When Dignity and Honor Cultures Collide: A Negotiation Perspective

Whether focal cultures are honor, dignity or face-oriented, yield dramatically different processes and outcomes in cross-cultural negotiations. We challenge the assumption that those categories operate as mutually exclusive types in negotiations. We ground our argument in an inductive approach, examining negotiating behavior from both insiders (from French culture, representing dignity), and outsiders (from Latin American culture, representing honor). Specifically, we show that negotiations that pit culture of honor against culture of dignity result in a liminal (i.e. intermediary) ground, where negotiators of two sides share a large set of perceptions of the focal negotiating behavior. This liminal ground, according to our set of interviews and written narratives, includes three main components: conventionality, pride in historical legacy, and conflict- related tradition. These components, we propose, represent a hybrid form of dignity and honor cultures. We discuss implications for cross- cultural negotiations.