(2021SP1-MGMT-6045-01) Global Leadership Competencies

M3D3

Let's say that you're a marketing director for a large pharmaceutical company and are preparing a presentation of forecasts for a new product that will be introduced into the East Asian market. You put together your information and determine that you will support your message with facts, figures, and the research results of the latest clinical trials. Your information is current, statistical, and objective. You meet with your prospective Chinese counterparts and begin the presentation stating your forecasts for the market are accurate projections and that, since this drug will do well on the foreign market, you need business partners overseas. You want your Chinese partners to provide resources to help pave the way and eventually produce mutual profitability.

This method of organization and support is typical of low-context cultures, which tend to be direct and verbalize objective facts. This is a form of linear, analytic reasoning in which you offer a major and minor premise and then draw a valid (and, let us hope, irrefutable) conclusion. In other words, you put the general issue up front and then move to a specific conclusion. ("This firm can partner with us to provide the proper level of promotion and distribution. Therefore, together we can succeed with this drug.") This method of reasoning, which relies on linear analytics and objectively verifiable facts, is a Western-style organization pattern that might not be suitable for negotiations in Eastern countries. Why? How would you reconcile the differences between the two styles?