Beyond Instrumentalism: A Relational Approach to Negotiation

Instrumentalism, the philosophy that rational people will behave in ways that promote self‐interest, is often the default assumption that scholars and practitioners rely upon when interpreting and predicting human behavior in negotiations. Instrumentalism, however, need not be the only lens through which negotiators and negotiations are viewed. In this article, we discuss some of the problems associated with too heavy a reliance on instrumentalism and propose an alternative relational approach, one in which negotiators see themselves as agents embedded in a system of relationships, who are motivated to understand and advance the welfare of others. We discuss some of the characteristics that differentiate negotiators who adopt a relational versus instrumental approach and invite scholars and practitioners to consider the implications of viewing negotiations through a more relational lens.     

Teaching Students to Shape the Game: Negotiation Architecture and the Design of Manageably Dynamic Simulations

Although important work is being done in the emerging field of negotiation architecture and "shaping the game," little of it has found its way into the classroom. Simulation exercises are among the most powerful pedagogical tools available to negotiation educators, but most existing exercises have static architectures in the form of fixed parties, issues, and interests. This article summarizes existing research on negotiation design and proposes a framework for designing "manageably dynamic" exercises that can be used to teach key game-shaping concepts. The framework is illustrated through an in-depth discussion of an exercise based on the negotiations to end the civil war in El Salvador.     

An Exploration of a Model of Social Networks and Multilateral Negotiations

Multilateral (many-party) negotiations are much more complex than traditional two-party negotiations. In this article, we explore a model of social network activity, especially clique formation, among parties engaged in multilateral negotiation and the implications that such networks might have on the negotiation process and outcome. Using data collected from 375 subjects participating in a negotiation simulation, our results reveal that, primarily, the negotiator's perspectives of clique formation (coalition building) — both his or her own and the other party's — have unique effects on the integrative, problem-solving approaches used in the process and on the negotiator's satisfaction with outcomes. Secondarily, centrality (manifest as emergent power) has a positive effect on both problem solving and satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that those players who emerged as the most dominant and powerful were not as satisfied (in relative levels) as those who were less powerful.     

Structural,Domestic, and Strategic Interests in the European Union: Negotiation Positions in the Council of Ministers

Preferences are a crucial element for analyzing decision making and negotiations, but knowledge about which factors determine these preferences is sparse. Some quantitative and qualitative studies of European Union (EU) negotiations have assumed that the negotiation conflict dimensions in intergovernmental negotiations reflect market‐versus‐regulation approaches as well as a north–south dimension. In this study, I demonstrate that these findings can be extended to show that the relevant determining factors for negotiation positions are economic structural variables and the degree to which a country benefits from the EU. Furthermore, the domestic interests of EU governments better explain a government's interest in some specific issues, such as consumer protection or fishery policies, than do their partisan preferences. Moreover, I am able to show that in frequent negotiations, such as EU Council of Ministers negotiations, sincere preferences dominate; however, some factors, such as extreme salience, can increase the likelihood that a minister will choose a less sincere strategic position such as an extreme position.     

Social Media Influence on Diplomatic Negotiation: Shifting the Shape of the Table

Social media is changing not only the atmosphere in which international negotiations take place; it is also changing the very substance of the deals. Because of the pace and proliferation of social media, negotiators must read “weak signals” early on—and anticipate a quickly organized, highly motivated opposition. However, diplomatic negotiators still lack the tools to engage in this sort of anticipatory strategy design. This article examines two recent cases, one involving the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the other involving a German Constitutional Court’s ruling on the European Central Bank’s Public Debt Purchasing Program, in which social media had a highly disruptive, unanticipated impact on international negotiations—to the point of forcing negotiators’ hands—and suggests institutional remedies to better anticipate the catalytic impact of advancing technology on diplomatic interactions.     

Transcending the Classroom: A Practical Guide to Remote Role Plays in Teaching International Negotiation

This article discusses the pedagogical value of using remote role plays in cross‐cultural negotiations between two classes taught simultaneously at different and geographically distant institutions. We argue that remote role‐play simulations provide valuable teaching and learning experiences, and are particularly helpful for managing issues associated with outside‐group negotiation and cultural differences, the prenegotiation stage, electronic negotiations and distorted communication, and one‐shot settings in which the negotiator lacks previous knowledge of the partner. The article begins with a discussion of some critical limitations of “traditional” in‐class role plays, followed by a practical guide to remote role plays and a report of our experiences with them. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of remote role plays as a teaching tool for international negotiation classes and the key lessons for the participating students.     

Dealmaking Disrupted: The Unexplored Power of Social Media in Negotiation

While social media has had profound effects in many realms, the theory and practice of negotiation have remained relatively untouched by this potent phenomenon. In this article, we survey existing research in this area and develop a broader framework for understanding the wider roles and effects of social media on negotiation. Through a series of detailed case studies, we explore how social media can drive important negotiations either off the rails or toward beneficial outcomes—and how savvy practitioners can harness this often‐neglected factor to their advantage, or else find themselves outmaneuvered by more digitally sophisticated parties. Applying the lens of the “3D negotiation” approach developed by Lax and Sebenius, we describe a number of potentially decisive roles that social media can play to enhance actions by negotiators “at the table,” with respect to deal design, and “away from the table.” In this 3D context, we show how social media can help negotiators learn about their counterparts (interests, perceptions, relationships, and networks), directly and indirectly influence the parties, mobilize supporters, and neutralize potential opponents. We show that being proactive—both in cultivating digital influence or allies and in building resilience to threats across online information ecosystems—can provide critical advantages for negotiators navigating a hyperconnected world. We develop a preliminary framework to help identify the full range of platforms, tools, and methodologies appropriate for the use of social media in negotiations, including network mapping software and open‐source intelligence techniques. Throughout our analysis, we stress the importance of ethical and privacy considerations.     

A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Automated Negotiations in Multiagent Systems

In fully automated e‐negotiation all involved parties are software agents, so negotiation takes place in a multiagent system between software agents that have been developed as a computer system for automating tasks in a specific application domain. A multiagent system is a group of agents that interact and cooperate with each other to fulfill their objectives or to improve their performance. How do these agents negotiate with each other to manage their task interdependencies? What negotiation mechanisms are needed? These are important questions. In this article, we present a conceptual framework for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems. This framework represents and specifies all the necessary concepts and entities for developing a negotiation system as well as the relationships among these concepts. This framework can also be used to model human negotiations scenarios for analyzing these types of negotiations and simulating them with multiagent systems. The work reported in this article is the first unified framework that represents all the needed elements for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems and existing relationships between them.     

Sources of Power in Public Negotiations: A Framework Applied to Public-Public and Public-Private Negotiations

The negotiation literature has extensively examined the topic of power and how it can be wielded. Numerous frameworks have been created and utilized in the various treatises on negotiations; analyzing the power differential in any given situation is a common teaching technique. However, despite this focus on the topic, discussions of power have been mainly focused on negotiations in the private sector. As a result, many of the most common frameworks are oriented toward this type of situation, resulting in a clumsy application to a public-sector negotiation. Given the growing importance of negotiations to public-sector leaders, we provide a new structure for analyzing power that can be utilized in such situations. For a municipal leader confronted with a complex public-private partnership, it is important to have the right tools to use when examining the power dynamics at play. After examining several current models of power, as well as other writings on the topic in negotiation and strategy literature, we present a new model. This model divides power into different categories based on whether it stems from formal or informal mechanisms, and then offers several specific forms relevant to the public sector. We then use this new model to examine a case study involving the new mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire and her efforts to negotiate a better response to the opioid and homelessness crisis. This case study illustrates the unique nature of public sector negotiations and provides a roadmap for negotiators looking to use our new framework.     

Enhancing Community Leadership Negotiation Skills to Build Civic Capacity

Most intra‐ and interorganizational decision making entails negotiations, and even naturally talented negotiators can improve with training. Executive trainings for managers and leadership programs for publicly elected officials, public managers, and nongovernmental organizations frequently include negotiation modules. These efforts, however, have yet to reach community leaders who also need to develop their negotiation skills. We propose that members of disadvantaged low‐income communities who lack educational and economic opportunities, and are less able to advocate for their own interest, need to build and strengthen their civic capacity, including their negotiation skills, to become more effective parties to decisions affecting them. While many professionals and executives have access to training, such opportunities are less accessible to the leaders of these disadvantaged communities. Although such leaders draw from their own heuristic knowledge, skills, and abilities, they could also benefit from sharpening their negotiation skills. We propose that the multidimensional understanding of their community that members accumulate through direct experience is indispensable, nontransferable to outsiders, and not teachable through in‐class activities. Leaders with the ability to leverage knowledge and assets to connect effectively to community insiders as well as to outside people, institutions, and resources, however, possess some specific inherent personality traits as well an understanding of social structures, strategies, and agency, which can be taught and learned. Such skills as how to conduct negotiations around the table and away from it and how to identify community members who can help and how to rally them are also teachable. The cases were chosen to illustrate the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that make these leaders effective in and beyond their communities. We highlight those KSAs that we think are teachable in the framework of a negotiation module in community leadership training to enhance civic capacity for community betterment.     

New Insights into Coalition Negotiations—The Case of German Government Formation

Research on coalition negotiations after general elections in parliamentary systems usually focuses on the parties’ utility maximization as corporate actors. However, the most recent process of government formation after the German general election in 2017 followed a different type of logic and led to an outcome unlike that of other coalition negotiations. Regarding policy seeking, office seeking, and vote seeking, the outcomes of both the exploratory talks between Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU)/Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), Freie Demokratische Partei, and the Greens and the negotiations between CDU/CSU and Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands are at least partly irrational from a cost–benefit analysis. This article examines the formation of Germany’s government in 2017–2018 and reveals the paradoxical outcomes of each phase of the negotiations. Empirical data to underpin the argument stem from interviews with negotiators and statements of direct participants in the formation of the coalition. Instead of the parties’ utility maximization, negotiations were largely dominated by intraparty conflicts, in which individual interests and personal trust rather than partisan unitary programs were most relevant to the negotiation process and outcome. Our work answers the question of why the grand coalition was unexpectedly renewed in the end—contrary to what might be predicted based on established theories of coalition building. The observations and conclusions set forth are of general interest not only for future coalition negotiations in Germany but also for other European parliamentary democracies facing increasing party fragmentation. Most importantly, the analysis yields insights into negotiations undertaken in the absence of rationalist behavior.     

Negotiators as Mediators: The Case of 1987–1995 Korea–United States Bilateral Trade Negotiations

Despite their widely recognized benefits, integrative approaches to negotiation have seldom been effectively used in interorganizational negotiations. This study analyzes the 1987–1995 Korea–United States Trade Negotiations, identifying elements in those talks that could have moved the negotiations in a more integrative direction. The role of building relationships — especially between key negotiators — is examined. Informal negotiations between the key negotiators from both sides were crucial in building such relationships, which helped both sides create solutions for mutual gains. This process was realized, inter alia, by the dual role that the key negotiators took on as negotiators and as mediators.     

Interpretive Filters: Social Cognition and the Impact of Turning Points in Negotiation

A number of studies have shown that certain events that occur during a negotiation can alter its course. Referred to as "turning points," these events are precipitated by actions taken either outside or inside the talks that have consequences for outcomes. In this article, we report the results of two experiments designed to examine the impacts of two types of precipitating actions, external and internal. In the first experiment, which focused on external actions, we found that crises — as opposed to breakthroughs — produced more movement in negotiations in which parties viewed the social climate positively (high trust, low power). We found that parties achieved less movement in negative social climates (low trust, high power).
In the second experiment, which focused on internal actions, we found that cooperative precipitants (factors inducing change) were more likely to occur when parties negotiated in the context of positive social climates. Negotiation outcomes were also influenced by the climate: we found better individual outcomes for negotiations that occurred in positive climates (high trust, cooperative orientations). Inboth experiments, the social climate of the negotiation moderated the effects of precipitating factors on negotiation outcomes. Perceptions of trust and power filter the way negotiators interpret actions that occur outside or are taken inside a negotiation, which can lead to agreements or impasses.     

Using Devising Seminars to Advance Collaborative Problem Solving in Complicated Public Policy Disputes

In many public policy situations, formal negotiations and collective problem solving are inhibited by a lack of good ideas that can get the buy‐in and support of all involved stakeholders. We suggest that devising seminars provide a promising approach for helping to overcome this barrier. A devising seminar is an off‐the‐record, facilitated workshop that brings together representatives of core stakeholding interest groups to brainstorm mutually advantageous approaches to address collective challenges. In this article, we explain what devising seminars are, how they work, and how they can help with complex public policy disputes. We illustrate through the case of the Devising Seminar on Arctic Fisheries and conclude with lessons learned from that experience.     

The Meaning of Intuition for the Negotiation Process and Outcome

Intuition is a useful tool for negotiators, as negotiations are often highly complex endeavors in which people make holistic judgments with incomplete information and no time for deliberation. Therefore, one might expect that intuition greatly influences negotiations and their outcomes and that negotiators would use intuition to their advantage. However, there is almost no systematic research into the meaning of intuition for negotiation. In this conceptual paper, drawing on five interviews of experienced negotiators, we apply general research on intuition to the specific case of negotiation and find that negotiators use intuition specifically for attribution and social interaction. We distinguish different intuition attitudes; identify preparation, time, and negotiation stages as relevant drivers for the use of intuition in negotiation; clarify the distinction between intuition and routine; and shine new light on the concept of domain-specific knowledge.     

Analyzing Complex Negotiations

Complex negotiations have been conducted for a long time, although until somewhat recently analysts had yet to conceptualize their fundamental nature, their essential elements, and the relationship between these elements. Over the past forty years, however, scholars have gained increasing understanding of the forces that shape negotiation complexity. In this article, I first review literature that has explored complex negotiations, which is found primarily in negotiation studies, and studies of international negotiation. I then develop a five‐part theoretical framework for analyzing complex negotiations: (1) identification of negotiation architecture, (2) context analysis, (3) process analysis, (4) structural and relational analysis, and (5) decisional analysis. I then demonstrate the utility of this five‐part framework by examining the U.S.–Australia Free Trade negotiations that produced the Australia–U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 2005. Finally, the article closes with some observations on complex negotiations and their analysis.     

"Sticking One's Neck Out": Reducing Mistrust in Sri Lanka's Peace Negotiations

Lack of trust has been widely used as an explanation for the failure of peace negotiations. However, we know little about how mistrust can be reduced between belligerents involved in negotiating peace. Why are some confidence‐building strategies more successful than others? For theory‐building purposes, this article explores how a party can send conciliatory signals to the other party that increase trust by exposing itself to three different kinds of political risks. More specifically, it compares the variables that reduced mistrust — or failed to reduce mistrust — during two peace negotiations in Sri Lanka: in 1994–1995 and in 2002. Using a theoretical framework that combines social psychology and rational choice approaches, this article examines the communicative signaling process between the parties. In addition, by drawing out the implications from this argument, we offer some insight into why the peace process in Sri Lanka became politically stalemated in 2003. We also use our comparison of Sri Lanka's peace processes to develop general propositions about the dynamics that can reduce mistrust. The main proposition that remains to be tested empirically is whether obstacles to peace can be transformed into important catalysts for the reduction of mistrust.     

CustomNegotiations.org: A Free Resource for Creating Custom Negotiation Simulations

Negotiation role‐playing simulations are among the most effective and widely used methods for teaching and conducting research on negotiations. Teachers and researchers can either license a published, “off‐the‐shelf” simulation or write their own custom “bespoke” simulation. Off‐the‐shelf simulations are usually high‐quality, include teaching materials, and are typically priced affordably, whereas bespoke simulations are fully customizable and ensure that participants will face a novel challenge. In this article, I introduce a third option: CustomNegotiations.org, a free resource for creating custom negotiation simulations that have the benefits of both off‐the‐shelf and bespoke simulations. I describe this resource and preview how negotiation instructors can use it to customize simulations for their own classes. I also discuss possible future directions for this kind of platform.