Managing Business Relationships in New Zealand and China: A Semantic Perspective

Zusammenfassung

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This paper investigates communication strategies for building business relationships from a semantic perspective (culture-specific interpretation of meanings). The research method is based on discourse analysis of interviews with the New Zealand and Chinese managers. This study suggests that using a semantic perspective provides in-depth analysis of the managers' discourse of target cultures, which complements the prevalent approach of using cultural dimensions. New Zealand and Chinese managers prefer different sets of semantic frames for constructing business relationships. Furthermore, Chinese business managers tend to use interpersonal strategies to initiate a business relationship while New Zealand managers employ inter-group strategies. Both cultures, however, employed interpersonal communication strategies in the maintaining stage.

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Auszug

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Managing Business Relationships in New Zealand and China: A Semantic Perspective

Introduction

This paper develops a semantic perspective (culture-specific interpretation of meanings) for further understanding the process of building effective business relationships with potential partners and clients in Zealand and North China1. These types of relations are essential for business success. It is no wonder that business relationships have been studied extensively as part of the social networking system. Relevant literature in this regard can be found in the research of social aspects of business relationship (Lin, 2001); in exploring marketing relationships (e.g. Arias 1998, Dwyer et al. 1987) and in the study of guanxi or connections (e.g. Luo 2000, Yang 1994). In addition, research (e.g., Abramson 2005, Fang 1999, Paik/Tung 1999) has explored the use of communication strategies to build these business relationships. For example, Fang points out that cultural values such as face and guanxi (connections) have an impact on the dynamics of Chinese negotiation styles and communication strategies. These findings are important for understanding the way communication strategies can be used for building business relationships.

Cross-cultural study of interpersonal relationships is often based on cultural dimensions (e.g., Hofstede 1991, Hall 1976). Cultural differences in building business relations have been well documented by researchers (e.g., Adair/Brett 2005, Johnston et al. 2007). When it comes to establishing specific business relationships in a particular culture, business people can resort to their own cultural values and communication strategies. For example, Grosse (2002) explores business relationship-building in relation to communication strategies. She mainly uses cultural dimensions (e.g., Hofstede 1991, Hall 1976) to compare cultural differences in using different types of networking strategies. While these dimensions shed light on the different communication strategies used to establish business relationships in different culture, they tend to polarise cultural values by assuming that the cultural dimensions apply to all cultures. What is missing is the dual ernie and etic perspective, the etic referring to using cultural-general constructs for studying cultural differences while ernie focusing on cultural-specific perspective from within the culture, according to Derrida (1992). Derrida (1992) also proposes that we need to examine cultural dimensions within cultures, before making further comparisons with other cultures. However, the tendency to compare cultures using cultural-general dimensions such as proposed by Hofstede (1991) still remains a strong focus for cross-cultural research although this standpoint for comparing cultures is increasingly being challenged (e.g., Bond et al. 2002, Holden 2004, Abramson 2005). As Bond et al. (2001) propose, future resea...

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