Leading HEC Paris Professor to Address Doha Business Professionals

HEC Paris in Qatar, the regional campus of HEC Paris, recently ranked number 1 in Executive Education by the Financial Times, hosted a two-hour public online masterclass titled ‘Dealmaking Across Cultures: Are There Universal Rules in Negotiation?’

The masterclass was conducted by acclaimed researcher Professor Gonçalo Pacheco de Almeida, member of the French National Research Centre and HEC Paris research lab. His research has been published in management and economics journals the world over and has earned him numerous awards and several research fellowships.

“Cross-cultural negotiation is increasingly common in today’s globalized world,” explained Professor Pacheco de Almeida. “The challenges of making deals with counterparts from different cultures are not exclusive to international negotiation: even within a country, bargaining often occurs between parties with distinct negotiation styles or coming from diverse subcultures.”

In the masterclass Professor Pacheco de Almeida took participants through a simple, live negotiation exercise to introduce key universal negotiation principles that hold true across cultures. After the negotiation debrief, participants discussed basic dos and don’ts in cross-cultural negotiation – and the intricacies of identifying local versus global dealmaking rules.

Public masterclasses are part of HEC Paris in Qatar’s community outreach activities, aimed at extending the impact of the business school across the business community. For more than a decade, HEC Paris has built its management education portfolio, offering its Executive MBA degree program where participants can fine tune their analytical and strategic business-making skills; a Specialized Master’s degree program, in which participants acquire essential skills to successfully operate business units; and custom-designed in-house programs tailored to the individual needs of organizations.