Buyer and Seller Differences in Business‐to‐Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face‐to‐face business‐to‐business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real‐life buyer–seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.     

Overcoming Barriers to Mediation in Intake Calls to Services: Research‐Based Strategies for Mediators

In this article, I investigate intake calls to community mediation services in which disputing neighbors ask mediators to help them resolve their conflicts. These calls are the first point of contact between potential clients and mediators. To maintain their organization's funding, mediators must convert a sufficient number of these callers into clients of the service. Intake calls, however, are not treated as part of the mediation process proper, and mediators are not trained to handle them. I audio‐recorded and transcribed approximately two hundred calls to mediation services based in the United Kingdom and then analyzed them using conversation analysis. I identified several factors routinely present in these intake calls that seemed to prevent disputants from ultimately engaging in the mediation process; I characterize these factors as “barriers to mediation.” These barriers include callers' lack of knowledge about mediation as a service and mediators' often ineffective methods of explaining the process. In particular, callers rejected mediation services when the mediators explained that mediation is an impartial service. Some of the mediators, however, managed intake calls differently, describing it more effectively, expressing empathy or affiliation with callers, and thus were able to overcome many of the callers' most common concerns about the process. In this article, I also discuss this study's implications for understanding the institution of mediation and for training mediators.     

The Walk in the Woods: A Step‐by‐Step Method for Facilitating Interest‐Based Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

In this article, we describe a method we have used successfully in both academic and professional settings to rapidly introduce novice negotiators to the principles and practice of interest‐based negotiation: “the walk in the woods.” The walk incorporates much of the principles of interest‐based negotiation: fostering self‐awareness, cultivating curiosity, and understanding the importance of world view. The walk's effectiveness is illustrated in this article using the case of the merger of two large, complex health‐care organizations.     

The Short‐Term Effects of Mediation on Low‐Intensity Civil Wars

International diplomacy, to the extent it is effective, should not only prevent escalation of low‐intensity conflict, but should also facilitate de‐escalation. This article focuses on the short‐term effects of managing low‐intensity civil wars through third‐party mediation. Specifically, we compare the efficacy of third party‐mediated direct (face‐to‐face) and indirect talks in low‐intensity civil wars from 1993 to 2004 using the Managing Intrastate Low‐Intensity Conflict data set. We argue that a focus on short‐term success is valid because of the relationship among mediation, short‐term success, humanitarian aid access, and peacebuilding. We also assess the roles of mediator identity, mediation strategy (behavior focus versus incompatibility focus), peace agreements, war type, per capita gross domestic product, level of democracy, and conflict duration. Our overarching finding is that direct forms of mediation in which all parties meet face to face were the most likely to yield short‐term success in the sample of civil wars that we analyzed.     

Consensus Arbitration: A Negotiation‐Based Decision‐Making Process for Arbitrators

In reaching their decisions, arbitrators are currently expected to act like judges by listening fully to both sides and then withdrawing to write the final and complete decision. But because of some key differences between their roles, I argue, arbitrators and judges should exercise completely different styles of decision making. Unlike judges, who make decisive rulings in order to enforce the law, arbitrators are empowered and chosen by the parties themselves to handle specific disputes or govern continuing relationships. Instead of shifting a negotiated process into an authoritative one, arbitrators have the capacity to solicit input from parties as they craft the award. Under a new model of arbitration that I call “consensus arbitration,” arbitrators would facilitate negotiation between the parties but retain the power to break impasses with partial, incomplete decisions, behaving more like facilitators than judges.     

People‐to‐People Dialogue between North and South Korea: Looking Ahead

The division in the Korean peninsula has lasted more than a half century, and the people on both sides have become quite different in their values, beliefs, behaviors, and lifestyles. As the two sides have increased their exchanges and communications for the last several years, the biggest challenge Korea and its people face is: “How should human relationships be rebuilt after suffering from chronic conflicts between adversary states?” This article considers track two diplomacy/people‐to‐people dialogue as a response to this question and reviews the issues and obstacles related to initiating such a dialogue.     

Level Two Negotiations: Helping the Other Side Meet Its “Behind‐the‐Table” Challenges

A long analytic tradition has explored the challenge of productively synchronizing “internal” with “external” negotiations, with a special focus on how each side can best manage internal opposition to agreements negotiated “at the table.” Implicit in much of this work has been the view that each side's leadership is best positioned to manage its own internal conflicts, often by pressing for deal terms that will overcome internal objections and by effectively “selling” the agreement to key constituencies. Far less frequently have analysts considered how each side can help the other side with its “behind‐the‐table” barriers to successful agreement. Following Robert Putnam's two‐level games schema, I characterize such “behind‐the‐table” or “Level Two” barriers more broadly, offer several innovative examples of how each side can help the other overcome them, and develop more general advice on doing so most effectively. As a fuller illustration of a Level Two negotiator helping the other side with its formidable behind‐the‐table challenges, I pay special attention to the end‐of‐Cold‐War negotiations over German reunification in which former American Secretary of State James Baker played a key role.     

The Day‐to‐Day Life of a Dean: Engaging in Negotiations and negotiations

This article analyzes the negotiating strategies and tactics that proved useful during my eight‐year stint as dean of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations during the 1970s. David Lax and James Sebenius have paved the way with their pioneering work on The Manager as Negotiator. By taking this perspective to the academic setting, I have identified a portfolio of tactics that are helpful in understanding how an administrator operates in a complex environment. The examples presented in this article help flesh out the standard categories of distributive and integrative bargaining as well as forcing and fostering strategies for implementing change.     

Making the Most of the First‐Offer Advantage: Pre‐Offer Conversation and Negotiation Outcomes

Why do some negotiators benefit from making the first offer during negotiations while others do not? This study explores the contents of conversations that take place before negotiators make their first offers in order to learn more about the differences between ultimately successful first offers that benefit from anchoring effects and ultimately unsuccessful ones in which negotiators apparently derive no benefit from making the first offer. In‐depth qualitative analyses of the conversations that role players engaged in prior to their first offers were conducted in simulated negotiation exercises. Their analysis identified five different conversational tactics that negotiators employed in one‐on‐one negotiations to gain power in the negotiation, or what they call here “power conversation tactics.” Their findings suggest that the negotiation outcome (i.e., net value) was related to how the negotiators employed and combined these tactics during the pre‐offer conversation. Based on these findings, they conceptualized four types of power‐gaining/power‐losing pre‐offer conversation scenarios and explored the link between negotiation outcomes and each of these types of pre‐offer conversations. This study further develops the literature on power dynamics and conversations in negotiations as well as the literature on the anchoring effect of a first offer.     

BABO Negotiating: Enhancing Students’ Perspective‐Taking Skills

Negotiation educators recognize that collaborative problem‐solving is a critical negotiation skill. Negotiation outcomes are often better when negotiators take a collaborative approach to the process, and they are better able to do this when they are able to take the perspective of the person with whom they are negotiating. Over the years, I have developed several techniques to help my students improve their collaboration and perspective‐taking skills. One of these techniques is to use collaborative terminology (BABO = both are better off) rather than more competitive language (win‐win). In this article, I describe the strategies I employ in my negotiation class to increase students’ perspective‐taking capacities and discuss how this focus enhances their ability to negotiate collaboratively.     

A Conceptual Typology of Kin‐State Mediation

In this article, I argue that kin states can play major roles in international mediation processes involving their kin communities. Although kin states may be naturally biased toward their kin, kin states are sometimes actively involved in mediation processes and such involvement is even encouraged by third‐party mediators. In this study, I divide the various roles assumed by kin states in mediation into four main conceptual categories: promoter, quasi‐mediator, powerbroker, and enforcer. My analysis presumes that a kin state can use its close ties with its kin community to make third‐party mediation more successful. I support and illustrate this model using cases of kin‐state involvement in peace processes and examine both the benefits and complications that kin‐state mediation can entail. This study contributes to scholarship examining the effectiveness of biased mediators. I conclude that the role a kin state assumes in a mediation is often context‐dependent, but that third‐party mediators and the international community can use their leverage over kin states to improve the peace process.     

Sport Mediation: Mediating High‐Performance Sports Disputes

Conflicts in high‐performance sports (HPS) are typically tense and emotionally charged experiences for the athletes, coaches, and sports organizations involved. Such disputes raise intriguing challenges for the mediators handling them. These disputes typically involve multiple parties who often have intensely competitive personalities negotiating a volatile mix of high‐stakes win/lose issues. Mediators typically confront numerous process challenges and must operate within the rigid policy parameters of the various governing organizations involved. Mediation can successfully manage and resolve these challenging disputes, often in creative ways that repair and preserve the parties’ relationships. To be successful in this environment, however, mediators must adapt to and confront the unique dynamics of sports disputes described here. In this article, I examine multiple case studies of mediations conducted through the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada (SDRCC) with the goal of identifying successful mediation strategies for HPS disputes. The centre, which has made mediation mandatory for almost all cases, had an overall settlement rate over a twelve‐year period of 46 percent, with rates as high as 94 percent for mediations voluntarily requested by the parties. Mediation has been used only sparingly elsewhere in the world for resolving HPS disputes to date, although, I argue, it is a successful tool that should be increasingly used both nationally and internationally. In recognition of mediation's potential role, the Court of Arbitration for Sport introduced updated mediation rules in 2016 and is moving to increase the use of mediation in international sports disputes.     

Predicting Competitive‐Unethical Negotiating Behavior and Its Consequences

This study examines the relationships between negotiators' attitudes toward competitive and unethical tactics, their actual use of those tactics, and their subsequent perceptions of performance and reputation in two‐party, e‐mail‐based negotiations. The results indicate several predictors of competitive‐unethical behavior, including a negotiator's attitude toward competitive‐unethical tactics, early use of competitive‐unethical tactics, and the behavior of a negotiating counterpart. Furthermore, it was the perceived honesty of one's counterpart rather than the actual use of competitive‐unethical behaviors that was associated with a negotiator's perceptions of the collective or joint outcome. The implications of these findings are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.     

The Long‐Term Effectiveness of Mediating Workplace Conflicts

In this study, we explore the long‐term effectiveness of the mediation of hierarchical workplace conflicts by comparing and analyzing participants’ perceptions of short‐term and long‐term mediation effectiveness. Specifically, we surveyed supervisors and subordinates to determine the extent to which they perceive mediation to be effective one year after the conclusion of the process. In this study, we distinguish between mediations that result in a continuing employment relationship versus exit mediations, which occur when employees end their employment. We collected data from real workplace mediation cases in the Netherlands. Our results show a general positive relationship between short‐term and long‐term mediation outcomes. Supervisors and subordinates, however, perceive the long‐term outcomes somewhat differently, with supervisors perceiving greater compliance with the agreement than did subordinates after one year. We found no significant difference in perceptions of long‐term effectiveness between exit and nonexit mediations. In the article, we discuss the implications of our findings for mediation theory and practice.     

Managerial Mediation Competency: A Mixed‐Method Study

Managerial conflict resolution skills such as mediation have often been poorly defined and measured. We used a mixed‐method design to develop a managerial mediation competency scale. In our first study, we used semistructured interviews to identify managerial mediation skills and attitudes, from which we derived a framework for measuring managerial mediation competency. In our second study, we developed scale items and used a quantitative survey to test the scale's psychometric qualities and to gain insight into the theoretical structure of managerial mediation competency. Our managerial mediation competency scale can be used in research questionnaires or organizational surveys as a training, research, and theory development tool.     

Hard‐Core Toughie: Donald Trump’s Negotiations for the United States Presidency

This paper examines the negotiation tactics employed by Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Drawing on data from multiple sources (interviews, debates, articles, books), our analysis begins with a brief overview of Trump’s personality and philosophy, which offers a basis for understanding his general negotiating approach. We then highlight six competitive tactics and four principles of persuasion that Trump employs, with specific examples of how he used them during the campaign with his primary negotiating counterparts – the other candidates, the Republican Party, the press corps, and the American electorate. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of his negotiating approach and preferred tactics in dealing with domestic and international issues as president of the United States.     

Collaborative Role‐Play Design: Teaching Negotiation through a Novel Student–Business Partnership

Simulations are a valuable tool for teaching negotiation, and the different ways in which they are used have been extensively discussed in the pedagogy literature. Scholars have critically reflected on the role of simulations and the conditions under which they are used, and some have stressed their drawbacks. These include their often artificial context, which can, some argue, limit the participants' real commitment. We have undertaken an innovative pedagogical experiment in an effort to address these concerns. As a part of this experiment, the students designed the simulations themselves, deriving inspiration from real situations they had experienced at companies in which they had completed internships. Our students' experiences suggest ways in which this novel pedagogical approach can ameliorate some of the usual pitfalls that instructors encounter when they use role plays. Further, we believe this process allows the students to understand the importance of achieving the right balance between the distributive and integrative dimensions of the negotiation.