When Dignity and Honor Cultures Negotiate: Finding Common Ground

Abstract

Dignity and honor cultures are thought to yield dramatically different processes and outcomes in cross‐cultural negotiations. We challenge this conceptual dichotomy through the qualitative analysis of negotiation accounts by practitioners and graduate students. Drawing on self‐worth theory, we reexamine the delineation and contrast of dignity and honor cultures as they manifest in negotiations between French and Latin American people. According to our set of interviews and written narratives, negotiators on the two sides share a large set of perceptions of French negotiating behavior, coalescing into three main components—conventionality, pride in historical legacy, and conflict proneness. This French behavior falls into neither cultural category, but rather demonstrates the possibility of hybrids between them. We discuss implications for theory, practice, and teaching of cross‐cultural understanding, and, specifically, of the French negotiating style.