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to their side of the deal. Introducing lawyers into the process of negotiation puts the parties on notice that any breach could be costly and that promises made initially must be kept, even if these prove inconvenient.
How might a legal contract be perceived by a more particularist business partner? There is another reason why people tend to keep their promises. They have a personal relationship with their colleague whom they hold in particular regard. If you introduce contracts with strict requirements and penalty clauses, the implied message is that one party would cheat the other if not legally restrained from doing so. Those who feel they are not trusted may accordingly behave in untrustworthy ways. Alternatively, they may terminate their relationship with a universalist business partner because that partners precautions offend them and the contract terms are too rigid to allow a good working relationship to evolve.
One serious pitfall for universalist cultures in doing business with more particularist ones is that the importance of the relationship is often ignored. The contract will be seen as definitive by the universalist, but only as a rough guideline or approximation by the particularist. The latter will want to make the contract as vague as possible and may object to clauses that tie him or her down. This is not necessarily a sign of impending subterfuge, but a preference for mutual accommodation.
Timing a business trip
A universalist business person a North American, British, Dutch, German or Scandinavian is wise to take much longer than usual when visiting a particularist culture. Particularists get suspicious when hurried. At least twice the time normally necessary to establish a contractual agreement is necessary to forge what has to be a closer relationship. It is important to create a sound relational and trustworthy basis that equates the quality of the product with the quality of the personal relationship. For example, Rolls-Royce issued a deadline to Toyota to make an acquisition offer and Toyota promptly withdrew.
An acquisition process takes a considerable amount of time, but for particularists, the time taken to grow close to your partner is saved in the avoidance of trouble in the future. If you are not willing to take time now, the relationship is unlikely to survive vicissitudes.
The role of head office
In those western countries that are high in universalism, the head office tends to hold the keys to global marketing, global production and global human resource management. My own experience, though, is that within more particularist national cultures, the writ of the head office fails to shape local ways of operating. Different groups develop their own local standards that become the basis of their solidarity and resistance to centralised edicts.
Particularist groups seek gratification through relationships, especially relationships to the leader. Generally, the more particularist the culture, the greater the commitment between employer and employee. The employer in these cultures strives to provide a broad array of satisfactions to employees: security, money, social standing, goodwill and socio-emotional support. Relationships are typically close and long-lasting. Job turnover is low and commitments to the labour force long-term. The local chief wishes all this to rebound to his or her own credit, not that of the foreign owner.
What frequently occurs is that foreign-based subsidiar