Negotiation's Process Complexity: An Intra-Individual Level Analysis

Abstract

The historical approach to negotiation's integrative processes analysis demonstrates that since 1965, a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies have been developed in order to describe and explain the compromising behavior that emerges in conflictual negotiations. These experimental approaches initially dealt with the situational aspects of the negotiation process, and they used the methodology of experimental games. Two new negotiation research approaches were developed since the end of the 1970s: the communication process and the cognitive bias approach. Each of these two approaches deals with a specific aspect of the negotiation process and each uses a new methodology: the simulation - scenario. In spite of the richness of these experimental studies' conclusions, the construction of a general explanatory approach of the negotiation process remains difficult because the different negotiation aspects were studied separately. For example, when experimental research deals with only one aspect of the negotiation process, the combined effects between variables of differing nature can not be taken into account. Thus, the interpretation of experimental results for real negotiation situations is a compromise. In order to reach better generalization conditions of the experimental conclusions, we need to develop a global approach to the integrative processes in negotiation. Our central research question will connect with this line of study of negotiations.