Integrative Tactics Research Articles

Planning Skills and Negotiator Goal Accomplishment

Scholars recognize that planning is an essential part of negotiation, but research provides limited insight into the nature of effective negotiation planning. This research is focused on the skills necessary for effective negotiation planning. It is argued that the information processing tendencies of high self-monitors make them particularly adept at planning for negotiations. The authors extend existing work in planning by relating self-monitoring to plan generation, plan enactment, and plan consequences. Results indicate that self-monitoring is related to prenegotiation goal commitment, planning of impression management strategies, planning of integrative tactics, and plan complexity. During negotiations, high self-monitors are more likely to engage in argumentation. However, they are not especially inclined to engage in more information seeking or rapport building. High self-monitors are better able to accomplish negotiation goals, and this appears to be the result of their superior planning skills. Results have implications for plan-based theorizing and for practicing negotiators.

TACTICAL BEHAVIOR AND NEGOTIATION OUTCOMES

This paper examined negotiator behavior in a variable‐sum two‐party negotiation task and its impact on individual and joint negotiator out‐come. Specifically, we examined the role of negotiator opening offer, reciprocity and complementarity of the use of tactics, systematic progression of offers, and information sharing in a negotiation with integrative potential. Results indicated that initial offers affect final outcome differently across buyers and sellers. The buyer's initial offer was curvilinearly related to his or her final outcome in the form of an inverted‐U. The seller's initial offer was positive‐linearly related to seller's outcome. Second, negotiators reciprocated and complemented both distributive and integrative tactics. In addition, highly integrative dyads differed from less efficient dyads in their reciprocation of integrative behaviors and complementarity of distributive behaviors. Third, approximately forty percent of offers made represented systematic concessions, but the proportion of offers reflecting systematic concessions was not related to the efficiency of the joint outcome. Finally, while information sharing did appear to have a positive effect on the efficiency of agreements, differences in the amount of information provided did not affect the proportion of outcome claimed by each party.

Goal Types, Gender, and Locus of Control in Managing Interpersonal Conflict

This article examines how actors' goals, gender, and locus of control affect conflict strategy behaviors. Extending a research program that investigates influence goals, conflict episodes were categorized into subsets of proactive and reactive goal types. Moreover, a measure of conflict locus of control (CLOC) was developed to assess actors' internal and external control orientations toward their interpersonal conflicts. Results revealed that distributive strategies were used more when defending oneself, whereas integrative tactics were used more to change one's relationship. Females were more likely than males to use personal criticism and anger strategies, whereas males were more likely to use denial tactics. In addition, CLOC internality was positively associated with integrative tactics, whereas CLOC externality was positively associated with avoidance and sarcasm strategies.

Relational and Episodic Characteristics Associated with Conflict Tactics

This study sought to discover how select episodic and relational variables are functionally related to communication tactics in situations of interpersonal conflict. More precisely, this study examined how communication satisfaction and perceived communication competence of partner might mediate the link between partner's conflict messages and developing relationship features. Partner's use of integrative tactics produced communication satisfaction and the perception of partner's competence. Communication satisfaction and partner competence, in turn, contributed to the definition of the interpersonal relationship in terms of greater control mutuality, trust, intimacy and relational satisfaction. Distributive tactics of partner were inversely related to communication satisfaction and perceived partner competence, and directly affected the relational characteristics of trust, control mutuality and satisfaction. Avoidance was not associated with episodic or relational features when referencing the partner's behavior. However, in tests that involved one's own conflict behavior, avoidance directly and negatively affected relational satisfaction.

Perceptions of Inequity, Satisfaction, and Conflict in Task-Oriented Groups

The study reported here was descriptive in nature and looked at 375 subjects involved in a group task. The research focus was on individual satisfaction, type, and amount of conflict, its resolution, perceived inequity, and quality of outcome. The results indicated that greater inequity was associated with people conflicts, which in turn were managed primarily with avoidance tactics. Task conflicts were managed mainly with integrative styles. Greater satisfaction was associated with integrative tactics. Perceptions of inequity were more associated with conflicts centering around people than with task and less inequity resulted from conflicts managed integratively. Inequity was negatively related to satisfaction, positively related to conflict, and not found to be related to outcome quality.

Personal Conceptions of Social Integration among the Aging

Much of the research on the aging and other marginal or quasi-marginal groups has relied upon “objective” measures of social integration. This article focuses on the subjective conceptions developed by the aging themselves and the ways by which these “maps” help them plan, interpret, and evaluate their ties into society. Because of their emerging self-consciousness regarding their place in society, the aging may become everyday experts and practitioners of integrative strategies and tactics to a greater degree than many other people.

CODING VERBAL CONFLICT TACTICS: NONVERBAL AND PERCEPTUAL CORRELATES OF THE "AVOIDANCE-DISTRIBUTIVE-INTEGRATIVE" DISTINCTION

Coding procedures developed by Sillars (1980a) classified statements made during interpersonal conflict into “avoidance,”“integrative,” and “distributive” categories. In the present paper we present evidence that these distinctions provide an intuitively sound and theoretically meaningful basis for coding communication during conflict. Two studies are reported. In the first study, verbal tactics correlated in the expected ways with observer perceptions of the disclosiveness and competitiveness of conflict discussions. In the second study, several predicted relationships between verbal tactics and nonverbal behaviors were confirmed, although regression analysis indicated that most of these relationships could be accounted for by the high degree of talkativeness associated with integrative tactics. Overall support for the coding distinctions was obtained from the two studies.