We (Gert Jan, Tim, Catholijn and Neil) kindly ask for your co-operation in a cross-cultural research project into relationships between culture and negotiation behaviour. We would like to collect data in many countries all over the world. We have designed an online game as a data collection instrument. Would you please help us and ask people in your country (e.g. friends, colleagues, students) to participate? We hope to attract at least 100 participants from your country. We suggest the text below for the invitation to participate. Please adapt the text to what you feel is necessary.

In return for your help we offer to share the resulting data set with you.

If you have any questions or ideas, please be in touch!

With kind regards, and thanks for your co-operation,

Gert Jan Hofstede, Catholijn Jonker, Tim Verwaart, Neil Yorke-Smith

(Wageningen University, Delft University of  Technology, American University of Beirut)

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Suggested text that you can use for inviting participants

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Dear friends/colleagues/students,

This is a request to spend a few minutes on playing a negotiation game.

All over the world people negotiate. However, people behave differently in negotiations. Great differences in personality and negotiation experience may exist between individuals. Moreover, what is considered appropriate negotiation behaviour may depend on the negotiator’s cultural background.

Researchers at Wageningen University, Delft University of Technology, and the American University of Beirut are interested in these
differences and have set up an online game as a research instrument to discover relationships between culture and negotiation behaviour.

They would appreciate your participation in this game: http://mmi.tudelft.nl/cargame. Your results will be stored anonymously.

With kind regards, and thanks for your co-operation,

…

PS Feel free to forward this e-mail to others you expect to be interested in this research. When you would like to be informed about the progress and results of the research, or when you have any questions, please send an e-mail to lemoncargame@gmail.com.