120 Yunxia Zhu
a trading partner to sell the toothpaste in New Zealand. Michael helped Mr. Ye
by ringing one of his NZ colleagues, Jonathan, and gave Mr. Ye information
about future communications with Jonathan. So, although Michael seems to be
prepared for the meeting in some way, the rest of the Chinese group appears to
have lost interest. This interlude clearly indicates how a negotiation can derail
if it is not managed appropriately.
In the end, Meeting 2 draws to a close with both parties exchanging gifts but
with no real outcome achieved. Ironically, the gift the Chinese group presented
to Michael was an introduction package about the business opportunities the
group had been prepared to promote. As noted earlier, they seemed to have
changed their original objective to a non-substantial negotiation. This interpretation
was also confirmed by Hongda Consulting.
The above comparison sharply contrasts the outcomes of the two meetings.
In Meeting 1, the negotiation could have gone wrong at several points if there
had not been sufficient business knowledge or relational empathy and trust. It
has to be noted that compared to the contextual factors of Meeting 1, Meeting
2 poses more challenges of dealing with public face of a larger group. Yet parties
in Meeting 2 seem to exert much less effort to build intercultural alliances;
instead, they insist on their own positioning and on using uncooperative strategies.
Meeting 2 thus is an example about how parties can abandon an exploration
of building intercultural alliances when confronted with communication
barriers and breakdown.