Negotiation Behavior Research Articles

Identity formation in multiparty negotiations

Based on the recently proposed Interactive Model of Identity Formation, we examine how top-down deductive and bottom-up inductive identity formations influence intentions and behaviour in multiparty negotiations. Results show that a shared identity can be deduced from the social context through recognition of superordinate similarities. However, shared identities can also be induced by intragroup processes in which individuals get acquainted with one another on an interpersonal basis. Both top-down and bottom-up processes led to the formation of a sense of shared identity, and this in turn exerted a positive influence on behavioural intentions and actual behaviour in multiparty negotiations.

Using a computational model to compare objective negotiations in real and virtual environments

Business transactions and other human activities involve many negotiation procedures. The most popular ones are objective negotiations where the coordinated behaviour of participants is based on ‘to the point’ arguments and mutual understanding. In this paper the computational model of such negotiations is presented. It takes into account many parameters describing initial conditions, negotiation processes and final contract outcomes. One can observe the behaviour of negotiators and create face-to-face (f 2 f) and chat negotiation dances. To support the monitoring of negotiation processes and data collecting, a suitable test bed is proposed and implemented. Moreover the tool allows the analysis of huge amounts of data and simulates many aspects of negotiations. The obtained results allow recognising and capturing properly many human activities based on negotiations in natural and Internet environments.

Time pressure in acquisition negotiations: Its determinants and effects on parties’ negotiation behaviour choice

Although negotiation literature suggests that time pressure influences negotiation behaviour, and in strategy literature, time appears as a key factor in acquisition formation, its impact on negotiation behaviour choice has not been the subject of a great deal of in-depth research. This paper focuses on the determinants of the amount of time pressure perceived by negotiation parties during acquisition negotiations and the impact on communication. The effect of cultural differences in both relationships is also analysed. The theoretical model proposed is explored by examining three acquisition negotiation cases involving Spanish firms. The evidence suggests that, contrary to expectations from a review of the literature, time pressure is not always associated with competitive negotiation behaviour. Experience, preparation and a concern for the post-negotiation atmosphere (a basis for value creation) are all moderating factors. In addition, in acquisition negotiations time pressure seems to be mainly determined by two factors: the need for secrecy and the perception of time availability. Negotiation time and time pressure appear as different concepts. Several issues to be analysed and contrasted empirically in future research are also proposed.

Reasoning Principles for Negotiating Agent

Automated negotiation is an important applying field of agent theory and technology. For the current agent theoretical models have some troubles in explaining the agent's negotiation behaviors, this paper defines utility as costs and incomes coming from the transformation of the possible negotiation states. This lead to a semantic model fitting the agent's automated negotiation. Then, on the basis of the classical Belief-Desire-Intention model, a logic named BDI-U is completely proposed, which can explain the principles of the negotiating agent’s reasoning process. Therefore, the model can support further design and development of negotiating agent. The work performs five steps: designing formal language, designing semantic model, explaining semantics, proposing and explaining system axioms, and the axioms’ validity proof.

The coevolution of choosiness and cooperation

Explaining the rise and maintenance of cooperation is central to our understanding of biological systems and human societies. When an individual's cooperativeness is used by other individuals as a choice criterion, there can be competition to be more generous than others, a situation called competitive altruism. The evolution of cooperation between non-relatives can then be driven by a positive feedback between increasing levels of cooperativeness and choosiness. Here we use evolutionary simulations to show that, in a situation where individuals have the opportunity to engage in repeated pairwise interactions, the equilibrium degree of cooperativeness depends critically on the amount of behavioural variation that is being maintained in the population by processes such as mutation. Because our model does not invoke complex mechanisms such as negotiation behaviour, it can be applied to a wide range of species. The results suggest an important role of lifespan in the evolution of cooperation.

New Technology Meets an Old Teaching Challenge: Using Digital Video Recordings, Annotation Software, and Deliberate Practice Techniques to Improve Student Negotiation Skills

There is a world of difference between teaching negotiation theory, which pertains to conceptual understanding, and teaching negotiation skills, which pertain to actual behavior in real‐world situations. The principle of reflective practice is widely used for theoretical instruction. Deliberate practice, however, is a more powerful model for skills training. Cognitive scientists have discovered that subjects will learn skills best when they perform well‐defined tasks at appropriate levels of difficulty, and when they are given immediate feedback, an opportunity to correct their errors, and an opportunity to practice until the tasks become routine.To satisfy the deliberate practice conditions for large graduate‐level negotiation courses (some as large as seventy students), students were assigned to use webcams with their laptop computers to video record their negotiation exercises. Before each exercise, students were assigned to prepare for and to concentrate on performing two or three well‐defined tasks. Students reviewed these recordings and commented on their performances in a journal before uploading the videos and journals to an assigned network folder. The instructor and teaching assistants then reviewed the journals and specified portions of the videos and provided individual written feedback to the students.The instructors found that student negotiating skills have improved significantly using this new system. In comparison with earlier semesters, students also felt they were involved in a more intense and personal learning experience. A majority of students reported they intend to apply the principles of deliberate practice in their professional lives after graduation. The authors have found this method continues to challenge their ability to identify and describe the skills used by expert negotiators.As an addition to this new methodology, two of the authors have spearheaded the development of video annotation software, known as “MediaNotes,” to help students and instructors review, comment upon, and learn from video recordings of negotiations. Based on their experiences using the software to support deliberate practice, the authors expect this tool to initiate a significant advance in our ability to recognize and describe expert negotiation behavior and in students’ ability to improve their negotiating skills.

Emotion in Conflict and Negotiation: Introducing the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) Model

This paper reviews the current state of research on the interpersonal effects of emotions in conflict and negotiation. The review shows that a great variety of emotions, such as anger, happiness, guilt, regret, disappointment, and worry, have pervasive effects on negotiation behavior and conflict development. However, the review also reveals some inconsistent findings, especially with regard to the impact of anger and happiness on cooperation and competition. To understand these apparent inconsistencies, I introduce a new model of the interpersonal effects of emotions in conflict and negotiation - the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model. The EASI model posits that emotions may exert interpersonal influence via two distinct paths - an informational-strategic path and an affective - relational path. Behavior is proposed to depend on the relative strength of these two routes, which is in turn determined by individuals' information processing tendencies and a number of situational characteristics, which are also discussed. I conclude by identifying some avenues for future inquiry.

Conflict management styles as indicators of behavioral pattern in business negotiation

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine whether conflict management styles are able to predict actual behaviors in business negotiation in two different countries.Design/methodology/approachSubjects were recruited from both Canada and China to participate in a laboratory study. Three simulated business negotiations were used for participants to negotiate deals in both countries in order to compare the validity of conflict management styles in predicting negotiation behaviors.FindingsThis study shows that conflict management styles are valid predictors of actual negotiation behaviors in Canada, but not in China. The results also show that Chinese people use a more avoiding approach and demonstrate a higher level of integrativeness during business negotiation simulations, while Canadians use a more compromising approach and show a higher level of distributiveness.Practical implicationsPractical implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the usefulness of self‐reported conflict management styles for negotiation researchers and practitioners in training seminars and in terms of the effectiveness of first offer as one negotiation strategy to achieve better negotiation outcomes.Originality/valueThis study is particularly pertinent, given that the relationship between conflict management styles and actual behaviors in negotiation receives little attention and that even less attention is given to this relationship in a cross‐cultural context.

EU Delegation and Agency in International Trade Negotiations: A Cautionary Comparison*

AbstractThe principal‐agent (PA) approach is increasingly used to explain how and why the EU formulates its trade policy and engages in international trade negotiations. This article evaluates the utility of PA in trade policy through a comparative analysis of the EU's participation in two different international negotiations: the International Competition Network and World Trade Organization (2001–06). The comparison of EU institutions and activities in these two empirical cases suggests that while PA seems well suited to explain international negotiations in regulatory policies (competition), it seems less suited to explain developments in distributive policies (trade). The findings, which reveal potential problems of multiple agents and a greater likelihood of observational equivalence in trade policy, advise caution when using PA to explain the EU's behaviour in international trade negotiations.

Effects of Experience and Advice on Process and Performance in Negotiations

This experiment ( N = 68 dyads) tested the influence of experience and advice on behavior and joint outcomes in integrative two-party negotiations. Dyads in an advice condition received short tactical advice to question fixed-pie assumptions and to exchange information. Afterward, they negotiated once. Dyads in an experience condition negotiated twice in successive rounds. Finally, dyads in an experience-and-advice condition negotiated twice and received advice prior to the second negotiation. Dependent measures were negotiation behavior, negotiation duration, joint outcome, and judgmental accuracy. Results showed that the combination of advice and experience led dyads to apply more problem solving and fewer contentious strategies, which mediated the higher joint outcomes that these dyads reached in shorter times. Experience or advice alone was not sufficient to make negotiators use different strategies or to exploit the integrative potential of the negotiations better than they did before they received advice and/or gained experience.

North Korea's External Economic Relations

North Korea's international transactions have grown since the 1990s famine period. Illicit transactions appear to account for a declining share of trade. Direct investment is rising, but the county remains significantly dependent on aid to finance imports. Interdependence with South Korea and China is rising, but the nature of integration with these two partners is very different: China's interaction with North Korea appears to be increasingly on market-oriented terms, while South Korea's involvement has a growing noncommercial or aid component. These patterns have implications for North Korea's development, the effectiveness of UN sanctions, and its bargaining behavior in nuclear negotiations.

STRATUM: A METHODOLOGY FOR DESIGNING HEURISTIC AGENT NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES

Automated negotiation is a powerful (and sometimes essential) means for allocating resources among self-interested autonomous software agents. A key problem in building negotiating agents is the design of the negotiation strategy, which is used by an agent to decide its negotiation behavior. In complex domains, there is no single, obvious optimal strategy. This has led to much work on designing heuristic strategies, where agent designers usually rely on intuition and experience. In this article, we introduce STRATUM, a methodology for designing strategies for negotiating agents. The methodology provides a disciplined approach to analyzing the negotiation environment and designing strategies in light of agent capabilities and acts as a bridge between theoretical studies of automated negotiation and the software engineering of negotiation applications. We illustrate the application of the methodology by characterizing some strategies for the Trading Agent Competition and for argumentation-based negotiation.

Role Effects in Negotiation: The One‐Down Phenomenon

Role is a concept that underlies most studies of human behavior in negotiation as subjects take on the roles of buyers and sellers or labor and management contract bargainers, for example Naturalistic studies also focus on such roles as teacher and administrator contract bargainers, hostage takers and hostage negotiators, Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators, and husbands and wives in divorce mediations. This article examines these role effects and finds consistent patterns across both experimental and naturalistic contexts. Specifically, a “one‐down effect” emerges when individuals in lower power roles assume more aggressive negotiation strategies that are significantly less effective in achieving desired outcomes. The article concludes by identifying the theoretical frameworks that might explain these role differences.

Testing the relationship between local cue–response patterns and the global structure of communication behaviour

A central assumption of negotiation research is that organized sequences of cues and responses underlie the dimensions and constructs found to structure interaction. We empirically tested this assumption using a new 'proximity' coefficient, which measures the global interrelationships among behaviours based on their intrinsic local organization within an interaction sequence. An analysis of sequences from 21 hostage negotiations showed that local cue-response dependencies are organized in a way that corresponds with an established structural model of communication. Further analysis of case-specific coefficients showed that criminal, political and domestic incidents involve very different cue-response dynamics, with criminal incidents dividing into two distinct types of interaction. The importance of the proximity concept for unifying local and global accounts of negotiation behaviour, and the avenues of research made possible by the proximity coefficient, are discussed.

Response modes in negotiation

Negotiators may respond to each other’s offers and demands in different ways. Whereas many negotiation experiments present participants with numerical information about offers and counteroffers (e.g., “I propose 6–8–2”; numerical response mode), real life negotiations often involve affective and evaluative statements (e.g., “I didn’t like your last offer, but I would be happy to explore alternatives”; affective response mode). The present research explores the differential consequences of responding in affective as opposed to numerical terms. Specifically, we predicted and found that affective responses increase the impact of social and contextual cues on negotiation behavior. Three studies demonstrate that the impact of other’s toughness (Experiment 1), other’s respectability (Experiment 2), and other’s appearance (Experiment 3) on a negotiator’s demands and concessions is greater when the other provides affective rather than numerical feedback.

The influence of gender role on negotiation development and outcome

PurposeThe main aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of gender differences on negotiation behaviour choice and, consequently, on its outcome. The analysis undertaken is first defined by distinguishing between sex and gender role. It gender role and not biological sex the factor that can have a direct impact on behaviour. With a contextual perspective, we have chosen the negotiation processes of strategic alliances as our contextual framework of analysis.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts a qualitative methodology, particularly case study analysis.FindingsA higher degree of complexity increases the perception of ambiguity, which then leads to the influence of gender in the negotiation. Androgynous profiles act favourably in nurturing clearly integrative behaviour, whilst when the profile more closely resembles the masculine stereotype, behaviour tends to be more competitive, though attenuated. Acting in the best interests of the firm, and the fact that negotiators normally belong to the higher echelons of management, favours the adoption of this integrative behaviour. Lastly, it can be observed that competitive behaviour results in less favourable outcomes than an integrative approach in a cooperation agreement.Originality/valueThe proposal bring to the attention of managers the importance of choosing the individuals that are going to negotiate the strategic alliance correctly, in order to achieve better outcomes and to smooth the path towards good performance in the future.

Chinese Conflict Management Styles and Negotiation Behaviours

China has been one of the most important markets for western firms, but negotiating with the Chinese is quite a challenging task. Researchers have been investigating the distinctness in Chinese negotiation and conflict management styles, but have yet to provide solid evidence for it. An attempt is made in this study to illustrate how Chinese people approach conflicts, and thus how this affects their negotiation behaviours during business negotiation, which provides an empirical test of Chinese conflict management styles and their impact on negotiation outcomes. Results show that compromising and avoiding are the most preferred methods of conflict management in China, while accommodating and competing lead to more satisfaction during business negotiation. Managerial implications and future studies are then discussed.

Preference structures and negotiator behavior in electronic negotiations

Electronic Negotiation Support Systems allow users to construct a formal model of their preferences, which is then used during the negotiation process. In this paper, we analyze whether preferences embedded in such models are actually reflected in the behavior of negotiators and negotiation outcomes. Empirical results indicate that elements of negotiator behavior, like initial offers or the extent of concessions made during the negotiation, closely correspond to individual preferences. The same holds for the structure of the compromise. In contrast, the impact of negotiator preferences on reaching an agreement or the efficiency of the compromise is rather weak.

Group member prototypicality and intergroup negotiation: How one's standing in the group affects negotiation behaviour

How does a representative's position in the group influence behaviour in intergroup negotiation? Applying insights from the social identity approach (specifically self-categorization theory), the effects of group member prototypicality, accountability and group attractiveness on competitiveness in intergroup bargaining were examined. As representatives of their group, participants engaged in a computer-mediated negotiation with a simulated out-group opponent. In Experiment 1 (N=114), representatives with a peripheral status in the group sent more competitive and fewer cooperative messages to the opponent than did prototypical representatives, but only under accountability. Experiment 2 (N=110) replicated this finding, and showed that, under accountability, peripherals also made higher demands than did prototypicals, but only when group membership was perceived as attractive. Results are discussed in relation to impression management and strategic behaviour.

Non-binding agreements and fairness in commons dilemma games

Usually, common pool games are analyzed without taking into account the cooperative features of the game, even when communication and non-binding agreements are involved. Whereas equilibria are inefficient, negotiations may induce some cooperation and may enhance efficiency. In the paper, we propose to use tools of cooperative game theory to advance the understanding of results in dilemma situations that allow for communication. By doing so, we present a short review of earlier experimental evidence given by Hackett, Schlager, and Walker 1994 (HSW) for the conditional stability of non-binding agreements established in face-to-face multilateral negotiations. For an experimental test, we reanalyze the HSW data set in a game-theoretical analysis of cooperative versions of social dilemma games. The results of cooperative game theory that are most important for the application are explained and interpreted with respect to their meaning for negotiation behavior. Then, theorems are discussed that cooperative social dilemma games are clear (alpha- and beta-values coincide) and that they are convex (it follows that the core is “large”): The main focus is on how arguments of power and fairness can be based on the structure of the game. A second item is how fairness and stability properties of a negotiated (non-binding) agreement can be judged. The use of cheap talk in evaluating experiments reveals that besides the relation of non-cooperative and cooperative solutions, say of equilibria and core, the relation of alpha-, beta- and gamma-values are of importance for the availability of attractive solutions and the stability of the such agreements. In the special case of the HSW scenario, the game shows properties favorable for stable and efficient solutions. Nevertheless, the realized agreements are less efficient than expected. The realized (and stable) agreements can be located between the equilibrium, the egalitarian solution and some fairness solutions. In order to represent the extent to which the subjects obey efficiency and fairness, we present and discuss patterns of the corresponding excess vectors.