The findings of this research report have some important practical or managerial implications for Western negotiators and their managers. Note that these implications are general ideas that could help Westerners negotiate more successfully with Chinese employees working for Western MNCs. Western negotiators and their managers need to set up their own business plan or negotiation strategies according to their company's situation taking into account the characteristics of the negotiation counterpart.
1. When negotiating with Chinese negotiators representing a Western MNC in China, Western negotiators still need to build guanxi. Guanxi still plays an important role when negotiating with these Chinese negotiators, however, good guanxi does not mean they will negotiate without concern for their company's interest. Therefore, it is crucial for Westerners to understand that the purpose of building guanxi with their counterpart is not to gain favour or to influence the final decision, but rather to form a mutual relationship, mutual trust, and a more cooperative negotiation environment that emphasizes harmony. This could prevent Westerners being treated competitively or being deceived by misleading information in the negotiation, and make the negotiation easier, and more likely to reach a win-win solution. That is, guanxi is useful, but it is definitely not a vital factor in reaching a business deal or making the negotiation a success. Chinese negotiators representing a Western MNC will stand by their principles in negotiation, for the sake of their company's code of conduct.
Therefore, Westerners need to shift the focus from guanxi to business deals themselves such as the prices, contract terms, products or services, etc.
2. Spend slightly more time when the two parties first meet to allow both parties to get to know each other and start building guanxi. Try to build mutual trust during the negotiation, and put more focus on forging a long-term business relationship and emphasize long-term business cooperation when signing a deal. More importantly, Westerners should not only focus on the contract and its details. In other words, the
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purpose of the negotiation is to build guanxi, establish mutual trust and a long-term business relationship, and also create the mindset of cooperation and problem solving. Such negotiation outcomes are called "the spirit of the deal" according to Fortgang, Lax, and Sebenius (2003), and are more important and useful in resolving future conflict and securing future business opportunities, than a signed paper contract according to McGregor (2005).
3. When negotiating with Chinese representatives of a Western MNC, offering gifts or having banquets can improve mutual guanxi, but are not necessary. As they all have the company's code of conduct to follow (which may preclude their accepting hospitality), there is no need to court them, for example, offering them gifts or meals, especially expensive ones, inviting them to negotiate overseas, or provide long-distance or overseas business trips which normally works well with traditional Chinese negotiators working at local Chinese companies (Fang, 2006; Ghauri &
Fang, 2001; McGregor, 2005).
4. Do not assume all Chinese negotiators are the same, especially the older and younger Chinese, or people who have been strongly influenced by Western culture, values, beliefs and concepts as compared to people who have not. Do not stereotype the Chinese counterpart based on previous findings about Chinese negotiators. As found in this research, Chinese employees working at a Western MNC are different to traditional Chinese negotiators in terms of some negotiation practices and behaviour; Westerners might need to prepare differently and change their negotiation strategies for different Chinese negotiators, as suggested by Vieregge and Quick (2011). Therefore, it is important for Westerners to find out who their negotiation counterparts are.
5. Westerners should not treat Chinese negotiators representing a Western MNC as they would Western negotiators in a negotiation, simply because they have been exposed to Western culture and beliefs, and their negotiation approaches are more
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westernised. As found in this research and also suggested by McGregor (2005), traditional Chinese culture still influences Chinese negotiators, and some of their core culture values and ways of thinking have hardly changed, there are still some major differences between Westerners and the Chinese in negotiation. Simply ignoring such differences might easily cause unnecessary conflict, which could be completely avoided. Therefore, Western managers and negotiators need to pay close attention to this issue.
6. Western companies should send appropriate negotiators to China, as recommended by Fang (2006) also. This research finds Chinese negotiators representing a Western MNC still focus on the people participating in the negotiation to a certain degree, people's personal characteristics and social behaviour will influence the outcome of a negotiation, hence careful selection of negotiators for the delegation team is an important step that could ensure the negotiation is successful. The ideal candidate from a Western company for Sino-Western negotiation should be open-minded, a fast learner, patient, extrovert and sociable, allowing them to adapt to other cultural environments, learn cultural differences, deal with others, and build guanxi with the Chinese more easily. However, it also needs to be noted that this suggestion does not mean that a person's professional knowledge, background and negotiation experience are not important, rather all these factors need to be considered by Western company managers when selecting negotiators.
7. Provide a comprehensive pre-departure training course to the Western delegation team involved with cross-cultural negotiation with Chinese negotiators representing a Western MNC. The training course should include the major differences in negotiation styles between traditional Chinese negotiators and Westerners, the major differences and similarities in negotiation between Chinese with a strong Western influence and traditional Chinese negotiators, and traditional Chinese culture including Confucian ideology and Chinese stratagems. Such a detailed training course would be mainly aimed at helping the Western delegation team in
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understanding their Chinese counterparts from a cultural perspective.
8. Last but not least, Western negotiators and their company have to be fully prepared in both respects; technology, services, prices, payment terms, etc and the cultural dimension in order to complete the negotiation successfully. The key idea here is to
"know who you are dealing with and what they really want and need" (McGregor, 2005, p. 56).
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