Negotiating in a Complex World

Drawing on the literatures on negotiation and conflict resolution as well as research on international diplomacy, the author proposes a framework for understanding complexity in real-world negotiations. Rejecting models of the process that are simplistic, sterile, or static, he argues that complexity is inherent in negotiation. In ten propositions, he lays out key dimensions of complexity and ways that skilled negotiators can manage it. The propositions focus attention on the ways negotiators create and claim value, shape perceptions and learn, work within structure and shape the structure, negotiate and mediate, link and de-link negotiations, create momentum and engineer impasses, and work outside and inside. The author also highlights the importance of organizational learning in negotiation, noting that most negotiators manage multiple negotiations in parallel, and most organizations have many negotiators doing similar things.     

Toward a Theory of Negotiation Precedent

It is remarkable that precedents and their use have not been well explored within the negotiation literature. In this article, I examine the sparse knowledge of precedents and offer a preliminary framework for understanding the role of precedents in negotiation, including how negotiators establish and apply them. Precedents can either evolve randomly or be created with strategic intent. Understanding precedents generally involves examining how negotiators build, adopt, avoid, and reject them. In this review of the existing literature, I identify twelve concepts and paradigms that are particularly relevant to our understanding of negotiation precedents. I also establish a research agenda and identify three methods for further developing our knowledge of precedents: applying path dependence theory from the field of international relations to a negotiation context; conducting experimental research in a laboratory setting involving subjects engaged in negotiation exercises that contain opportunities to apply precedents; and conducting field research with a focus on case methodology grounded in negotiation linkage theory and theories of negotiation dynamics. Finally, in this article, I formulate a two‐part framework on building and applying precedents, and offer managerial guidance for the negotiation practitioner. Precedents serve as a strategic technique and provide a source of power at that point in a negotiation when decisions are made.     

Methodological problems in negotiation research

SUMMARY

Despite a decade or two of researching negotiation, little more is known about it than before. Since the research methods available in communication science are varied and powerful and there is no lack of information or crucial data, the major impediments to progress must be the inability to formulate the most pertinent questions and to construct the most useful integration of information. Comprehension of negotiation depends on the methods used to accumulate this knowledge, that is observation and theory building. As in the case of other human behavioural research methodology, negotiation methodology has problems concerning theoretical assumptions providing the frame for theory development, the theories forming the basis for the selection or development of research methods and the methods determining the data observed. Methodological problems unique to negotiation research are the complexity of the phenomenon, the multi-disciplinarity, the lack of time resulting from the crisis-nature of negotiation and the present lack of methods to measure relationships between variables.     

Gender and Negotiation in the Small: Are Women (Perceived to Be) More Cooperative than Men?

We surveyed research by experimental economists that examines gender differences in negotiation in the context of two simple, two-player games. Our purpose is to uncover empirical regularities in the results that might be useful to teachers or practitioners of negotiation. In the dictator game, one player unilaterally determines the division of a fixed amount of money. In the ultimatum game, one player offers a division and the other must accept or reject that offer; if rejected, both players receive a zero payoff. The results have shown that, on balance, women tend to be more egalitarian than men, to expect and ask for less in the negotiation. Women also seem to be more responsive to the context of a negotiation and are less likely to fail to reach an agreement than men. These differences are small, however, in comparison with differences in expectations about what women and men will do. We conclude that stereotyping is alive and well in negotiations and that this can help or hinder negotiation outcomes, depending on the context.     

More than Just a Footnote: Constructing a Theoretical Framework for Teaching about Gender in Negotiation

The dominant paradigm in teaching about gender issues in negotiation over the past 25 years has been to treat the subject as one of difference — men negotiate one way, and women negotiate another way. While this can provoke interesting discussions, there are pitfalls in treating gender in this way. The author suggests two other ways to approach the subject matter: viewing gender as emergent in the negotiation process or taking a gender relations perspective that highlights some of the invisible aspects of negotiation. The author suggests ways to teach about gender in negotiation courses from each of these perspectives; these newer ways of teaching about gender in negotiation help make it a more integral part of the curriculum.     

The Effect of Advice on Negotiations: How Advisors Influence What Negotiators Do

Studies of negotiations often overlook, or at least do not fully account for, the important role played by people who advise negotiators. Often deliberately hidden from view, advisors have important but unrecognized influence on the negotiation dynamic. In this article, I explore the roles and methods of advisors in the negotiation process, drawing on role theory and survey research conducted in 2013 among approximately seventy advisors at the European Union Council of Ministers. I define advice as “a communication from one person (the advisor) to another (the client) for the purpose of helping that second person determine a course of action for solving a particular problem” and consider the nature of this advice and the range of relationships that may exist between advisors and their clients. Advising is much more than the mere transmittal of information from advisor to negotiator and that for advice to be effective a relationship must exist between the two parties. I then identify three models of the advisor–negotiator relationship. The first is the advisor as director, wherein the advisor tends to take control of the negotiating process, directing the negotiator toward actions that she or he should take to achieve success at the negotiation. The second is the advisor as servant, in which the advisor merely responds to the demands of the client for help and guidance in the negotiation. And the third is the advisor as partner, wherein advisor and negotiator jointly manage the process and solve the problem together. Finally, I explore the factors that lead advisors and negotiators to adopt each of these three models, the various advising styles that advisors use, and the differing effects on the negotiation process that these elements may have, drawing on historical examples as well as survey data from the EU Council of Ministers.     

What You Bring to the Table: Transference and Countertransference in the Negotiation Process

While there is a large body of work devoted to interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup conflict, little has been written about the dimension of the intrapersonal or intrapsychic conflict in the negotiating process. This article introduces the psychodynamic concepts of transference and countertransference and describes how these phenomena play a role in the negotiation situation. By describing the negative transference and how this gives rise to resistance, the author presents an explanation of what works and why in negotiating. The model is then applied to different current models of negotiation, and considers the implications for the organization of the negotiating team and team leadership. With a knowledge of transference and countertransference, the psychodynamic model may provide another perspective that can be used to understand the negotiation process.     

Improvisation and Teaching Negotiation: Developing Three Essential Skills

The notion of an adaptable negotiator, who can respond to any situation he or she encounters, resonates with every negotiation expert. Unexpected things happen in negotiation, and negotiators must be able to adapt in fleet and effective ways. Dealing with the unexpected, responding “in the moment,” and adapting effectively to sudden changes — these are the skills of an improvisational artist, and they are effective skills for negotiators to learn. How can improvisational skills be taught to negotiation students so that they will be able to draw upon these skills in the heat of a negotiation or mediation? By bringing together teachers of improvisation in various disciplines, we explored how improvisation is currently applied and taught in theater, business, and psychotherapy. We then developed some ideas about ways in which teachers of negotiation might begin to incorporate improvisation as part of the negotiation lesson plan.     

The Reputational Advantages of Demonstrating Trustworthiness: Using the Reputation Index with Law Students

Lawyers should care about their reputations. But exactly what sort of reputation should lawyers seek to establish and maintain in the largely nontransparent context of legal negotiation? And even if a lawyer has developed a reputation as a negotiator, how will he/she know what it is and how it came to be? I force my students to grapple with these questions by incorporating the issues of reputation and reputation development into my negotiation/mediation course. I introduced this innovation at the same time that I decided to increase my focus on developing students' skills in distributive (or value‐claiming) negotiation. Although legal negotiation certainly offers frequent opportunities for the creation of integrative joint and individual gains, the process will almost inevitably involve distribution. The pie, once baked, must be cut. As a result, I now base a portion of my students' final grade on the objective results they achieve in two negotiation simulations. Two dangers of this assessment choice are that it can encourage students to focus only on the numbers and, even worse, engage in “sharp practice”— an extreme form of hard bargaining that tests ethical boundaries — in order to achieve the best short‐term distributive outcomes. Of course, neither a quantitative focus nor sharp practice is synonymous with a distributive approach to negotiation. Nonetheless, to counterbalance the temptations posed by the focus on, and ranking of, objective results, I also base part of students' final grades on their scores on a “Reputation Index.” These scores are based on students' nominations of their peers, accompanied by explanatory comments. This article describes the Reputation Index and how I use it. It also explores the empirical support for the validity of the Reputation Index as a tool for simulating the development and assessment of lawyers' reputations in the “real world.” To that end, the article considers research regarding the bases for lawyers' perceptions of effectiveness in legal negotiation, the sometimes counterintuitive distinction between negotiation “approach” and negotiation “style,” and the relationships among perceptions of negotiation style, procedural justice, trustworthiness, and reputation.     

A Temporal Model of Negotiation Linkage Dynamics

This article explores negotiation linkage dynamics (how one negotiation influences or determines the process or outcome of another) by examining three bilateral trade treaty negotiations conducted by the governments of Australia, Singapore, and the U.S. from 2000 to 2004. After developing a temporal framework of negotiation linkage, the study examines how one negotiation can influence another negotiation when time is treated as an independent variable and negotiation process and outcome are treated as dependent variables. The study's findings can be used to help negotiation scholars and practitioners strategically manage the opportunities and challenges inherent in negotiation linkage dynamics. The study concludes with a proposed research agenda and a temporal enhancement of the negotiation paradigm.     

Improvisation and Negotiation: Expecting the Unexpected

Negotiators must improvise. As the negotiations process unfolds, they work with new information, continually making decisions along the way to achieve favorable results. Skilled improvisational jazz musicians and actors perform in similar ways: they repeatedly practice song chord progressions and notes or scene guidelines before a performance; then, during the performance, they work with the information or the music they hear in order to react and respond, making decisions along the way to produce dazzling music or a compelling scene. In this article, two experts in negotiation, a jazz-improvisation scholar, a former member of an improvisational theater troupe, and a psychotherapist versed in therapeutic improvisational techniques explore the improvisational nature of negotiation.
Several aspects of negotiation are similar to improvisation. Both negotiators and improvisational performers need to have a similar mind-set to be successful, both need to recognize and/or change that mind-set at times, and both must craft creative solutions. But there are some significant differences between improvisational performance and negotiation practice, which this article also notes. For example, personal charisma ("star quality") is a common attribute of successful performers, but not something negotiators may always rely on. Similarly, improvisational artists usually work as a team, while a negotiator is often on his or her own. Nonetheless, the incorporation of improvisation techniques into the negotiation skills repertoire holds great promise for practicing negotiators and is a worthy topic of future negotiation research and teaching.     

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.     

How Valid Is Negotiation Research Based on Student Sample Groups? New Insights into a Long‐Standing Controversy

Although a considerable amount of research has examined the impact of experience on negotiation behavior and performance, we still know very little about the usefulness of student samples in negotiation research because most studies have compared the performance of inexperienced students with those who had received some kind of extensive negotiation training or with experienced professional negotiators(s). Against this background, we investigate whether the results obtained from trained student samples are generally similar to those of professional negotiators. Generally, our data confirm our hypotheses that students with some negotiation training and experience perform better than untrained student negotiators and that they are not significantly outperformed by professional negotiators. From this, we conclude that many questions in the field of negotiation research can be effectively tested by using trained students as experimental subjects.     

World Championship in Negotiation? The Role of Competitions in Negotiation Pedagogy

The last decade has seen the emergence of several new negotiation competitions around the world. We think the two major drivers of this development are a general trend toward the increasing internationalization of higher education and a recognition of the specific benefits of competitions for negotiation pedagogy. These benefits include: the high level of student commitment generated by participation in a competition, which enhances the quality of negotiation; the opportunity that the competitions give students to experience authentic cultural diversity; and the networking opportunities for students and instructors that the competitions create. This article focuses on the role that negotiation competitions can play in negotiation pedagogy. We first present an overview of the currently most important international negotiation competitions. This is followed by an outline of the specific benefits of negotiation competitions for pedagogy. We then take a closer look at the organization and outcome of negotiation competitions and discuss the opportunities for their development and growth.     

Thinking Globally and Acting Locally

The literature of negotiation and conflict resolution continues to build on and move away from traditional emphases on transactions and decision making. Topics such as the impact of culture on negotiation once aroused debate but are no longer even controversial. Enough scholars in our large and multidisciplinary field have benefited from the insights of complementary social sciences so that few serious scholars or practitioners doubt that identity and culture are dynamic factors affecting negotiations. Some have moved beyond the quest for distributional efficiency that characterized so much early research and now advocate nothing less than social transformation and empowerment through conflict resolution methodologies. Several recent contributions to the negotiation literature—Negotiating Globally, and Reaching for Higher Ground in Conflict Resolution—are evidence that literature in the field is pushing new frontiers.Anthony Wanis-St. John: His courses include Cross-Cultural Negotiation and the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process. He was a PON doctoral fellow 1999-2001. He is a practicing mediator and facilitator.     

Pre-Settlement Settlement (PreSS): A Simple Technique for Initiating Complex Negotiations

Pre-setttement settlement, or PreSS, is a negotiation technique that precedes and potentially facilitates a final settlement. A PreSS is distinguished by three characteristics. It is: formal (being a binding agreement), initial (being the first step of a longer process), and partial (covering only a subset of issues). PreSS provides a conceptual umbrella for several existing concepts in the negotiation literature. The what, when, and why of PreSS are delineated and examples of pre-settlement settlement are provided.     

Managing the negotiation agenda

Conclusion The agenda is one of the main structural elements of negotiation, in addition to such questions as site, identification of participants, and elements of timing. Together, they answer the who, what, when, and where questions. As with other aspects of negotiation, the agenda can be used either manipulatively to enhance leverage or to improve the prospects for agreement and the possibilities for mutual gain. In most cases, it will be used both ways, reflecting the nature of negotiation as a mixed-motive situation.Although it can be instrumental to volunteer as a sole source to write the agenda, in most cases it becomes a joint activity to construct a consensual basis for subsequent negotiation. In these situations, agenda-building becomes one of the pre-negotiation activities that set the tone for the relationship (Saunders, 1985). In other situations, the parties may engage in actual negotiation without a formal or written agenda. When this occurs, the risks and uncertainties may be high but the party who appreciates the importance of the informal agenda has a tremendous advantage.Whether one plans it or not, during the course of negotiation the parties will discuss a finite set of issues in some sequence and from a particular perceptual framework. Consciousness of the universality and centrality of the agenda is prerequisite to guiding negotiation to a successful conclusion. William R. Pendergast is Associate Dean at Boston University's Metropolitan College, 755 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass. 02215, where he teaches graduate courses and executive development seminars on negotiation. He is preparing research on power and influence, and on strategic choice in negotiation.     

The Influence of Emotional Intelligence on Negotiation Outcomes and the Mediating Effect of Rapport: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Although early research on negotiation focused on cognition and decision‐making processes, recently, negotiation scholars have started to pay attention to the importance of emotion in negotiation and have suggested that emotional intelligence is likely to improve negotiation performance. Few studies, however, have tested the relationship between emotional intelligence and negotiation outcomes. This study contributes by empirically testing the influence of emotional intelligence on specific negotiation outcomes (joint gain, trust between parties, and the desire of parties to work together again) and also examines the mediating effects of rapport. We used a laboratory experimental design with 202 participants to test the hypotheses. We found that a negotiator's emotional intelligence was correlated with his or her counterpart's trust level and desire to work again but had no effect on joint gain. In addition, rapport fully mediated the relationship between emotional intelligence and desire to work again, and between emotional intelligence and trust.     

Negotiating to Avoid Agreement

There are many roads to NO. Some are routed there intentionally. Parties sometimes engage in negotiations even though they are determined to avoid agreement, or at least consider any agreement as incidental to their reason for negotiating. The author identifies two varieties of avoidance negotiation. Opportunistic avoidance subsumes a variety of circumstances and motivations. By contrast, demand avoidance can be comprehended in a more unitary fashion as a response to audience expectations by a reluctant negotiator. The analysis is anchored in cases drawn from a range of settings and in the negotiation literature. It includes a discussion of diagnosis, response, and implications for theory and research as well as for negotiation and mediation practice.