International commercial negotiation : a comparison between brazilian and foreign tobacco dealers

Abstract

This study focuses on the international tobacco negotiations and the influence of the Brazilian culture, personal values and ethical behavior. In today’s globalized world, the investigation and understanding of cultural differences is essential in the planning of negotiation strategies. The minimization of cultural shocks provides better results. The subject of cultural awareness provides the academia and the companies, especially dealers, relevant theoretical information as well as demonstrates a practical reality, introducing important considerations to the planning of negotiations. The overall goal of this research work is to determine the existence of differences and similarities in the culture, personal values, and ethical behavior among Brazilian dealers and dealers from other 24 countries when they engage in commercial negotiations, and analyze these differences and similarities. This is an exploratory-descriptive research with a multi-method approach: the qualitative and the quantitative. The first includes a bibliographic research of scales to measure culture, personal values, and ethical behavior existing and accepted in Brazil, which provide importantInternational commercial negotiation: A comparison between Brazilian and foreign tobacco dealers REAd – Edição 44 Vol. 11 No. 2, mar-abr 2005 2 contributions to the formulation of this research instrument: the questionnaire, through which we collect the information for the quantitative phase. It was applied the questionnaire in the city of Santa Cruz do Sul, considered to be the center of the Brazilian tobacco industry, located in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, and in the foreign countries. Total sampling was 147 questionnaires applied (42 in Brazil and 105 in the foreign countries). This research is structured according to the following theoretical sequence: international commercial negotiation, national culture, personal values, and ethical behavior. In a general way the results demonstrate the cultural differences and similarities in international tobacco commercial negotiations and provide a picture of the Brazilian and the foreign tobacco dealers’ cultural characteristics, according to the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede (1997), the personal values identified by the School of Values of Kahle (LOV) (1983), and the ethical behavior according to Lewicki’s (1998) model.