Negotiation Behavior Research Articles

What is a Masculine Negotiator? What is a Feminine Negotiator? Depends on Who You Ask and When

Universal gender-related social categories such as warmth and competence have previously been used to explain gender differences in negotiation behaviors and outcomes. By conducting a qualitative study and a quantitative study, we demonstrate that people's understanding of gender in negotiations is contingent on cultural and contextual factors, such as for American people, masculinity is about maximizing economic capital and femininity is about maximizing relational capital and this category have the same manifestations across negotiation contexts, whereas for Chinese people, masculinity is about maximizing relational capital and femininity is about avoiding so and this category have different manifestations across negotiation contexts. The results revealed that while Americans categorized aggressive negotiation motives and behaviors as masculine and non-aggressive ones as feminine across all negotiation contexts, Chinese people had a different pattern that depended on the negotiation context. In business...

Beyond Instrumentalism: A Relational Approach to Negotiation

Instrumentalism, the philosophy that rational people will behave in ways that promote self‐interest, is often the default assumption that scholars and practitioners rely upon when interpreting and predicting human behavior in negotiations. Instrumentalism, however, need not be the only lens through which negotiators and negotiations are viewed. In this article, we discuss some of the problems associated with too heavy a reliance on instrumentalism and propose an alternative relational approach, one in which negotiators see themselves as agents embedded in a system of relationships, who are motivated to understand and advance the welfare of others. We discuss some of the characteristics that differentiate negotiators who adopt a relational versus instrumental approach and invite scholars and practitioners to consider the implications of viewing negotiations through a more relational lens.

Automated negotiation with behaviour prediction

The proliferation of web technologies has made it increasingly important to make the traditional negotiation pricing mechanism automated and intelligent. Negotiation is although a complex activity to automate without human intervention but the software agents when enhanced with learning techniques can better simulate the human intelligence and increase the profits of their owners. Prediction of partner's behaviour in negotiation will not only improve the utility gain for the adaptive negotiation agent but also achieve the agreement much quicker. The basic concept is that the information about negotiators, their individual actions and dynamics can be used by software agents who are equipped with adaptive capabilities so that they can learn from past negotiations and provide assistance for selection of appropriate negotiation tactics. In this paper an automated negotiation system has been proposed which is capable of predicting the strategy and the preferences of the opponent.

A meta-analysis on gender differences in negotiation outcomes and their moderators.

This meta-analysis investigates gender differences in economic negotiation outcomes. As suggested by role congruity theory, we assume that the behaviors that increase economic negotiation outcomes are more congruent with the male as compared with the female gender role, thereby presenting challenges for women's negotiation performance and reducing their outcomes. Importantly, this main effect is predicted to be moderated by person-based, situation-based, and task-based influences that make effective negotiation behavior more congruent with the female gender role, which should in turn reduce or even reverse gender differences in negotiation outcomes. Using a multilevel modeling approach, this meta-analysis includes 123 effect sizes (overall N = 10,888, including undergraduate and graduate students as well as businesspeople). Studies were included when they enabled the calculation of an effect size reflecting gender differences in achieved economic negotiation outcomes. As predicted, men achieved better economic outcomes than women on average, but gender differences strongly depended on the context: Moderator analysis revealed that gender differences favoring men were reduced when negotiators had negotiation experience, when they received information about the bargaining range, and when they negotiated on behalf of another individual. Moreover, gender differences were reversed under conditions of the lowest predicted role incongruity for women. In conclusion, gender differences in negotiations are contextually bound and can be subject to change. Future research is needed that investigates the underlying mechanisms of new moderators revealed in the current research (e.g., experience). Implications for theoretical explanations of gender differences in negotiation outcomes, for gender inequalities in the workplace, and for future research are discussed.

Influence of Ethical Position and Information Asymmetry on Transfer Price Negotiations

This study examines the potential effect of ethical position (EP) on negotiation strategies and behaviors in an intra-firm setting. We demonstrate that EP moderates the relationship between information asymmetry and the initial transfer price dispersion, or bluff during negotiations for individuals who are morally situational. Graduate business students participated in an experiment that randomized the level of information they could use in determining their initial asking price and their reservation price in a negotiation. This manipulation allows us to examine managements’ negotiation behavior when making an ethical judgment. Further, we relate their transfer price position to their EP that consists of two orthogonal factors, relativism and idealism. We find that access to the opposing division’s private information does not influence the initial transfer price position of those who are relatively idealistic. Contrary to our hypothesis, these results suggest that during transfer price negotiations, those who are more relativistic will have a smaller initial transfer price dispersion than those who are relatively idealistic. This study provides evidence that EP plays an important role in transfer price negotiation behaviors.

DEVELOPING FUZZY BAYESIAN GAME MODEL FOR OPTIMIZING NEGOTIATION PRICE

Construction procurement is a key business where price negotiation is commonly required to reach final contractual agreement. However, even simple negotiations often result in infeasible agreements. The uncertain and limited supplier information as well as complex correlations among various factors affecting supplier behaviors make the contractor difficult to decide the appropriate offer price (OP) and vice versa. This study proposes a novel Fuzzy Bayesian Game Model (FBGM) for improving the prediction effectiveness of negotiation behaviors. The performance of the proposed FBGM was evaluated in the case where an agent uses the counter-OP of an opponent to learn the negotiation strategy of the opponent. The validation analysis shows that the sequential updating process of FBGM significantly improves the estimation ability of negotiators. The proposed model also gives a comprehensive view of negotiation scenarios by considering all possible negotiation cases. Using FBGM, negotiators can apply flexible strategies to optimize their own profit with a reasonable negotiation time.

Negotiating behavior in service outsourcing. An exploratory case study analysis

Despite the well-documented importance of the outcome of negotiation for strategic success, little attention has been paid to negotiations in outsourcing agreements. In view of this gap in the literature, this paper addresses the contextual factors that better explain the negotiation behavior displayed in increasingly frequent service outsourcing agreements. Exploratory research, based on the analysis of four cases of a service outsourcing negotiation process, leads to a series of proposals that form the basis for a further research agenda. Our findings suggest that negotiating behavior in service outsourcing can be explained by the power relationship, time pressure and, in particular, by the type of service outsourced. The latter appears to influence the impact of other contextual factors on negotiating behavior.

Gender differences in resources and negotiation among highly motivated physician-scientists.

Resources, including space, equipment, funding, personnel, and protected time, are essential in academic medical careers. Negotiation often plays a key role in the distribution of these resources. This study explored gender differences in resources, negotiation behaviors, and negotiation outcomes in a sample of career development awardees. Postal survey of a cohort of 1,708 clinician-researchers with responses from 1,275 (75 % response rate). Researchers who received NIH K08 or K23 awards between 2006 and 2009. We analyzed gender differences in resources, negotiation behaviors, and negotiation outcomes, using regression models adjusted for race, K award type, K award year, degree, academic rank, specialty, and institutional funding. Over one-fifth of respondents reported inadequate access to research space and one-third had asked for increased space or equipment. Perceived adequacy of these physical resources did not differ significantly by gender, but a higher proportion of women reported inadequate access to grants administrators (34.8 %) and statistical support (49.9 %) than men (26.9 %; p = 0.002 and 43.4 %; p = 0.025, respectively). Women were more likely to have asked for reduction in clinical hours (24.1 % vs. 19.3 %; p = 0.02) and to have raised concerns about unfair treatment (50.2 % vs. 38.2 %; p < 0.001). Overall, 42.9 % of women and 35.9 % of men asked for a raise in the two years preceding the survey (p = 0.09), and among those who had asked for increased resources, the likelihood that the request was granted did not differ significantly by gender. Many career development award recipients report resource needs and negotiate for increased resources. Gender differences in perceived access to research support personnel exist even in this select cohort of K awardees. Institutions should provide appropriate training in negotiation and ensure adequate and equitable distribution of resources to promote academic success.

North Korea's Negotiation Behaviors in the South-North Talks and North Korea-US Negotiations

North Korea's Negotiation Behaviors in the South-North Talks and North Korea-US Negotiations

NEGOTIATION AGENT BEHAVIORS BASED ON REINFORCEMENT LEARNING APPROACHES AND FUZZY ARTMAP NEURAL NETWORKS

Behaviors, in which the characters conciliatory, neutral, or aggressive define a ‘psychological’ aspect of human personality, play an important role for negotiation agent. Elsewhere, learning in negotiation is fundamental for understanding human behaviors and developing new concepts. In this paper, a negotiation strategy essentially based on such human personality behaviors is suggested for SISINE project which aims to develop innovative teaching methodology of negotiation skills. For this purpose, first, reinforcement learning (Q-learning and Sarsa-Learning) approaches are developed, analyzed, and compared in order to acquire the strategy negotiation behaviors. Second, a Fuzzy ArtMap Neural Network (FAMNN) is developed to acquire this strategy. Third, a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) architecture is suggested for the FAMNN integration. The suggested strategy displays the ability to provide agents, through a basic buying strategy, with a first intelligence level in a social and cognitive system for learning negotiation strategies (human-agent and agent-agent).

Examining Cultural Intelligence and Cross-Cultural Negotiation Effectiveness

International negotiation failures are often linked to deficiencies in negotiator cross-cultural capabilities, including limited understanding of the cultures engaged in the transaction, an inability to communicate with persons from different cultural backgrounds, and limited behavioral flexibility to adapt to culturally unfamiliar contexts. Although management educators are concerned about developing students’ cross-cultural capabilities, there exists very little empirical research demonstrating the impact of such abilities on negotiation performance. To address this limitation while advancing research on the development of cross-cultural capabilities, we examined the impact of cultural intelligence (CQ) on cross-cultural negotiation performance. Using assessment center and consensus rating methodologies, 113 fully employed MBA students participated in a negotiation exercise designed to underscore key cultural differences with respect to both negotiation style and substantive issues. Controlling for prior negotiation and international experiences, personality (openness to change and extraversion), and emotional intelligence, our results demonstrated that CQ predicted negotiation performance while interest-based negotiation behaviors partially mediated the CQ–negotiation performance relationship. CQ capabilities facilitated negotiators’ ability to demonstrate cooperative, interest-based negotiation behaviors in a negotiation context that demanded behavioral adaptation. We conclude by discussing a series of practical implications for management educators and suggestions for future CQ research.

The Effect of Superiors' Exogenous Constraints on Budget Negotiations

ABSTRACT In a world characterized by increasing pressure from financial and product markets, the question of how exogenous constraints affect internal coordination and control processes has become increasingly important. This experiment investigates how two exogenous constraints that superiors can face in budget negotiation settings, increased opportunity costs and financial pressure to meet unit targets, affect budget negotiations and subordinate effort. The results show that both constraints induce more cooperation, but in different ways. Financial pressure on the superior leads to more cooperative negotiation behavior by superiors and subordinates than increased opportunity costs. Specifically, subordinates do not take advantage of the superior's increased financial pressure to enforce lower budgets. After negotiation, both constraints strongly mitigate the negative effects of superior budget imposition on subordinate effort because exogenous constraints eliminate the effect of procedural fairness considerations on subordinate effort.

Chinese values and negotiation behaviour: A bargaining experiment

The importance of Chinese culture in cross-national negotiation has become conventional wisdom in international business research and practice. However, empirical work has not sufficiently established whether, how and under what conditions specific cultural values of the Chinese affect their negotiation decisions. This paper reports an experiment with a purpose-designed game task in which Chinese subjects divide a fixed gain over escalating stages. We find that concerns for face and harmony promote cooperative negotiation decisions while desire to win and risk seeking accentuate competitive ones. Values only predict behaviour in the critical, final stage of the bargaining process supporting a dynamic view of the effect of culture in negotiation.

Integrative and distributive negotiations and negotiation behavior

Negotiations are essential part of many business relations. The implementation of the negotiation process is dependent on many factors and its chosen design may lead to different outcomes. The negotiation features and characteristics shape the negotiation process. The negotiation outcome depends on the negotiation skills of the involved parties, the available information and their chosen approach and behavior. When following a distributive approach, the parties are interested in maximization of the personal outcome so they may not be able to see the total potential of an integrated approach. Crucial requirements for the integrative negotiations are close cooperation and communication between the parties. These negotiation types -distributive and integrative-are closely related to the negotiation behavior of the involved parties: competitive and cooperative. Commonly used competitive and cooperative tactics are mentioned in this work, followed by economic and social-psychological measures of negotiation behavior. The obstacles for reaching integrative agreements are summarized. The contributions of the negotiation support system (NSS) for integrative negotiations are discussed in terms of a possible solution for overcoming certain negotiation challenges.

Do Women Accommodate More Than Men? Gender Differences in Perceived Social Support and Negotiation Behavior by Spanish and Dutch Worker Representatives

Historically, the role of worker representatives (WRs) is traditionally perceived as masculine. With an increasing participation of women in the workforce, the number of female WRs grows all over Europe. WRs’ main task is to negotiate on behalf of the constituency. We explore how male and female WRs perceive support from their constituency and how this perceived support is related to their negotiation behavior. We test hypotheses about the impact of gender and societal culture on perceived support and accommodating behavior in negotiations. The hypotheses are tested using a quantitative approach among 219 female and 495 male WRs in Spain and 166 female and 398 male WRs in the Netherlands. Following the research question there was no evidence indicating gender differences in accommodating behavior. Results show that a) WRs accommodate less to management in Spain than in the Netherlands; b) female WRs perceive less social support than their male counterparts in Spain, but not in the Netherlands; c) social support is negatively related to accommodating behavior only for female WRs in Spain, but not in the Netherlands. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Confucian Ideal Personality and Chinese Business Negotiation Styles: An Indigenous Perspective

China has become one of the most important economies in the global market, but negotiating with the Chinese remains a great challenge for most Westerners. This study is to help better understand Chinese business negotiation styles with an indigenous perspective by exploring the impact of Confucian ideal personality on business negotiation process in China. This study tests the effects of three key components of Confucian ideal personality—benevolence (Ren), wisdom (Zhi), and courage (Yong) on Chinese negotiation behaviors and further on negotiation outcomes with 200 business students in a simulated negotiation exercise. The results support the significant effects of benevolence and courage on Chinese business negotiation styles but wisdom is not found to have any significant impact in China. The overall pattern of the results substantiates the strong influence of Confucianism on Chinese negotiation styles, and provides an important supplement to negotiation theories developed in the West.

Mind the Medium: A Qualitative Analysis of Email Negotiation

Using qualitative analysis of email transcripts, this research investigated the behavioral differences in more or less successful email negotiations. We hypothesized that proactive and reactive medium management, relationship building, positive and negative emotion transmission along with integrative and distributive behaviors would influence joint gain and subjective value in email negotiation dyads. The hypotheses were tested on simulated buyer-seller email negotiations (n = 52 dyads) from a US and a German university. Ordinary least squares regression revealed that value creating behaviors and the total amount of communication increased joint gain while reactive medium management decreased joint gain. Controlling for individual gain and individual target profit, negotiators’ global subjective value of the negotiation was negatively impacted by distributive negotiation behaviors and reactive medium management, as revealed by hierarchical linear modeling. Practical implications and future research are discussed.

A DSS User is a Happy Negotiator

The present work states that the analysis and design of decision support systems should consider their impacts on the emotional behaviors of negotiators. This paper provides a brief literature review with respect to this issue, and an outline of a research framework, which explains how to assess and analyze the dynamics of emotional behaviors in text-based negotiations. Subsequently, it provides some results, which show that a decision support system does not mitigate but intensifies emotional behaviors, toward the end of successful as well as failed text-based online negotiations. It is concluded that the research and design of decision support systems should focus more on the impact such systems have on the emotional behaviors of the supported negotiators.

The Effect of List Price Strategies on Real Estate Negotiations: An Experimental Study

When selling a home, an important decision facing the homeowner is choosing an optimal listing price. This decision will depend in large part on how the chosen list price impacts the post negotiation final sale price of the home. In this study, we design an experiment that enables us to identify how different types of common list price strategies affect housing negotiations. Specifically, we examine how rounded, just below, and precise list prices impact the negotiation behavior of the buyer and seller and, ultimately, the final sale price of the home. Our results indicate that the initial list price strategy does play an important role in the negotiation process. Most notably, a high precise price generates the highest final sale price, smallest percentage discount off the list price, and the largest fraction of the surplus to the seller, while just below pricing leads to the lowest final price, largest percentage discount, and smallest fraction of the surplus to the seller. Interestingly, these effects generally attenuate with negotiating experience. Importantly, our experimental results are generally consistent, both in direction and magnitude, with the limited transactions-based empirical studies relating to real estate listing prices.

A study of computational and human strategies in revelation games

Revelation games are bilateral bargaining games in which agents may choose to truthfully reveal their private information before engaging in multiple rounds of negotiation. They are analogous to real-world situations in which people need to decide whether to disclose information such as medical records or university transcripts when negotiating over health plans and business transactions. This paper presents an agent-design that is able to negotiate proficiently with people in a revelation game with different dependencies that hold between players. The agent modeled the social factors that affect the players' revelation decisions on people's negotiation behavior. It was empirically shown to outperform people in empirical evaluations as well as agents playing equilibrium strategies. It was also more likely to reach agreement than people or equilibrium agents.