Facework coding challenge

A range of studies have used the facework framework. Cai and Donohue (1997) used facework to investigate if culture has a global influence on negotiation practices or if culture solely influences communication in a more distinguished manner. Their study compared and contrasted two perspectives of the influence of culture on negotiation behaviour. The first perspective presumes that culture is a prevailing force, and the other perspective argues that culture combined with other aspects of interaction jointly influence negotiation behaviour. The authors used a quantitative coding structure of negotiation transcripts from negotiations between the collectivist culture of 30 Taiwanese participants and the individualist culture of 30 American participants. The findings in this study suggested that a combination of culture and interaction characterises the process of facework in negotiations. In addition, results showed a tendency for the case specific factors of interaction being a more dominant influence than cultural values in the overall use of facework (Cai and Donohue, 1997). Although these are significant findings, several issues can be observed. It did not thoroughly discuss the implications for understanding culture on communication in a direct facial way. It relied solely on typed transcripts analysed after the negotiation event, thus no inferences could be made about how implicit communication, for example, body language or various social settings, influenced the negotiations.

Merkin (2006) approached facework and culture in a more specific manner. This study examined whether Hofstede’s dimensions of uncertainty avoidance are a significant predictor to understanding differences in various countries. The survey between six countries comprising 658 participants in Chile, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Sweden and the United States, was completed after participants had read a case study representing a face threatening situation. The study used the theoretical knowledge from Hofstede’s (1984) early work to explore uncertainty avoidance in facework. The quantitative analysis of the surveys supported their main hypothesis, revealing that uncertainty avoidance influences ritualistic, harmonious, and aggressive facework strategies in an embarrassing behaviour. The research therefore confirmed that this particular cultural dimension is a significant influence on facework communication strategies.

The positive implication drawn from this study is that it showed evidence for one of Hofstede’s central cultural dimensions being correlated with both facework and cross-cultural communication. However, this investigation has the same problem as that observed within Cai and Donohue’s (1997) work in that it used post-reported analysis of a communication event, when examining broad and evolving factors such as culture and communication. The self-reported data has grave limitations in relation to facework because the participants were not actually observed carrying out the behaviours they were associating and concurrently reporting from the case.

Oetzel, Garcia and Ting-Toomey (2008) addressed these fallacies in facework behaviour. The study, which builded on and adopted the same paradigm and methodology as Oetzel’s (2001) earlier research, recognized that the direct relationship of culture and face concerns to facework behaviour has limited empirical justification. This study investigated the relationship between self, other, and mutual face concerns and facework strategies in four different cultures: United States, Germany, Japan and China. In similar fashion to Cai and Donohue (1997) and Merkin (2006), the study used post-hoc analysis of recalled accounts from conflict situations. The survey, comprising 768 participants, equally distributed amidst the four cultures, involved self-reports about the participants’ attitudes and conflict behaviours in conflict situations. The main results were that other-face is associated with remaining calm, keeping discussion private, giving in, pretending positively and expressing emotion negatively. Self-face is associated strongly with defending positively. Mutual-face is associated strongly and negatively with aggression (Oetzel et al., 2008).

However, this study differentiated itself by identifying that there is a clear relationship between face concern and facework, yet little empirical support was found to establish a relationship to culture. The results showed some association between facework strategies and culture, but these were pan-cultural and did not arise on an individual level of behaviour; hence, the author’s suggestion that cultural training might be an element for consideration in preparing for cross-cultural negotiations, is somewhat vague. Although identifying some discrepancies across cultures, the study leaves room for further advancement on how facework can be used as framework in improving cross- cultural communication and relationships. As such, the findings help validate facework theory; as an instrument, however, it does little to promote alternative methodology and analysis. A natural

conclusion to draw from this research is that utilization of observational methods in conflict situations can generate valuable insight, and build on face negotiation theory.

Many previous empirical studies have generated valuable results by building on Ting- Toomey’s (1988) original theory. However, these have been quantitative in nature and primarily based on self-report surveys, and laboratory experiments; thus, they are overly complex and not necessarily translatable (Cai & Donahue, 1997; Chevalier, 2009; Merkin, 2006; Oetzel, 2001; Oetzel, Garcia & Ting-Toomey, 2008). facework has been shown to be a difficult framework to code (Ting- Toomey & Oetzel, 2001), therefore a more direct approach to the empirical methodology is sought.

The videotaped interaction method (Sillars, 1991) is one technique among other ethnographic methodologies that has been recommended to gain a deeper ‘net-meaning’ of face (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998). However, to the best of this author’s knowledge, no study has employed this technique in business negotiation research. This thesis, for the first time, adopts the videotaped interaction method for negotiation process observation in a business context. Rackham supported this notion, stating that ‘very few studies have investigated what actually goes on face-to-face during a negotiation’ (Rackham, 1980, p. 341). Rackham (1980) proposed that negotiators do not let researchers observe them work, as well as pointing to the lack of sound methodology and techniques. He goes on to suggest that observation is a simple and extremely effective tool for investigating negotiation. Rackham conducted a study in several phases using behavioural observation methods; tape-recorded interviews were conducted with negotiators before the negotiation event, in order to understand their planning process. Next, as the negotiation was conducted, frequencies of certain behaviours used by both parties during the negotiation process were counted, utilising behavioural analysis methods. Skilled negotiators showed marked differences in their face-to-face behaviour compared to average negotiators, with certain behaviours and strategies detected more frequently than others. Thus, the use of this tangible methodology has produced constructive results on how negotiators conduct themselves.