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.     

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.     

"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.     

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.     

The Chocolate Conundrum: A Simple Simulation of a Canonical Management Problem

This article describes an exercise that simulates one of the most famous of all human management problems: the “tragedy of the commons.” Coined by Garret Hardin in 1968, the term refers to any situation in which people acting rationally to meet their individual interests wind up depleting a shared resource to the detriment of all participants. Because these patterns arise in many real‐world situations — from global warming and natural resource management to free‐rider problems in markets and organizations — this exercise may interest a broad range of negotiation scholars, teachers, and practitioners. The Chocolate Conundrum is a simple exercise that uses candy to demonstrate the tension between individual and collective interests that arises in all social dilemmas. Because these dynamics also arise in many real situations, the exercise can be a powerful teaching tool for instructors in management, public policy, sociology, economics, and many other social science disciplines. Unlike some other simulations of collective action problems, this exercise is simple to administer, requires no computation or tallying of results, and works with a broad range of audiences and group sizes.     

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.     

Culture and Negotiation: The Pedagogical Dispute Regarding Cross-Cultural Simulations

This article examines one especially challenging aspect of active-learning international studies courses—the use of cross-cultural simulations. What is the significance of culture for negotiation? What difficulties might cross-cultural negotiations pose, and how might negotiators work with cultural differences to achieve successful outcomes? Is it possible to model the effects of cultures on negotiators in a classroom role-play? What are the advantages to using cross-cultural simulations, and what difficulties do they entail? How might an instructor make best use of materials that focus on cultural issues and their effect on negotiation? When teaching students of different cultures by active-learning methods, what ought an instructor to bear in mind? What cross-cultural simulations are available, and what readings might be assigned to accompany them?     

Seeking Sustainable Solutions: Using an Attractor Simulation Platform for Teaching Multistakeholder Negotiation in Complex Cases

We live and work in an increasingly complex and dynamic world. The demands of working in such environments require that negotiators understand situations of conflict and work with these situations in correspondingly complex and dynamic ways. Dynamical systems theory offers important insights and tools to enhance the understanding of difficult social conflicts, including the conceptualization of ongoing destructive conflicts as strong attractors: a particular form of self-organization of multiple elements comprising the mental and social systems associated with conflict. This article describes the pedagogical use of a computer simulation of conflict attractors (the attractor software) that allows participants to visualize and work interactively with the dynamics of conflict as they unfold over time. It further describes a negotiation workshop that employs the simulation to enhance participants' understanding of complex long-term dynamics in conflict and presents the findings of two outcome studiescomparing the effectiveness of a workshop that employed the simulation with one that employed a traditional integrative problem-solving method. While not definitive, these studies suggest that an understanding of the dynamical approach to conflict, supported by use of the attractor software, can promote the generation of more sustainable solutions for long-term conflicts.     

The Curse of the Smartphone: Electronic Multitasking in Negotiations

In this study, we have explored the use of mobile phones during negotiations. Specifically, we examined the effects that multitasking — reading messages on a mobile phone while negotiating face to face — had on the outcome achieved in a negotiation, as well as on perceptions of professionalism, trustworthiness, and satisfaction. Using an experimental design in a face‐to‐face dyadic negotiation, we found that multitasking negotiators achieved lower payoffs and were perceived as less professional and less trustworthy by their partners.     

With Feeling: How Emotions Shape Negotiation

Recognition of the role played by emotions in negotiation is growing. This article synthesizes current research around four broad themes: moves and exchanges, information processing, social interaction, and context. The authors' review reveals that much of the research on this topic has focused on two key emotions, anger and happiness. More recently, negotiators have turned to other emotions such as guilt and disappointment, demonstrating that not all negative emotions have the same consequences, or activate the same regions of the brain. Focusing on social interaction, the authors note that negotiators may influence each others' emotions: whether negotiators converge to anger or happiness has different consequences for agreement. Researchers have broadened their examination of emotion by considering how external factors such as power, the number of negotiators, culture, and gender influence the impact of emotional expression. The authors also consider the function and impact of expressing authentic emotions, or choosing to use emotions strategically to gain an advantage — an issue that raises important ethical questions for negotiators. The article concludes with some practical implications of the research.     

An Experimental Study on the Effects of Exitability and Correctability on Electronic Negotiation

The purpose of the present study was to examine via a laboratory experiment the effects of two features of electronic negotiation, correctability and exitability, on negotiation processes and outcomes. We define correctability as the negotiator's ability to revise messages before transmitting them to the other party, thus prompting informational and social elaboration. The opportunity to exit the negotiation that the use of the electronic medium creates, a phenomenon for which we have coined the term "exitability," can give rise to the perception that electronic negotiation is inherently more unstable than face-to-face negotiation. In two experiments, we manipulated the exitability of one of the parties in three ways. In another experiment, we manipulated correctability in two ways. We found that increased exitability caused by the existence of a potential alternative party with whom to negotiate prompted participants to decrease their demands and to reach agreement more often. Increasing the correctability of messages enhanced their clarity and generated more trade-offs, thus leading to more frequent agreements.     

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.     

Perceptions of Time and Their Impact on Negotiations in the Arabic-Speaking Islamic World

This article examines how perceptions of time affect Arabic-speaking Islamic negotiators and how their attitudes about time, and their corresponding behaviors, may differ from those of their Western counterparts. We begin by identifying cultural differences in the conceptualization of time and then comment on the role of time in negotiations, discussing how time influences bargaining, trust, and negotiation tactics. In the section on tactics, we discuss stall-and-delay tactics, the use of the past as an objective standard, and limits on negotiating the future. Our purpose is to encourage negotiators from the West to be knowledgeable about the way they, as well as negotiators from Arabic-speaking Islamic cultures, conceive of and use time in negotiations. We believe that understanding that the very concept of time is often quite different in these two cultures is an important step in facilitating negotiations that cross these cultural boundaries.     

Introduction: Great Underappreciated Works Deserving of Renewed Attention

Although news is a social construction that narrates events in the world by assimilating them to existing cultural categories, there are many cultural categories from which to choose. How do journalists determine whether an event calls for a melodramatic frame or an ironic frame or some other narrative convention? Reviewing two recent studies—of news coverage of 9/11 and news coverage in the early 1990s of an accidental killing of a Japanese exchange student in New Orleans—this article argues that the character of “the events themselves” helps limit what narrative frames journalists select.     

Peace from the Inside: Exploring the Role of the Insider-Partial Mediator

Previous quantitative research on mediation in intrastate and interstate conflicts has highlighted the role of external mediators. This study represents the first effort to systematically explore the role of internal—insider-partial—mediators. We suggest that the insider-partial mediators bring important indigenous resources to a peace process and that they can complement external mediators by mitigating the bargaining problem of information failure. Exploring new data on the occurrence and effect of mediation in unarmed insurrections from 1970–2006, we find that the insider-partial mediators significantly increase the likelihood of negotiated agreements. This applies even after controlling for so-called selection effects, where external mediators are selected, or self-selected, into the most difficult conflict situations, whereas insider-partial mediators are utilized in conflict situations that are less severe; and where insider-partial mediators have a substantially higher frequency of activity in unarmed as compared to armed insurrections. We therefore conclude that the insider-partial mediators play an important and positive role in peacemaking that merits further exploration.     

The Culture of Interest: A Proposed Addition and Revision of the Three‐Culture Model

Negotiation and conflict resolution theorists have classified world cultures according to three types for the purpose of describing and predicting some of the ways in which individuals and groups within broad, geographically based cultural groups behave in conflict and negotiation‐related situations. These three broad categories, called “cultural syndromes,” have described these cultures according to the relative value they place on these three concerns: honor, face, and dignity. Based on our examination of the literature on the cultural dimensions of negotiation and conflict management, our own practice, and an analysis of literature and practice pertaining to the place and utility of the honor, face, interest, and dignity attributes within and between cultural groups , we propose a reformulation of this typology. Our reformulation would replace the broad “dignity” category with a new category that we call “interest,” which we believe better characterizes Northern European and North American cultures. We also argue that a cultural orientation toward dignity is universal and not geographically unique and is thus shared by all three cultures. This new formulation, we believe, more accurately characterizes the global range of orientations toward negotiation and conflict resolution and would, if adopted, help scholars and practitioners better understand culturally divergent conflict orientations and behaviors as well as the ramifications of such differences for negotiation and conflict resolution practice.     

Using Blogs as a Teaching Tool in Negotiation

This article reports on the experimental use of blogs as a teaching tool in a course on negotiation and mediation. The blogs were of two kinds: individual "journal" blogs accessible only by the student author and the course instructor, and a class or collective blog, accessible by all members of the course. The use of blogs builds on the familiar use of journals as a tool for reflection and personal review and adopts the technology of online communication with which the student body is increasingly familiar and comfortable. The article reports on the student response to this development and the perceived impact on extended peer-to-peer communication, cooperation, and skills development. This note also briefly places this experiment in the wider context of the widespread use of blogging, online social networking, and — more ambitiously — the promotion of critical and deliberative skills through the use of information communications technology.     

Hard Bargaining in the Classroom: Realistic Simulated Negotiations and Student Values

Empirical research into the negotiation practices of lawyers shows that “hard bargaining,” including at least some unethical conduct, is an inescapable fact of a lawyer's life. To prepare students for legal practice, negotiation instructors must expose them to hard bargaining in the classroom. In doing so, however, instructors should be sensitive to the moral and ethical values of their students, so that the classroom experience does not unduly pressure students to compromise their values. The simulation is the primary tool of negotiation instruction. By selecting and manipulating simulations, a negotiation instructor can expose students to a wide range of negotiating behaviors, from distributive negotiations marked by the use of power tactics to value‐creating negotiations in which participants must consider many interests and collaborative strategies predominate. With that flexibility, however, comes the potential for classroom exercises to pressure students, in ways both subtle and overt, to adopt behaviors that feel uncomfortable. In this article, I examine the use of simulations to teach different types of negotiating behavior, including hard bargaining. Referring to a number of widely available simulations, I suggest ways to focus student attention on three dimensions of negotiation behavior — the issues over which the parties are bargaining, the objectives the parties seek, and the tactics the parties use to achieve their objectives — in order to push students to reflect on their own negotiation behaviors and to prepare for the tactics of others. I assess the potential for simulations to pressure students to compromise their values, and I conclude with my own thoughts on the goals of a negotiation course.     

Beyond Frogs and Scorpions: A Risk‐Based Framework for Understanding Negotiating Counterparts' Ethical Motivations

Managing the flow of valid information is one of the biggest challenges that negotiators face. The high incidence of questionable or unethical negotiating tactics has been well documented, but ways of dealing with the deceptive practices of a counterpart have received comparatively little attention. In this article, we suggest that, in addition to avoidance and confrontation, negotiators typically attempt to manage the unethical tendencies of their counterparts through twelve neutralizing approaches. These approaches are based on four types of perceived risk that counterparts often consider when deciding whether to use ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics: risks to immediate or short‐term goals/tasks; risks to immediate or short‐term relationship(s); risks to future or long‐term goals/tasks; and, risks to future or long‐term relationships. By applying expectancy theory, resource dependency theory, social identity theory, and social network theory to this framework, we have developed propositions related to these twelve neutralizing approaches. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges related to evaluating these propositions in future research.     

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.