International Business Review 21 (2012) 1190–1191

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International Business Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ibusrev

Book review

R. Kumar, V. Worm, International Negotiation in China and India: A Comparison of the Emerging Business Giants,
2011189 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-24594-5

The authors Rajesh Kumar and Verner Worm are well known scholars in cross-cultural negotiation research. Their new
book provides a valuable reference to understanding the negotiation styles of two of the world’s major economies: India and
China. Though there is abundance of literature on national negotiation styles, the authors push the literature forward by
linking institutional environment of a country to its unique negotiation dynamics. The book addresses cross-cultural
negotiation issues that are of utmost significance in today’s increasingly complex business environments, more so as both
India and China are on their way to become economic powerhouses. Goldman Sach suggests that India could be the world’s
third largest economy by 2035 (next only to USA and China) with China taking the lead by becoming world’s largest economy
by 2041 (Wilson & Purushothaman, 2003).
Even though India and China differ a lot in terms of their political environment and cultural traditions, their comparison
has lately become an area of interest (Das, 2006); the present book furthers this approach. While Kumar has continued with
his earlier work Doing Business in India (Kumar & Sethi, 2005), Worm’s subtle understanding of the Chinese culture, markedly
shown in his earlier works (e.g., Worm, 1997), gets reflected in the present book. Akin the nature of elephant, the Indian
economy has grown at a gentler pace, contrastingly different from its northern neighbour China which, like a dragon, has
‘‘grabbed the benefits of globalization (FDI, exports, education and skills) without singeing it with its fiery breath’’(Virmani,
2006, p. 298). Are these economic giants very different in nature; or are they joined by a thread of unity? Kumar and Worm
attempt to answer these questions by analysing the historical linkages between the two countries and decoding how they
differ.
The book is divided into ten chapters that deal with different topics. The authors ground their work in institutional
framework choosing its three pillars (i.e., regulatory, normative, and cognitive) to explain how negotiation practices across
the two nations are related as well as separated. The first chapter (Chapter 1) underlines the relevance of institutional
perspective to understanding cultural and negotiating practices of a nation. Spelling out their intention to ‘‘develop a
comprehensive framework for understanding cross-cultural negotiations’’ (p. 3); the authors identify the key elements of
institutional theory besides highlighting their implications. In the next chapter (Chapter 2) readers are presented a brief
history of the two nations: the trial to understand cross-cultural negotiations through the lens of historical enquiry is a
welcome addition that few scholars try despite the merit associated with such historical probes (Fang, 1999; Fang, Fridh, &
Schultzberg, 2004). The authors emphasize that while religious thoughts and colonial experiences have shaped Indian
negotiating behaviour (pp. 26–27), understanding China’s 4000 years of continuous history and its current focus on reducing
income differences (p. 33) is important to comprehend the Chinese approach to negotiations.
Discussing institutional environment of India (Chapter 3) the authors underline the importance of bureaucracy, the
structure of the Indian judicial system, and the nature of the Indian political class. The issue of corruption is discussed with
reference to the close nexus between bureaucrats, industrialists and the politicians. Dealing with Chinese institutional
environment (Chapter 4), the authors note that being a single party governed country, it is easier to ward off the liability of
gratifying multiple stakeholders. Moreover, as hierarchy is highly valued in the party system and a decision taken at top level
is respected without much inquiry, the Chinese bureaucracy is less risk-averse. The subsequent chapters deal with the
requisite negotiation behaviour in the Indian (Chapter 5) and the Chinese context (Chapter 6). Next, the authors provide case
studies designed to emphasize the institutional environment of India (Chapter 7) and China (Chapter 8). The institutional
environment of India is portrayed through the help of cases dealing with large organizations like Enron, Union Carbide, and
the WTO. The WTO case is common to both nations and would help readers do a comparative analysis of political climate’s
effect on institutional environments of the two countries. The other two cases in the Chinese institutional environment are
that of Rio-Tinto and Google. Barring the WTO case, all the four cases discussed are of those business agreements that were
marked with initial or terminal failures; for instance while Enron was a global failure (McLean & Elkind, 2003), Union Carbide
contributed to one of the world’s deadliest industrial disaster in history (Lapierre & Moro, 2002). While these cases would
help readers get a fine understanding of how not to negotiate in the two countries, inclusion of case studies where the

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2012.09.001
 Book review / International Business Review 21 (2012) 1190–1191 1191

business agreements were smoother or where the government played a nominal role could have added to a diverse reading.
Chapter 9 recapitulates the learning from the preceding chapters: it contains important lessons put-in in a highly sumptuous
manner. The concluding Chapter 10 discusses the limitations of the book.
A shortcoming of the book is that the authors have discussed the institutional environment at country level without
taking heed of intra-national differences. India and China are vast countries with many regional and sub-regional variations.
Given these differences, a question emerges: is any generalization about the Indian and the Chinese negotiation styles
possible? Question can also be raised about generalization of individual negotiation styles. Cross-cultural negotiations are
full of pitfalls; and as Fang (1999) argues, cross-cultural negotiation processes are often marked by fluidity and inherent
paradoxes that can only be understood in their situational context. The generalization or the stereotypical portrayal of
negotiating behaviour could well have its roots in the etic approach with which scholars often analyse negotiating situations:
much concerned with literal understanding of explicit situations, we fail to decode their contextual meaning (Li, Leung, Chen,
& Luo, 2012; Tsui, 2006). Such an etic approach to understanding cultural characterises leads to identification of the Indian
negotiator as being too idealistic (p. 141) or the Chinese negotiator as being highly pragmatic (p. 144), while in reality, their
conduct could be shaped by contextual factors. Though the Yin Yang thinking which emphasizes the coexistence of
seemingly contradictory negotiation behaviour finds a mention in the book, we believe that a fuller discussion of the Yin
Yang perspective (e.g., Fang, 2012) and its effect on the negotiating style and environment of the two multicultural nations
would have been worthwhile. Another area of the book that could be further improved is the structure: quite often it appears
that one is reading two different books that are merged into one. Nonetheless, these are not fatal flaws but ones which we
hope the reader should be aware of.
Despite the shortcomings, the book makes a very interesting contribution to the study of negotiation studies. The book
would be a worthwhile read for researchers, academics, students, and managers alike, and would help them tame the two
giants, the Elephant and the Dragon, with better negotiation counterstrategies.

References

Das, D. K. (2006). China and India: A tale of two economies. Abingdon, Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Fang, T. (1999). Chinese business negotiating style. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Fang, T. (2012). Yin Yang: A new perspective on culture. Management and Organization Review, 8(1), 25–50.
Fang, T., Fridh, C., & Schultzberg, S. (2004). Why did the Telia–Telenor merger fail? International Business Review, 13(5), 573–594.
Kumar, R., & Sethi, A. K. (2005). Doing business in India: A guide for western managers (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lapierre, D., & Moro, J. (2002). Five past midnight in Bhopal. New York, NY: Warner Books.
Li, P. P., Leung, K., Chen, C. C., & Luo, J.-D. (2012). Indigenous research on Chinese management: What and how. Management and Organization Review, 8(1), 7–24.
McLean, B., & Elkind, P. (2003). The smartest guys in the room: The amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. New York: Portfolio.
Tsui, A. S. (2006). Contextualization in Chinese management research. Management and Organization Review, 2(1), 1–13.
Virmani, A. (2006). Propelling India from socialist stagnation to global power. New Delhi: Academic Foundation.
Wilson, D., & Purushothaman, R. (2003). Dreaming with BRICs: The path to 2050 (Global Economics Paper No. 99): Goldman Sachs.
Worm, V. (1997). Vikings and mandarins: Sino-Scandinavian business cooperation in cross-cultural settings. Copenhagen: Handelshøjskolens forlag.

Kunal Kamal Kumar*

Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore, India

Therese Carlström
Carolina Karlsson
Stockholm University, Sweden

*Corresponding reviewer
E-mail addresses: kumarkunalkamal@gmail.com (K.K. Kumar)
therese.carlstrom@hotmail.se (T. Carlström)
carolina-ani@hotmail.com (C. Karlsson)