Negotiation Simulation Research Articles

Making the Most of the First‐Offer Advantage: Pre‐Offer Conversation and Negotiation Outcomes

Why do some negotiators benefit from making the first offer during negotiations while others do not? This study explores the contents of conversations that take place before negotiators make their first offers in order to learn more about the differences between ultimately successful first offers that benefit from anchoring effects and ultimately unsuccessful ones in which negotiators apparently derive no benefit from making the first offer.In‐depth qualitative analyses of the conversations that role players engaged in prior to their first offers were conducted in simulated negotiation exercises. Their analysis identified five different conversational tactics that negotiators employed in one‐on‐one negotiations to gain power in the negotiation, or what they call here “power conversation tactics.” Their findings suggest that the negotiation outcome (i.e., net value) was related to how the negotiators employed and combined these tactics during the pre‐offer conversation.Based on these findings, they conceptualized four types of power‐gaining/power‐losing pre‐offer conversation scenarios and explored the link between negotiation outcomes and each of these types of pre‐offer conversations. This study further develops the literature on power dynamics and conversations in negotiations as well as the literature on the anchoring effect of a first offer.

Linguistic competence and cross-cultural negotiations: A Mexican-Norwegian example

In the present paper we look at the connection between level of linguistic competence and negotiation outcome in cross-cultural negotiations. The corpus consists of six Mexican-Norwegian dyads participating in a negotiation simulation. The language of communication was English, which means that none of the participants negotiated in their native language. The negotiation transcripts were submitted to a qualitative linguistic analysis and graded according to level of competence. These results were coupled to negotiation outcome, which was calculated according to a cost matrix. The findings showed no statistically significant connection between language competence and outcome.

Can outnumbered negotiators succeed? The case of intercultural business negotiations

Culture likely affects the choice of negotiation strategies significantly, and culture-dependent preferences for negotiation strategies could lead to conflict when negotiations cross borders. Negotiators often regard some degree of adaptation to the culture of their negotiation partner as a solution to such conflicts. The authors test this suggested solution in an asymmetric setting, in which a solo (outnumbered) negotiator faces a team. Two studies that employ web-based negotiation simulations show that only solo negotiators adapt to the negotiation strategies of their team counterpart. In a third study that uses a symmetric (solo–solo) setting, the adaptation effect disappears. These studies thus illustrate the greater social impact of teams versus solo negotiators. For outnumbered negotiators, adaptation is particularly beneficial (i.e., increases negotiation profit) if it involves an increased use of integrative strategies. The degree to which negotiators succeed in intercultural negotiations thus depends on their counterpart’s (team’s) culture.

Budget Time

This article presents a gender-based negotiation simulation designed to make participants aware of gender-based stereotypes and their effect on negotiation outcomes. In this simulation, the current research on gender issues is animated via three role sheets: (a) Vice president (VP), (b) advantaged department head, and (c) disadvantaged department head. While the VP role is the same for everyone, the participants who play the role of department head are unaware that there are two versions of that role. Participants playing either of the department head roles negotiate one-on-one with their VP for an increase in next year’s budget. The participants are purposefully not made aware that the exercise is based on gender issues; thus, both males and females may play any role. Significantly different negotiation results are recorded at the end of the exercise, learning objectives are revealed, and an excellent platform for exploring numerous gender-based issues is in place. The benefits for participants include (a) an enhanced and sophisticated awareness of gender issues in negotiation and (b) prescriptions for mitigating disparate outcomes that are often a function of gender.

Predicting Paris: Multi-Method Approaches to Forecast the Outcomes of Global Climate Negotiations

We examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant.

Negotiating from Mars to Venus: gender in simulated international negotiations

Gender analysis has emerged as an important conceptual approach to the study of decision making and conflict resolution in the international arena. Although scholars and practitioners within the field of international relations have debated the effect of gender on the negotiation and decision-making process, little systematic evidence to support their assertions has taken place. This article examines a set of data from the GLOBALED PROJECT that provides insights into the different ways men and women perceive world affairs and interact in a negotiation setting. In particular, the authors examine differences in the negotiation styles of all-female, all-male, and mixed-gender groups when negotiating over international or global issues. Findings from the GLOBALED PROJECT, a computer-mediated study of gender differences in decision-making and negotiation skills, show that there are indeed significant differences between the approaches used by various gender groupings. Although much work remains to be done in this area, this research indicates that some of the impressionistic and anecdotal characterizations of the different ways men and women approach negotiations and decision making are indeed well-grounded when examined through systemic evidence.

Negotiating the Transatlantic Relationship: An International, Interdisciplinary Simulation of a Real-World Negotiation

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the effectiveness of an international, interdisciplinary simulation of an ongoing trade negotiation. It thoroughly describes the simulation, provides links to background information for public use, and offers suggestions on ways to further strengthen the learning outcomes achieved.

Dignity, face, and honor cultures: A study of negotiation strategy and outcomes in three cultures

SummaryThis study compares negotiation strategy and outcomes in countries illustrating dignity, face, and honor cultures. Hypotheses predict cultural differences in negotiators' aspirations, use of strategy, and outcomes based on the implications of differences in self‐worth and social structures in dignity, face, and honor cultures. Data were from a face‐to‐face negotiation simulation; participants were intra‐cultural samples from the USA (dignity), China (face), and Qatar (honor). The empirical results provide strong evidence for the predictions concerning the reliance on more competitive negotiation strategies in honor and face cultures relative to dignity cultures in this context of negotiating a new business relationship. The study makes two important theoretical contributions. First, it proposes how and why people in a previously understudied part of the world, that is, the Middle East, use negotiation strategy. Second, it addresses a conundrum in the East Asian literature on negotiation: the theory and research that emphasize the norms of harmony and cooperation in social interaction versus empirical evidence that negotiations in East Asia are highly competitive. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dancing on the Slippery Slope: The Effects of Appropriate Versus Inappropriate Competitive Tactics on Negotiation Process and Outcome

As negotiation is critical to all forms of organizational decision-making, researchers have shown an interest in understanding how the flow of information (valid and otherwise) influences this process. Often, competitive, questionable, and unethical tactics have been treated as interchangeable in these studies, despite presumed differences in appropriateness. The purpose of this study was to examine the similarities and differences in negotiators’ use and efficacy of appropriate competitive tactics (e.g., exaggerated offers) versus inappropriate competitive tactics (e.g., factual misrepresentations), primarily through a negotiation simulation. The study found that although these two categories of tactics were correlated in terms of overall use, appropriate competitive behaviors were used more frequently, especially early in negotiations, and these behaviors often resulted in comparable responses from counterparts. While ultimately increasing the likelihood of a negotiation impasse, the use of appropriate competitive tactics improved an individual’s substantive outcome where agreements could be reached. Inappropriate competitive tactics were likely to increase in number the sooner they were first employed in negotiations, with a response of inappropriate competitive tactics to the first use of competitive tactics increasing the likelihood of subsequent use of inappropriate tactics. The implications of these and other findings for both practitioners and future research are discussed.

Cultural Effects on Relationality in Negotiations: An Experimental Study

This paper empirically examines the role of relationality in negotiations and how it varies in different cultural settings. Using a two-session buyer-seller negotiation simulation, this research shows that negotiators' relational self-construal (RSC) enhances their relational commitment to the on-going negotiations, which leads to a higher level of relational capital accumulated at the end of negotiations. The impact of RSC on relational commitment as well as the impact of relational commitment on counterparts' relational capital is stronger for negotiators with a high (as opposed to low) relational cultural background. At the dyadic level, intercultural context reduces the impact of relational commitment on relational capital when compared with intracultural context. The findings offer important theoretical and practical implications regarding how relationality, when interacting with cultural factors, functions in negotiations.

Bringing Diplomacy into the Classroom: Stimulating Student Engagement Through a Simulated Treaty Negotiation

This article carefully critiques existing educational literature in relation to simulations, identifying some methodological flaws in the relevant empirical studies, but also pointing to a strong correlation between simulations and student engagement in studies involving a range of methodologies. The article builds on this literature by reporting the findings of empirical research relating to a treaty simulation based on the Paris climate agreement. These findings support the value of treaty simulations in enhancing student engagement. The value of simulations as an effective method to assess both skills and conceptual knowledge is also analysed using a model based on Biggs’ ‘constructive alignment’ approach. The article provides a complete set of materials for running an international treaty negotiation simulation exercise which can be utilized in international law, international relations, international environmental law and negotiation subjects at university. This exercise places an emphasis on the teaching of negotiation skills and developing conceptual knowledge through stimulating student engagement. The simulation is designed to be time-effective, to mitigate any trade-offs with respect to the coverage of other course content. It is also largely free-standing and can be easily adapted to any subjects in which negotiation skills are relevant, including those suggested above.

Does Emotional Intelligence Matter in Interpersonal Processes? The Mediating Role of Emotion Management

Researchers have identified emotional intelligence (EI) as an important individual characteristic that predicts interpersonal effectiveness. In this study, we identified three potential areas of emotion management (emotion expression, emotion recognition, and shaping counterpart emotion) that may be promoted by intrapersonal and interpersonal EI, and may mediate the effects of EI on interpersonal process and outcomes. Our analysis of data from a dyadic negotiation simulation indicates that EI predicts one aspect of emotion management (shaping counterpart emotion). Intrapersonal EI (but not interpersonal EI) increased counterpart positive emotion and decreased counterpart negative emotion during the negotiation simulation. Nevertheless, the overall relationship between EI and emotion management was weak. The present study highlighted the need for clearly conceptualizing and investigating emotional management through which individuals accrue interpersonal and performance benefits.

Severance Pay and the Older Worker: Negotiated Versus Litigated Outcomes Under Canadian Common Law

The North American workforce is aging and workers are increasingly working beyond normal retirement age. Although mandatory retirement has largely been abandoned in Canada, employers still have the common law right to terminate employees without just cause by giving reasonable notice of dismissal. Where no, or insufficient, notice is given, the dismissed employee can file a civil action for wrongful dismissal. This article examines whether older workers are treated differently relative to younger workers in the assessment of reasonable notice. This question is examined in both an experimental negotiation simulation and by a statistical analysis of all Canadian appellate court decisions addressing reasonable notice issued during the 12-year period from 2000 to 2011.

From International Regime Construction to Action: The Past, Present, and Future of Bargaining the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

Banning the Bang or the Bomb? Negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Regime. Edited by Mordechai Melamud, Paul Meerts, I. William Zartman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 373 pp., $99 hardcover (ISBN: 978-1-107-04400-5). In Banning the Bang or the Bomb? , the editors and members of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN) Steering Committee gather an eclectic group of scholars and practitioners to analyze the negotiations over the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and its Organization (CTBTO), which is charged with implementing a monitoring and verification regime, including special on-site inspections (OSI). The manual pinpoints efforts toward the prohibition of nuclear weapon testing as a model of international regime-building, and casts lights on the challenges inspectors will face by drawing lessons from OSI negotiation simulations. Not only is the contributors' expertise eclectic, but so is the framework followed throughout the book, which reaches beyond IR disciplinary boundaries by combining realist and constructivist understandings to capture the essence and evolution of conflicting interests and preferences. Material and non-material factors, as well as distributive (win-lose) and integrative (win-win) negotiation strategies, are important facets to take into account in a holistic examination of international arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation negotiations such as this one. The book's title highlights the contested relations between banning nuclear weapon testing (non-proliferation), or nukes tout court (disarmament), and the different security interests of the regime creators. Designing and negotiating international regimes are recursive activities in which the parties involved need to first agree on general guiding principles and common understandings, and then …

The construction of Dynamical Negotiation Networks depending on need for cognitive closure

When people communicate, they create shared representations of reality—a common ground of meaning. This article concerns mapping the dynamic process through which people create such common ground during an interaction. The Dynamic Negotiation Network methodology allows us to investigate the structure of shared understanding that negotiators come to as they reach an agreement through interaction. We also look at how negotiator characteristics can influence communication and, in effect, the shared reality that is generated. Our preliminary qualitative findings suggest that individuals who have a high need for cognitive closure, that is, who are eager to maintain their way of viewing the world, create more complex meaning structures when communicating than do people whose need for cognitive closure is low, that is, who are more flexible in negotiating the form a shared reality should take. Complex structures are characterized by more skewed distributions of connections between elements. The communication contexts we use are transcriptions of a dyadic negotiation simulation.

Effects of Implicit Negotiation Beliefs and Moral Disengagement on Negotiator Attitudes and Deceptive Behavior

In three studies, we examined the relationship between implicit negotiation beliefs, moral disengagement, and a negotiator’s ethical attitudes and behavior. Study 1 found correlations between an entity theory that negotiation skills are fixed rather than malleable, moral disengagement, and appropriateness of marginally ethical negotiation tactics. Mediation analysis supported a model in which moral disengagement facilitated the relationship between entity theory and support for unethical tactics. Study 2 provided additional support for the mediation model in a sample of MBA students, whereby predispositions to morally disengage mediated the effect of dispositional entity beliefs on unethical behavior in a negotiation exercise. In study 3, we manipulated implicit beliefs prior to a negotiation simulation and found that entity beliefs predict deception through two sequential mediators, extreme opening bids and state moral disengagement.

Negotiating in a Foreign Language

This study examines characteristic features of simulated negotiations between native and non-native speakers. The difficulties encountered by the non-native group are stratified according to footing, where five different layers are found: interpersonal, intergroup, intercultural, interlanguage, and game-frame.

Designing a multi-issues negotiation support system based on prospect theory

Considering a prospect-theory type marginal utility function, the S-shape value function is utilized to encode the preferences of negotiators. This article presents the framework of a purchase negotiation support system. Based on the proposed framework, a prototype system was developed to carry on multi-issue decision problems during the purchase negotiation process. To examine the feasibility of using the value function to represent players’ preferences in the negotiation system, we examined the final agreements from 25 simulated negotiation scenarios using two different preference settings.

Knowledge of Opponents’ Power in Power-Asymmetric Negotiations: Whose Knowledge Shapes the Structure of Outcomes?

This article focuses on dyadic negotiations in which negotiators have asymmetric best alternatives to the negotiated agreement (BATNAs). The article sets out to contribute to this domain, arguing that it is important to consider negotiators’ knowledge of their opponents’ BATNAs. The study uses a job negotiation simulation and examined the effects of the knowledge of opponents' BATNAs on agreement efficiency (indexed by joint outcome) and negotiators' abilities to claim values (bargaining strength). In a 2 x 2 experiment, findings indicated that strong negotiators’ knowledge of opponents’ BATNAs increases their bargaining strength but hinders their efficiency; weak negotiators’ knowledge alone reduces their bargaining strength but increases efficiency; and the detrimental impact of strong negotiators’ knowledge on efficiency outweighs the benefit of weak negotiators’ knowledge. The impact of knowledge on efficiency depends on which party has access to it. Paradoxically, weakness leads to efficiency and strength can lead to “winning” an impoverished prize. Keywords: Negotiation, Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), Power Asymmetry, Knowledge To cite this document: Ricky Siu Wong, of Opponents’ Power in Power-Asymmetric Negotiations: Whose Knowledge Shapes the Structure of Outcomes?, Contemporary Management Research, Vol.11, No.2, pp.117-142, 2015. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/cmr.12984

How to dissolve fixed-pie bias in negotiation? Social antecedents and the mediating effect of mental-model adjustment

Summary Fixed-pie bias, defined as the erroneous belief that the other negotiation party's interest is directly opposite to one's own, has been a consistent hurdle that negotiators must overcome in their efforts to achieve optimal negotiation outcomes. In this study, we explore the underlying cognitive mechanism and the social antecedents of fixed-pie bias reduction in negotiation. Using data from a negotiation simulation with 256 participants, we found that mental-model adjustments made by negotiators could effectively decrease fixed-pie bias. More interestingly, we also found that negotiators were less likely to reduce fixed-pie bias when negotiating with an in-group member than with an out-group member but only under a high accountability condition. Finally, we found that mental-model adjustment mediated the effects of the aforementioned social antecedents (in-groupness and accountability) on reduced fixed-pie bias. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.