The International Negotiator Crosses the Beach. D-Day, a Relaxed Excursion, or Something In Between?

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Expert negotiators are expert boundary players. As they manage the tensions inherent in all negotiations they know how to cross real and metaphorical boundaries, some more like a D-Day hell than a pleasant beach.

Negotiation on any topic, in any place, involving people of any background, will highlight myriad differences between the parties even if interests and aims are compatible?from the outset. The differences separate the parties and tend to be more complex in international than domestic negotiations. There is a cardinal boundary between ‘them’ and ‘us’ that must be crossed for communication to take place. The cardinal boundary embodies more specific ones, such as national, cultural, social, organisational, emotional, educational, professional, intellectual, political, historical, personal, religious, linguistic, paralinguistic, ideological and psychological. The successful international negotiator is always a subtle and adept ‘boundary player’ who thrives on such complexity.

As?negotiators we rely too much on toolkit books and sometimes banal 'teachings' by scholars. The most adroit veterans I know are in the habit of going deeper than that regardless of their academic accomplishment. They are not shy of theory that helps them to understand what they do and why they do it that way.

I recommend three areas of theory that provide insight into the relationship between boundary play and international negotiation. The first, from social and cultural anthropology, concerns ethnicity; the second area, from organisational theory, concerns the transitional zone between an organisation and its external environment (Starbuck 1983), and depicts the manager as a ‘boundary role person’ (an ugly but useful label invented by Adams, 1983). The third area is about the role of empathy in successful boundary play.

1. Ethnicity and boundary play

An ethnic group and a negotiator or negotiation team are of different orders, but simple ethnicity theory does provide insight into the nature of the relationship between negotiating parties and the circumstances under which boundaries between them may be breached.

One of the distinguishing features of an ethnic group is a membership that identifies itself, and is identified by others, as constituting a category of people that is distinguishable from other categories of the same order (Barth 1969: 10–11). There are credible or spurious claims to distinctive combinations of culture, language, race, and so on. There is a parallel with negotiation: the broad identity of each party distinguishes it from other parties even though common purpose is possible.

Ethnicity is a device for control of interaction between groups. Each group maintains the boundary with other groups to promote an internal sense of identity and purpose, and to ensure that interaction between groups is strategic rather than haphazard or casual. The boundary and the rules for crossing it increase the chances of success in the competition for control of economic and other resources.?

In international negotiation, the players cannot simply discard the boundary between ‘them’ and ‘us’ to negotiate without constraint. The complexity of cultural and other factors associated with the boundary cannot be eliminated wholesale. On culture as one variable, Salacuse says good international negotiators have learned to cross the cultural divide, but “cultural … bridging requires the cooperation of the parties at both ends of the divide, and no negotiator will permit a bridge to be built if he or she feels threatened or sees the bridge as a long-term danger to security” (1993: 206). Rather, negotiators try to build a bridge across the boundary and cross it selectively. As with ethnic interaction, the crossing is strategic, focused, purposeful, limited and probably temporary. The real cases in my book on the art of international negotiation are rich in such boundary play (English 2010).

An example from Jakarta illustrates the analogy between ethnic interaction and the negotiation process. No doubt there are other perspectives on this sort of meeting, but one non-Chinese manager claims you must take great care when negotiating with Chinese people who come to Jakarta from Singapore and Hong Kong to do business:?

The Chinese trick is to have a few people working on the same task as you. They take the best of what they can pick up from everyone along the way, and try to avoid paying anything to anyone. When we are trying to strike a deal, and it seems clear that they are very interested in what I can do for them, I work my way around to suggesting some payment up front into a trust account. They say “That’s not how we do business. We’ll take it elsewhere.” “Go ahead,” I tell them. “If you guys are as rich as you say you are, what’s $5000 deposit to you?” They confer, and argue, and procrastinate. It goes backwards and forwards, and the angle changes.?But they rarely go elsewhere. They agree to the deposit but they don’t like me for it.

In this case, the Chinese and non-Chinese negotiators are separated by a real ethnic boundary that is reinforced by the parties’ different approaches to doing business. They cross the boundary, in a very limited way, as they negotiate an arrangement that each expects to be gainful. The Chinese want the other man’s consulting skills; he wants their fee. The jockeying for position may be construed as a clarification of rules governing the limited boundary crossing between the parties. This exchange also shows shrewd ‘calculated insensitivity’ by the non-Chinese manager as he manoeuvres the Chinese into a position where they must accept his terms to save face.

Often there are actual ethnic boundaries to cross, as in the Jakarta example and in most international negotiation. Even if ethnic differences are minor or non-existent, negotiators are always in a relationship that is analogous to inter-ethnic relations. Membership of a negotiation team, like membership of an ethnic group, is reinforced by a boundary that reflects some form of actual or potential competition and conflict; but membership is meaningless if the boundary is impregnable and negotiation cannot occur.

2. The ‘Boundary Role Person’ in Grey Space

The negotiator as boundary player is similar to the organisational “boundary role person [BRP]” (Adams 1983). Adams gives marketing, sales, purchasing and despatch as examples of specialist BRP roles. English (1995, 2001) shows how the boundary role is striking in the international manager, who tends to have multiple rather than specialist roles and always operates across national, cultural and other borders. The features Adams says distinguish the BRP include greater psychological and often physical distance from other members of the organisation than those members have from one another. I would add intellectual distance—the international operator is under more pressure to learn to understand and deal with the unfamiliar; cognitive dissonance is more likely to stimulate questioning of the self and others (English 2001).

Adams’s BRP represents the organisation but is more oriented to the external environment and tends to be closer to the agents of other organisations. These features are accurate in general for the international negotiator. In my study, not a single veteran representing an organisation seemed ‘mainstream’, at least during negotiations. Starbuck says an organisation, like a cloud or magnetic field, is not crisply discrete from its external environment:

[An organisation] comprises a distinctive section of social space. But as one approaches the boundary, the boundary fades into ambiguity and becomes only a region of gradual transition…. One can sometimes say “Now I am inside” or “Now I am outside”, but [one] can never confidently say “This is the boundary”. (1983: 1071)

In my study of international negotiation veterans (English 2010) I did not doubt their loyalty to the organisation but their reporting suggested they negotiated in some sort of limbo, more or less distant from their constituents but never divorced from them. International managers gave the same impression in my earlier study (English 1995, 2001).

No matter how the negotiator sees the various boundaries, perhaps as physical things at one extreme and states of mind at the other, the faithful player who represents an organisation also seems to have a paradoxical sense of distance from it. Turner (1992) says the negotiator is the meat in the sandwich between constituents and other parties to the transaction. The negotiator knows the constituents expect certain behaviour and results but also knows it is proper to negotiate in ways and for purposes acceptable to the other party or parties (235). Furthermore, the negotiator’s personal image, and adherence to protocol on the international circuit, are interests that the principal constituency should respect. Diplomats in particular are under pressure to play the game according to professional expectations. The cosmopolitan diplomatic club may be as much a constituency as the diplomat’s home government.

In the search for boundaries to play—Another one there! And another!—a nest of Chinese boxes comes to mind. The astute negotiator or analyst chooses to open only enough boxes to provide the information needed to deal with the case at hand.

3. Boundary Play and Empathy

An attempt to understand the other point of view is the first step towards communicating across the boundary between ‘them’ and ‘us’. The accomplished negotiator tends to think of the negotiation and its context in terms of tensions between different perspectives on the same issues. Successful negotiators are good empathisers. They take great pains to understand other perspectives and compare them with their own, however commendable or downright evil the negotiator and counterpart may be in behaviour and motivation. It is a mistake for a boundary crosser to rely on a touchy-feely concept of empathy, as hostage release specialists know better than most of us.

The other party’s point of view is encapsulated in ‘them’; my point of view as negotiator is an element of ‘us’. The process of trying to communicate involves reflecting on oneself, transmitting verbal and other messages, receiving feedback, digesting it, sending more messages based on that feedback, and so on (see figure below). This is boundary play as communication, with empathy at its heart. Perhaps the figure represents broadly the entire negotiation process.

With regard to style, projection into the shoes of the ‘other’ is usually associated with a search for common ground as a foundation for agreement, but this does not necessarily signal an ongoing collaborative approach or a tendency to give ground. An empathetic negotiator may choose to adopt a competitive strategy and combative stance for all or part of a negotiation. The astute negotiator as BRP is not a monostylist.

Although empathy is essential to effective boundary play, projection into other shoes does not always lead to appropriate action. The negotiator makes strategic and tactical decisions but some of them may be wrong. For instance, the USA and the USSR might have concluded the Seabed Arms Control Talks in 1967-1970 much earlier if they had used a collaborative style instead of a competitive one in which each side took a fixed position it knew was anathema to the other (Ramberg 1977: 133). Communication across the boundary was poor even though empathy was strong. To extend Salacuses’s point about cultural bridging, even if communication and understanding are excellent there is no guarantee of consensus because the parties’ interests, let alone their positions, may be too far apart.

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Crossing the beach is a complex and uncertain journey. What seems to be a narrow strip of sand may turn out to be the Sahara in high summer.

[Adapted from Chapter 8 of Tony English (2010) Tug of War: The Tension Concept and the Art of International Negotiation. https://www.amazon.com/Tug-War-Tension-International-Negotiation/dp/1863356738?]

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References

Adams, J. S. (1983) The structure and dynamics of behavior in organizational boundary roles. In: M. D. Dunnette (ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Wiley: New York. 1175–1199.

Barth, F. (ed.) (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. George Allen and Unwin: London.

English, T. (1995) The Double-headed Arrow: Australian Managers in the Business Context of Asia. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of New England.

English, T. (2001) Tension analysis in international organizations: A tool for breaking down communication barriers. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 9(1), 61–86.

English, T. (2010) Tug of War: The Tension Concept and the Art of International Negotiation. Common Ground: Melbourne, Australia &?Champaign, Illinois. Social Sciences Series of the University Press.

Ramberg, B. (1977) Tactical advantages of opening positioning strategies: Lessons from the Seabed Arms Control Talks 1967–1970. In: I. W. Zartman (ed.), The Negotiating Process: Theories and Applications. Sage: Beverly Hills. 133–148.

Salacuse, J. W. (1993) Implications for practitioners. In: G. O. Faure and J. Z. Rubin (eds), Culture and Negotiation: The Resolution of Water Disputes. Sage: Newbury Park. 199–208.

Starbuck, W. H. (1983) Organizations and their environments. In: M. D. Dunnette (ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Wiley: New York. 1069–1123.

Turner, D. B. (1992) Negotiator-constituent relationships. In: L. L. Putnam and M. E. Roloff (eds), Communication and Negotiation. Sage: Newbury Park. 233–249.