are calculations of state interest and state navigation of the international system. Both have become much more complex, owing to the increased importance of such factors as crossnational actors and forces, economic globalization, and international media." (Starkey et al., p. 4) Negotiators in an international context must stride a careful line between the presentation of authority and the demonstration of respect for negotiating partners.

Accordingly, it is important for international negotiators to possess characteristics of communicational dexterity, cultural acuity and a certain amount of charisma. It is necessary to command sufficient respect as a representative of one's firm and its cultural identity without trespassing the cultural proclivities of a potential host nation or trade partner. That said, it is also frequently the case that parties in negotiation will exist on different planes of authority.

Negotiators must be characteristically attuned to power dynamics and the impact that these are likely to have on the avenue and outcome of trade engagements. So reports the text by Lall (1966), which notes that "a difference in the power levels of the countries concerned is one of the factors of prime importance which affect movement toward negotiation." (p. 132) Tactics in such contexts and the resultant effectiveness will often be a direct function of the selectivity and judiciousness exhibited in selecting a suitable trade partner.

In many cases during this age of globalization, trade partners are moved toward interaction based on their respective economic interests. But tactically sound negotiation should begin with a selection of trade partners with certain degrees of compatability, particularly as these relate to such national features as political orientation, human rights records, labor conditions and environmental priorities. Lall indicates that, for instance, "a country which insists on following its own policies and has the power to do so is not the one that is most disposed to negotiate an issue,.