Resumen

A few years ago the idea of travel, a student exchange and doing business abroad were special and exotic activities. Now the world is changing completely. As time goes by, the world is becoming smaller. Although there has been an interest in international business for centuries, its frequency has increased rapidly in the past 20 years. People today travel more frequently and farther and businesses are more international than ever before.

As business has turned more and more to an integrated world market to meet its needs, the difficulties of communicating at a global level have become increasingly widespread. In this global business environment, cross cultural negotiation has become a common field of research. Whyα Companies need to secure a favorable position in the business world, executives have to become aware of the importance of the role of crosscultural communications.

When two people communicate, although they may speak on the same idea, the background foundation of said idea for both have a different origin, influenced by each individual person´s cognitive and culture.

Negotiation is the process by which at least two parties try to reach an agreement on matters of mutual interest. When one takes the seemingly easy process of negotiations into a cross-cultural context, it becomes even more complex and complications tend to grow exponentially. When negotiating internationally it translates into anticipating culturally related ideas that are most likely to be understood by a person of a given culture. This means almost certainty having to cope with new and inconsistent information, usually accompanied by new behavior and social environments (Hendon & Herbig, 1996, Page xi).

As is commonly known, culture differs from one another. This differences can affect all entry strategy decisions, such as the choice of target country markets, the choice of a candidate product and its adaptation to foreign markets, the formation of a foreign marketing program and the control of entry operations, etc. All these decisions depend on cross-cultural communications of one sort of another.

The main goal of this paper is to present an overview on how the communication and culture affect the result of a business negotiation with the example of the company MTV Networkst. The negotiators who take the time to understand the approach that the other parties are likely to use and to adapt their own styles to that one are likely to be more effective negotiators. Unless the negotiator sees the world through the counterparty´s eyes (no matter how similar they appear to be) they may not be seeing or hearing the same. No one can usually avoid being effected by his or her own cultural assumptions, images, and prejudices or other attitudinal baggage in a negotiation situation. Cultural differences frustrate because they are confusing and seem to be unpredictable. The U.S. department of commerce is very pessimistic; it estimates that for every successful negotiation with Japanese, there are twenty-five failures (Hendon & Herbig, 1996, Page xii). Often barriers to a successful agreement are of a cultural nature rather than of an economical or legal nature.

This paper is organized in the following manner. The first chapter is about the description of the Company MTV Networks. Here the characteristics of the company are described. The next chapter is about potential problems MTV could have. It explains the main problems that MTV has faced since the foundation of the company. Then the paper continues with the chapter of selection of a problem, which includes the description of the problem. After this chapter this paper is continuing with the chapter of implementation of the solution in which the solution strategy is explained very

detailed. To conclude the paper recommendations for being a successful international business negotiator will be given.

Esta tesis sólo puede ser consultada por miembros de la Comunidad Universitaria. (ir al índice de contenido)

Witzke Hernández, A. 2014. The effect of culture and communication in MTV Networks. Proyecto Final Licenciatura. Administración de Negocios Internacionales. Departamento de Administración de Negocios Internacionales, Escuela de Negocios y Economía, Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Noviembre. Derechos Reservados © 2014.