Assess, don't assume

When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments-of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc.- should be informed and modified by two classes of potentially relevant cross-border factors, the general and the negotiation-specific. Drawing on considerable literature in cross-border and cross-cultural negotiation, this paper develops the first two levels of a four-level prescriptive framework for effectively carrying out such assessments: 1. Common expectations for surface behavior: etiquette, protocol, and deportment, and 2. Deeper cultural characteristics and their implications for the negotiation process itself.