Proposal of a Validated Coding Instrument to analyse Cross-cultural Business Negotiation Interactions

Increasing globalisation has resulted in the need for frequent face-to-face negotiations, and this has fostered the growth for scholarly research in this area. This study proposes the development of a reli-able and functional coding instrument for cross-cultural business negotiations that aims to make the coding process more agile and straightforward for trained coders and future scholars. The Interactive Process Analysis model (1950) was used as the root to create this proposed instrument. The study used video and audio recordings from a two-culture business negotiation simulation, involving Masters level students from a well-established British University. A mixed method approach involving Kappa’s measure of inter-rater agreeability was used to validate the proposed instrument and the functionality of the instrument was verified thorough the coding of 40 simulated business negotiation sessions. This methodological contribution in the area of cross-cultural business negotiations aims to speed up the coding process. It further enables scholars to investigate cross-cultural interactions and gain insight into the cross-cultural issues that are faced by professionals and businesses in the real-world.