How to manage the negotiation process with a Chinese company

Sammanfattning: Today, China is the fastest growing economy in the world (Fang, 2005). Foreign companies are competing for the opportunity to take part of this development and reach the Chinese market, and Sweden is no exception. A crucial part in doing business with Chinese companies is the negotiation process. There exist many differences in culture between Sweden and China. To consider these differences may be the key for a successful negotiation. In this dissertation we study Chinese business negotiation only from the perspective of Swedish negotiators. Guidelines on how to make a successful deal have been compiled based on the literature and tested in a case study. In the case study Swedish negotiators has compared the guidelines from the literature with their actual experiences to see how well they match. Based on the result a modified list of guidelines will be presented that hopefully will be applicable for Swedish companies when negotiating with Chinese companies. The result from the case study showed that the experiences from the respondents were consistent to some extent, but it also showed different issues worth mentioning. Because of the information received from the respondents a modified list of guidelines were made with the aim to be more applicable to Swedish exporting companies.