Negotiation Partners Research Articles

The impact of relationship history on negotiation strategy expectations

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how the history of a supply chain relationship impacts expectations concerning negotiation strategy use.Design/methodology/approach– Following a grounded theory approach, experienced buyers and suppliers were interviewed to enhance understanding of the complexity of supply chain negotiations.Findings– Qualitative analysis developed a theoretical framework emphasizing the impact of relationship history on negotiation strategy expectations in long-term buyer-supplier relationships. Data supports that previous negotiation interactions build a history between the involved organizations. This relationship history creates expectations. When negotiation strategy use is consistent with expectations, the relationship history will continue to develop in the same manner as it has previously. When negotiation strategy expectations are violated, the relationship impact will differ depending on evidence of an Extrarelational Factor that leads to the strategy change.Research limitations/implications– Results of this study present a theoretical framework that future research can quantitatively test, which has the potential to open up new streams of research on relationship history and supply chain negotiations.Practical implications– Results show that buyers and suppliers should consider the strategy expectations of their negotiation partner. When actions are inconsistent with expectations, the effects impact the relationship.Originality/value– Negotiation research has largely focussed on negotiations as discrete events with economic outcomes. This ongoing buyer-supplier relationship research highlights the impact that previous negotiations (relationship history) have on negotiation expectations. It also explores the relational impact when those expectations are or are not met.

Subjective Perceptions in Wartime Negotiation

The prevalence of negotiation in social interaction has motivated researchers to develop virtual agents that can understand, facilitate, teach and even carry out negotiations. While much of this research has analyzed how to maximize the objective outcome, there is a growing body of work demonstrating that subjective perceptions of the outcome also play a critical role in human negotiation behavior. People derive subjective value from not only the outcome, but also from the process by which they achieve that outcome, from their relationship with their negotiation partner, etc. The affective responses evoked by these subjective valuations can be very different from what would be evoked by the objective outcome alone. We investigate such subjective valuations within human-agent negotiation in four variations of a wartime negotiation scenario taken from the political science literature. We observe that the objective outcomes of these negotiations are not strongly related to the human negotiators' subjective perceptions, as measured by the Subjective Value Index. We examine the game dynamics and agent behaviors to identify features that induce different subjective values in the participants, even when separated from the effect of the objective outcomes. We thus are able to identify characteristics of the interaction between negotiation and battlefield processes that most impact people's subjective valuations.

Alex Walter – “… den tyske embedsmand, der overhovedet har gjort Danmark de største tjenester under krigen”

Mogens Rostgård Nissen: Alex Walter, — “… the German official who rendered the largest services of all to Denmark during the war.”
 Alex Walter was head of the German government committee, which during the occupation of Denmark negotiated trade agreements with the corresponding Danish government committee. That is why he had great influence on the economic side of occupation policy, which the German occupying power carried out in Denmark during the war. Walter had a broad knowledge of Danish economy and Danish conditions in general, because since 1932 he had negotiated trade agreements with top Danish officials. At the same time, he was well-known and respected in Denmark, and that was important for the agreements he assisted in concluding during the occupation. Under his leadership, the German occupying power followed a traditional trade policy, which was focused on practical issues and concrete results. It was a policy, which objectively was for the common good of Denmark and Germany. Walter was a very high-level official in the thoroughly Nazified Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture. His immediate superior, Herbert Backe, was responsible for German food planning, and he had a decisive influence on the Nazi occupation policy for all of Europe, including the exploitation policy, which took place in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. But Denmark followed an entirely different economic track, which was characterized by negotiations and cooperation, and it was very much Walter, who became responsible for planning and implementing this economic policy. Among his negotiation partners in Denmark, Walter was perceived as a reasonable and sensible man, with whom one could negotiate and rely on. There was a clear understanding that Walter had intervened several times during political crises — among other things when the Danish government stood down in August 1943; during the general strike in the summer of 1944 and in connection with the deportation of the police in the autumn of 1944. But he also had a dark Nazi side to him, precisely because he was linked to Backe and the Ministry of Nutrition and Agriculture. After the war, he was interned due to the fact that as a senior official, he had been a member of the Nazi party and held the rank of SS Sturmbannführer. That is why he was only finally acquitted and stripped of his Nazi status in October 1948, a few months before he died.

Personal Values and Negotiation Outcomes: Understanding Ourselves and Others

We examine the relationship between people’s professed values and their negotiation performance through a controlled experimental design study. Using Schwartz values and distributive, integrative, and compatible negotiation outcomes in a controlled experiment, we apply multi-level modeling to determine interdependent effects at the individual and dyadic levels. Specifically we found that the values of hedonism and tradition negatively impact distributive outcomes for the primary subject. Concurrently, distributive outcomes for the primary subject are negatively affected by the value of tradition and positively impacted by the value of security in the negotiation partner. Finally, we found that the negotiation partner’s value of self-direction positively impacts the integrative outcome for the primary subject. The implication for the selection of collective bargaining agents is discussed.

Emotion Regulation: Responding to and Effectively Managing Others’ Emotions

Our work life is characterized by a wide variety of interpersonal relationships, ranging from interactions between customers and employees, leaders and followers, different negotiation partners, an...

An E-Negotiation Agent Using Rule Based and Case Based Approaches: A Comparative Study with Bilateral E-Negotiation with Prediction

The research in the area of automated negotiation systems is going on in many universities. This research is mainly focused on making a practically feasible, faster and reliable E-negotiation system. The ongoing work in this area is happening in the laboratories of the universities mainly for training and research purpose. There are number of negotiation systems such as Henry, Kasbaah, Bazaar, Auction Bot, Inspire, and Magnet. Our research is based on making an agent software for E-negotiation which will give faster results and also is secure and flexible. The negotiation partners and contents between the service providers change frequently. The negotiation process can be transformed into rules and cases. Using these features, a new automated negotiation model for agent integrating rule based and case based reasoning can be derived. We propose an E-negotiation system, in which all product information and multiple agent details are stored on the cloud. An E-negotiation agent acts as a negotiator. Agent has user’s details and their requirements for a particular product. It will check rules based data whether any rule is matching with the user requirement. An agent will see case based data to check any similar negotiation case matching to the user requirement. If a case matches with user requirement, then agent will start the negotiation process using case based data. If any rule related requirement is found in the rule base data, then agent will start the negotiation process using rule based data. If both rules based data and cases based data are not matching with the user requirement, then agent will start the negotiation process using Bilateral Negotiation model. After completing negotiation process, agent gives feedback to the user about whether negotiation is successful or not. The product details, rule based data, and case based data will be stored on the cloud. So that system automatically becomes flexible. We also compare E-negotiation agent automated negotiation and behavior prediction system to prove that using rule based and case based approaches system should become fast.

Understanding the Influence of Instant Messaging on Ending Concessions During Negotiations

In many online price negotiations, instant messaging (IM) and audio channels rival each other in use, but IM’s use is on the rise. In these contexts, people who are strangers to each other are inclined to act more competitively. They are driven by self-interest and strive for greater gains from agreement in the form of what is termed “ending concessions.” To date, however, researchers have focused on striving for agreement as the main goal of negotiators. This study uses a selfishness theory to explain how individuals using IM, as compared to those using audio, can encourage their negotiation partners to make ending concessions, and thereby increase individuals’ gains when agreement is reached. We use data from a negotiation laboratory experiment to test a model of ending concessions that is predicted by unrestricted offers and comments that negotiators make over IM and audio. We base our analyses on the contents of the resulting communications. The objects of negotiation are simulated lottery tickets. Our results provide three key insights. First, when using IM, partners appear to interpret offers that include concessions from individuals as attempts to manipulate partners into accepting non-equitable agreements; as a result partners decrease their ending concessions. These interpretations do not appear to occur when using audio, and as a result individuals’ concessions do not decrease partners’ ending concessions. Second, using IM, when individuals disagree with anger directed at partners’ bidding behaviors, partners respond by increasing their ending concessions. Ending concessions are further increased when using audio. Third, and in contrast, using IM, when individuals disagree with emotion that does not include anger, partners respond by decreasing their ending concessions. Ending concessions are further decreased when using audio. These insights provide guidance for practice, and are bases for future research on the use of IM and audio for negotiation.

Unlocking integrative potential: Expressed emotional ambivalence and negotiation outcomes

This paper examines how one negotiator’s expressed emotional ambivalence can foster integrative outcomes. Study 1 demonstrated that observing a negotiation partner’s emotional ambivalence leads negotiators to come up with more integrative agreements. Study 2 examined a proposed mechanism: Expressed ambivalence leads to an increased perceived ability to influence the ambivalent negotiator because it suggests submissiveness. Study 3 demonstrated that perceived submissiveness mediates the effects of observed emotional ambivalence on integrative agreements. Implications of these findings for negotiation and emotions research, and directions for future research, are discussed.

EU Policy on Preferential Trade Agreements in the 2000s: A Reorientation towards Commercial Aims

AbstractThe aim of this article is to provide a general introduction to EU policy on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and thus to serve as a background for the more detailed discussion of the constitutional issues involved in EU PTAs. It starts with a description of how EU policy evolved during the 2000s, arguing that EU policy was predominantly driven by external or systemic factors in the international trading system and the EU's commercial response to these, rather than a policy shift driven by predominantly internal factors. This description is followed by a summary of the various motivations behind EU policy. The paper then discusses the content of the EU ‘model’ for PTAs. The term model needs to be used with some caution as the EU approach to PTAs has been fairly flexible and the content varies depending on the EU interests and those of its negotiating partner in any specific negotiation.

Sensitivity to Changing Contingencies Predicts Social Success

To adapt one’s behavior to suit changing social contingencies, it is necessary to be skillful at detecting such changing contingencies in the first place. As a consequence, the ability to detect changing contingencies (reversal learning) should predict social competence across both competitive and cooperative social settings. Consistent with this possibility, Study 1 revealed that better reversal learning predicted more effective conflict management and partner happiness within romantic relationships. Studies 2a and 2b found that better reversal learning predicted less satisfied negotiation partners, an effect mediated by the positive relationship between reversal-learning performance and value gained from the negotiation. In Study 3, better reversal learning predicted greater partner cooperation and more favorable outcomes in a multi-round prisoners’ dilemma game. These results suggest that the capacity to detect changing contingencies, and thereby modify one’s behavior in response to a socially dynamic world, facilitates interpersonal competence across a variety of social domains.

HOW DO CONTROLS AND TRUST INTERACT? THE CASE OF FAILED ALLIANCE NEGOTIATIONS IN THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY

ABSTRACT This case study responds to recent calls for investigation of the relationship of trust and control in managing risk during the early negotiation phases of alliances (Cäker, & Siverbo 2011; Faems, Janssens, Madhok, & Van Looy 2008; Vélez, Sánchez, & Álvarez-Dardet 2008). In order to do this, we conduct a case study on the failed alliance negotiation in the Scandinavian financial services industry. Specifically, we investigate the interactions of goodwill trust and competence trust with output, behavioral and social controls on relational, and performance risk. First, we find that the use of diverse controls has ambivalent effects on different forms of trust. Output and behavioral controls among partners have both deteriorated goodwill trust and competence trust during the alliance negotiations. Contrary, social controls were conducive to building both types of trust—yet, social controls were strongly underdeveloped. The latter led to an overly lengthy, two year negotiation period before a disagreement on the alliance was reached. Second, we illustrate how the same control mechanisms can be interpreted differently by negotiation partners, e.g., as a behavioral or a social control. Thereby, the effect of the same control can have ambivalent effects on mutual trust. Third, we address the unresolved issue of the optimal control-trust-risk constellation in early life cycle stages of alliances. Keywords control; risk; trust; alliance; negotiations; failure; financial services.

The UK, the EU and European Security: A German Perspective

While German commentators and politicians are primarily concerned with the economic impact of a possible ‘Brexit’ and the loss of a partner in EU economic negotiations, David Cameron's speech has also raised questions about the future of European security. For some in Berlin, the CSDP is unworkable without British participation; for others, the removal of the British veto would enable progress on CSDP institutions, long desired by Berlin. Here, Kempin and Mawdsley explore the apparent contradictions in German security policy, and the (possibly unwelcome) opportunities a Brexit might open up for Germany in relation to the CSDP.

EU Policy on Climate Change Mitigation since Copenhagen and the Economic Crisis

The EU has long assumed leadership in advancing domestic and international climate change policy. While pushing its partners in international negotiations, it has led the way in implementing a host of domestic measures, including a unilateral and legally binding target, an ambitious policy on renewable energy and a strategy for low-carbon technology deployment. The centrepiece of EU policy, however, has been the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), a cap-and-trade programme launched in 2005. The ETS has been seen as a tool to ensure least-cost abatement, drive EU decarbonisation and develop a global carbon market. After an initial review and revision of the ETS, to come into force in 2013, there was a belief that the new ETS was ‘future-proof’, meaning able to cope with the temporary lack of a global agreement on climate change and individual countries’ emission ceilings. This confidence has been shattered by the simultaneous ‘failure’ of Copenhagen to deliver a clear prospect of a global (top-down) agreement and the economic crisis. The lack of prospects for national caps at the international level has led to a situation whereby many member states hesitate to pursue ambitious climate change policies. In the midst of this, the EU is assessing its options anew. A number of promising areas for international cooperation exist, all centred on the need to ‘raise the ambition level’ of GHG emission reductions, notably in aviation and maritime, short-lived climate pollutions, deforestation, industrial competitiveness and green growth. Public policy issues in the field of technology and its transfer will require more work to identify real areas for cooperation.

Optimization-Based Methods for Improving the Accuracy and Outcome of Learning in Electronic Procurement Negotiations

Empirical observations as well as theoretical analysis suggest that negotiation outcome in buyer-supplier situations can be improved by having accurate knowledge about the behavior of one's counterpart (i.e., negotiation partner). Yet, there is a paucity of research works dealing with the incorporation of learning methods into electronic procurement technologies, especially methods that can work with small amounts of information. This paper presents an application of nonlinear optimization for learning the parameters of a common negotiation decision function. Then, to show the usefulness of learning in a procurement-negotiation interaction, we outline a reaction algorithm that seeks to improve outcome. Detailed computational results with both the learning and reaction algorithms are conducted to demonstrate the viability of our approach.

When feeling bad is expected to be good: Emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts.

According to the instrumental approach to emotion regulation, people may want to experience even unpleasant emotions to attain instrumental benefits. Building on value-expectancy models of self-regulation, we tested whether people want to feel bad in certain contexts specifically because they expect such feelings to be useful to them. In two studies, participants were more likely to try to increase their anger before a negotiation when motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) a negotiation partner. Participants motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) their partner expected anger to be more useful to them, and this expectation in turn, led them to try to increase their anger before negotiating. The subsequent experience of anger, following random assignment to emotion inductions (Study 1) or engagement in self-selected emotion regulation activities (Study 2), led participants to be more successful at getting others to concede to their demands, demonstrating that emotional preferences have important pragmatic implications.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in e-Negotiations

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the question of whether the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy present in face-to-face interactions can also be identified in electronic negotiation processes. In a 2x2 experiment with 116 subjects the authors found that beliefs about both the climate (conflict intensity and social relationship) and the individual negotiation style with their particular impact on negotiation outcomes came true – irrespective of the controlled context variables or negotiation partner. They confirmed the dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecy in computer-based communication. Based on the authors’ results they recommend that negotiators create a pleasant ambiance in order to support positive expectations and try to understand the partner’s negotiation style in order to (re-)act appropriately.

Price Competition and Concentration in Search and Negotiation Markets: Evidence from Mortgage Lending

We examine the relationship between concentration and price dispersion using variation induced by a merger in the Canadian mortgage market. Since interest rates are determined through a search and negotiation process, consolidation eliminates a potential negotiation partner, weakening consumers bargaining positions. We combine reduced-form techniques to estimate the mergers distributional impact, with a structural model to measure market power across consumers with different search costs. Our results show that competition benefits only consumers at the bottom and middle of the transaction price distribution. Estimates from a search and negotiation model attribute these differences to the presence of large search frictions.

Negotiating the Gender Divide

Employment relationships are increasingly personalized, with more employment conditions open to negotiation. Unfortunately, personalization may disadvantage members of some demographic groups. Women, in particular, routinely negotiate less desirable employment terms than men do. The gender gap in employment outcomes is frequently attributed to differences in the ways that men and women negotiate. The authors review the negotiation research demonstrating that women are disadvantaged in negotiations and the organizational behavior research examining the backlash experienced by agentic women. They use the stereotype content model and expectancy violation theory to explain why “best practice” negotiation behaviors benefit male negotiators but backfire for female negotiators. Gender-counternormative behaviors create negative expectancy violations for women, generating backlash and negatively affecting women’s outcomes. The authors’ integration suggests two distinct avenues for enhancing women’s negotiation outcomes. The first strategy set ensures that agentic negotiation behaviors stay below a negotiation partner’s threshold for perceiving negative violations; the second strategy set ensures that behaviors signaling warmth and likeability exceed a partner’s threshold for perceiving positive violations.

Can – Should – Must We Negotiate with Evil?*

How should the USA and its allies deal with regimes that abuse their own people and threaten world order? Are some regimes so evil that it is wrong and unwise to engage with them – even on matters of shared concern? The answer depends not only on the “facts of the case” but also on priorities and frames of reference. Thus, two Soviet citizens, each a Nobel Prize winner, disagreed on whether Western governments should treat the Kremlin as a viable partner in negotiations to control the arms race. Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn said “no,” because a regime that oppressed its own people could not be trusted. But Andrei D. Sakharov answered “yes,” because the stakes for humanity were so high. Solzhenitsyn put human rights first; Sakharov, the survival of humanity.Today a similar choice confronts Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo as they face leaders in Pyongyang moving to expand their nuclear and missile capabilities. President George W. Bush placed North Korea on an “axis of evil.” He loathed a leader who permitted more than a million of his subjects to starve. But even if this repugnance was justified, did it serve US and allied interests to end the dialogues that, in the Clinton years, offered hope of limiting and perhaps terminating the North's nuclear weapons and missile programs?“We are good and they are bad” is dangerous as an approach to foreign affairs. But it is also wrong and reckless to assume that all actors are equally flawed. Still, if a cruel dictatorship is willing to negotiate security arrangements likely to limit arms competition and make war less likely, democratic governments should engage and seek verifiable arrangements.

An Adaptive Agent for Negotiating with People in Different Cultures

The rapid dissemination of technology such as the Internet across geographical and ethnic lines is opening up opportunities for computer agents to negotiate with people of diverse cultural and organizational affiliations. To negotiate proficiently with people in different cultures, agents need to be able to adapt to the way behavioral traits of other participants change over time. This article describes a new agent for repeated bilateral negotiation that was designed to model and adapt its behavior to the individual traits exhibited by its negotiation partner. The agent’s decision-making model combined a social utility function that represented the behavioral traits of the other participant, as well as a rule-based mechanism that used the utility function to make decisions in the negotiation process. The agent was deployed in a strategic setting in which both participants needed to complete their individual tasks by reaching agreements and exchanging resources, the number of negotiation rounds was not fixed in advance and agreements were not binding. The agent negotiated with human subjects in the United States and Lebanon in situations that varied the dependency relationships between participants at the onset of negotiation. There was no prior data available about the way people would respond to different negotiation strategies in these two countries. Results showed that the agent was able to adopt a different negotiation strategy to each country. Its average performance across both countries was equal to that of people. However, the agent outperformed people in the United States, because it learned to make offers that were likely to be accepted by people, while being more beneficial to the agent than to people. In contrast, the agent was outperformed by people in Lebanon, because it adopted a high reliability measure which allowed people to take advantage of it. These results provide insight for human-computer agent designers in the types of multicultural settings that we considered, showing that adaptation is a viable approach towards the design of computer agents to negotiate with people when there is no prior data of their behavior.