Online Negotiation Research Articles

A little humor goes a long way? The influence of humor on offer acceptance in one-shot online negotiations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine whether the use of humor in one-shot online negotiations affects the chance that the target of the humor will accept the offer. This study/paper proposes two competing hypotheses in this specific context: humor could be perceived as impertinent and thus decrease offer acceptance, or it could be perceived as friendly and thus increase offer acceptance.Design/methodology/approachTo test these hypotheses, this study/paper conducted an experimental scenario study among 589 participants in a negotiation about selling a wardrobe on an online marketplace. Participants took the perspective of the seller, and this study/paper compared a condition in which the buyer used a joke versus a condition in which the buyer did not use a joke.FindingsThe use of humor by a buyer significantly increased the chance of offer acceptance by the seller. Without humor, 62% of sellers accepted the buyer’s offer. With humor, 82% of sellers accepted the offer. Further analysis suggests this is explained by the buyer being perceived as friendlier in the humor condition relative to the no humor condition. There were no effects on perceptions of buyer’s impertinence.Practical implicationsThe findings indicate that humor is beneficial for buyers in a one-shot online negotiation. On the flipside, this implies that sellers should be cautious about being manipulated into accepting inferior deals by buyers who use humor in one-shot online negotiations.Originality/valueThe significant increase in the number of transactions on online marketplaces (such as AliExpress or eBay) justifies having a fresh look at the role of humor in one-shot online negotiations that are at the core of such transactions. Research in this domain is relatively scarce. In particular, there is no study that specifically tests whether humor is beneficial or detrimental in one-shot online negotiations. This study/paper extends the existing literature to the area of one-shot online interactions characterized by psychological distance.

Exploring The Missing Link Between Trust in Business Negotiation and Virtual Work

This article addressed the relevance of Trust in online business negotiations. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, this article provides an overview of the literature on Trust, business negotiations, and virtual work to address the research gap on Trust in virtual business negotiations. Secondly, based on this overview, we developed a theoretical model encompassing factors, practices, and tools that impact Trust in online business negotiations. After a systematic review, key findings pointed out that Trust significantly influences the virtual negotiation environment. Also, we discovered that we need to study coherently defining the factors that influence Trust in the virtual environment and demonstrate how it is connected to the overall virtual negotiation process. We conclude that the factors, practices, and tools that directly influence online negotiations are distance, time, perceived distance, culture, available technology, and reputation.

Zooming out on bargaining tables: Exploring which conversation dynamics predict negotiation outcomes.

How much should you talk, pause, or interrupt your counterpart in negotiations? The present research zooms out on the macrostructure of negotiation conversations to examine how systematic differences in conversation dynamics-the structural and temporal patterns that arise from the presence or absence of speech between interlocutors-relate to objective and relational outcomes at the bargaining table. We examined 38,564 speech turns from 239 online negotiation recordings and derived, for each negotiator (N = 380), 16 measures pertaining to seven dimensions of conversation dynamics: speaking time, turn length, pauses, speech rate, interruptions, backchannels, and response time. Network analyses reveal that many of these measures are interconnected, with clusters of variables suggesting broad differences in negotiators' propensity to "talk vs. listen" and to mimic their counterparts. Regression and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) analyses further show that several measures uniquely predict objective and relational outcomes in videoconference negotiations. At the objective level, negotiators who speak more, faster, and with fewer pauses tend to get better deals. At the relational level, negotiators who refrain from interrupting and display more dynamic turn length (i.e., low similarity over successive turns) are better liked. Taken together, the results suggest that conversation dynamics could make or break deals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mediation services for resolving business disputes

The article examines the issue of online business dispute resolution (ODR) as a legal phenomenon. Special attention is paid to the analysis of online platforms that have proven themselves positively. Examples of domestic developments are also given. In modern conditions caused by globalization, the disappearance of borders and the formation of the world Internet community, the legal sphere undergoes transformations for effective functioning. The technological revolution, especially after the increased interest in Bitcoin, has opened up new opportunities for alternative dispute resolution in the online environment. Online mediation, online arbitration and even arbitration using the blockchain technology used in cryptocurrency have appeared. These forms of ODR are becoming increasingly popular. In situations where regulatory rules are created in the Internet space without the use of public legal instruments, self-regulation of relations on the Internet occurs. Often, such a process arises due to the need to regulate new objects of social relations, which at the state or transnational level can take a lot of time. The resolution of business disputes through online platforms is particularly relevant in connection with the Russian war of aggression, which significantly complicated the work of the courts.Thus, Internet service participants can create their own rules, and to ensure their functioning and protection, an online dispute resolution institute is necessary. The article defines the concept of ODR and analyzes its characteristics. Specific examples of the use of ODR in the practice of well-known Internet companies are also given. Advantages and disadvantages of ODR are considered, factors affecting the effectiveness of this method of dispute resolution are analyzed. The article also describes the types of online dispute resolution, in particular, online arbitration, online mediation and online negotiations are considered in detail. On the basis of the conducted research, a conclusion is made about the prerequisites for the development and popularization of online dispute resolution and the importance of ODR for self-regulation of relations is emphasized.

Effectiveness of In‐Person Versus Online Negotiation Teaching for Practitioners

Most negotiation courses have been taught in person. However, online education has become more prevalent over the past decade due to its flexibility, cost and time efficiency, and new digital technologies designed to compensate for the lack of personal contact. The global pandemic has accelerated this trend, raising the question of whether negotiation courses taught online are as effective as those taught in person. The few studies that have examined the effect of teaching modality on student performance were limited to undergraduate and graduate student samples and the results have been mixed. To contribute to this discussion, we conducted two studies with practitioners to examine whether online or in‐person instruction is more effective for teaching negotiation skills to experienced negotiators.

LEARNING BY DOING: THE BENEFITS OF ADOPTING AN ONLINE NEGOTIATION SUPPORT SYSTEM INTO AN ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES COURSE

The paper reports on the benefits of imbedding an online negotiation support system (NSS) into the experiential learning framework of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. Proponents of experiential learning projects in the second/foreign language classroom emphasize the benefits of learning by doing. To test the claim, the performances of students in two advanced level EAP courses at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, were compared. One course was developed with the principles of content-based (CBI) instruction, with input primarily from academic texts; the other course also used content-based instruction but was enhanced by an experiential learning project for which the online negotiation system was adopted. Participation in the project provided a novel learning experience for second language learners at Carleton, with counterparts from universities in three additional countries (Austria, Poland, and Taiwan) also participating. A statistical analysis of student grades showed that the students in the EAP course enhanced by the experiential learning project obtained significantly higher grades on the final assignment in comparison to the students in the “traditional” CBI course.The paper also demonstrates that this teaching and training system enhances learning by promoting learner autonomy, critical thinking, and academic language development. Relevant aspects of the experiential learning project led to enhanced learning outcomes, supporting the claim that learning by doing benefits language acquisition. The paper proposes a new experiential learning model, applicable to ESP/EAP instruction, i.e., the sustained-content experiential learning model which can be applied to any project that emphasizes learning through direct experience. The model depicts the importance of sequencing academic content tasks that build on each other allowing learners to accumulate knowledge and language and prepare them to engage in a meaningful, authentic communication. It also illustrates the importance of using reflection as an effective learning tool that helps develop critical thinking and analysis, skills necessary for academic success.

Egalitarian norm messaging increases human resources professionals' salary offers to women.

Across the globe, men make markedly more money than women, even within the same position. We introduce egalitarian norm messaging as a potential intervention to increase women's salaries and counter the gender pay gap. In two preregistered experiments with seasoned professionals (N = 435, work experience: M > 8 years, salary negotiations: M > 18 per year), we find a significant gender pay bias-Human Resources (HR) experts offered markedly lower salaries in an online negotiation to (simulated) female versus male candidates with identical qualifications. Moreover, the experiments show that dynamic (Experiments 1a and 2), as well as static egalitarian norm messages (Experiment 1a), increased salary offers to women. Exploratory mediation analyses suggest that the dynamic egalitarian norm effect was driven by HR professionals' feeling of working toward a shared goal of greater equity. A message that merely increased awareness of the pay gap did not elicit this feeling and did not significantly increase salary offers to women but resulted in fairly equal treatment of men and women (Experiment 2). While the egalitarian norm intervention significantly increased salary offers to women, it also unexpectedly reduced offers to men, thereby reversing the gender bias (Experiment 2). We discuss the theoretical contribution with regard to gender pay bias and egalitarian norm interventions, as well as applied implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Trust Climate in International Business-To-Business E-Negotiations: Antecedents, Processes, and Outcomes

ABSTRACT Purpose – This article explores the processes, antecedents, and outcome of the concept of trust climate in online negotiations through synchronous video conferencing between international buyers and sellers. Design/methodology/approach – By grounding the concept of trust climate in three complementary theories, and by drawing on the findings of prior research, this study specifies the concept and constructs a conceptual model (four propositions and moderating variables) for understanding trust climate’s processes, antecedents and outcome. Findings – Our proposal asserts that trust climate can result from e-negotiation interactions. A definition of trust climate developed from our research is presented, and it is differentiated from related concepts. Models of trust development indicate that trust develops gradually over time. Building a trust climate in the context of e-negotiation is more a matter of action and reaction in real-time interaction, rather than relationship evolution over time. Research limitations/implications – This research differentiates trust climate from similar concepts, adding theoretical insights toward a better understanding of this concept in online negotiation. The next step is empirical testing. Practical implications – The concept of trust climate should help managers better understand its development and provide valuable information to advance awareness of the processes and drivers of online international negotiation. In the time of COVID-19, there is an increased use of remote negotiation, including in the B2C domain with live streaming or between unions and governments, and this study can be useful for understanding the climate of trust. Originality – Prior research in B-to-B settings does not clearly distinguish between trust and trust climate, at best incorporating the concept into the relational atmosphere. This paper also contributes by deepening the discussion of the advantages of e-communication for the expeditious establishment of trust climate in online negotiations.

Anger Expression in Negotiation: The Effects of Communication Channels and Anger Intensity.

This research aimed to explore the effects of communication channels and anger intensity as factors determining how the expression of anger affects negotiation outcomes. Based on the “emotions as social information” (EASI) model and media richness theory, we tried to examine how anger expression influences both economic and psychological negotiation outcomes as a function of communication channels and explore its underlying mechanism. In Study 1, 470 participants were randomly assigned to one of the five experimental conditions-neutral, anger expression via text/emoticon/voice/video-and asked to participate in an online negotiation task. The results showed a significant main effect of communication channel; partner’s anger expression via communication channels richer in non-verbal cues (voice and video) led participants to make a higher concession and report lower satisfaction with negotiation and lower desire for future interaction with the same partner compared to anger expression via less rich channels (text and emoticon). The anger expression effects on psychological outcomes were partially explained by perceiver’s anger experience in response to anger display, which is consistent with the affective mechanism proposed by the EASI model. Study 2 examined whether the results of Study 1 could be attributable to the different levels of anger intensity perceived by the participants across different communication channels. Data analyses from 189 participants showed a significant main effect of anger intensity only with a desire for future interaction, but not with satisfaction and concession. The insignificant findings of the latter imply that the observed channel effect in Study 1 cannot be fully explained by the intensity effect.

An Asynchronous Online Negotiation Mechanism for Real-Time Peer-to-Peer Electricity Markets

Participants in electricity markets are becoming more proactive owing to the fast deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs) and the further development of demand-side management (DSM), which also boosts the emergence of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) market mechanisms. Moreover, the market is also required to operate in a real-time scheme in response to changes in generation and load to maintain power balance. It is highly desirable to propose and analyse novel approaches suitable for real-time P2P market mechanisms. These are challenging since most often involving a heavy computational burden, while the time available for negotiation in real-time is very short. Our core contribution is to design and analyse a novel asynchronous online optimization framework and related real-time P2P market negotiation mechanism, which can greatly reduce the computation and communication burden from two aspects. First, a novel online consensus alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm is proposed. It significantly reduces computation since only one iteration is performed for each agent at every time period. Second, the market operates in an asynchronous mode so that all agents can freely trade without waiting for idle or inactive neighboring agents. The sublinear regret upper bound is proved for our asynchronous online algorithm, which indicates that social welfare in the market can be maximized in the long run on average (over time). Simulations show that our algorithm enjoys good convergence performance, robustness, and fairness.

Intelligent Legal Tech to Empower Self-Represented Litigants

Legal technologies, or “legal tech,” are disrupting the practice of law and providing efficiencies for businesses around the globe. Indeed, legal tech often conjures up notions of billion-dollar businesses and highly sophisticated parties. However, one branch of legal tech that holds particular promise for less sophisticated parties is access to justice (“A2J”) through the use of online dispute resolution (“ODR”). This is because ODR uses technology to enable online claim diagnosis, negotiation, and mediation without the time, money, and stress of traditional court processes. Indeed, courts are now moving traffic ticket, landlord-tenant, personal injury, debt collection, and even divorce claims online. The hope is that legal tech such as online triage and dispute resolution systems will provide means for obtaining remedies for self- represented litigants (“SRLs”) and those who cannot otherwise afford traditional litigation. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of online processes, including court and administrative processes that traditionally occurred in person. Nonetheless, these online processes seem focused mainly on case management and communication, neglecting the need for more imaginative and innovative uses of technology. Accordingly, this Article proposes a six-module system for ODR programs and identifies gaps in development where new technologies are needed to advance A2J. Indeed, there is great room for the development of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and data analytics to assist SRLs and others in pursuit of remedies and justice.

Promoting Less Complex and More Honest Price Negotiations in the Online Used Car Market with Authenticated Data

Online peer-to-peer (P2P) sales of used and or high-value goods are gaining more and more relevance today. However, since potential buyers cannot physically examine the product quality during online sales, information asymmetries and consequently uncertainty and mistrust that already exist in offline sales are exacerbated in online markets. Authenticated data platforms have been proposed to solve these problems by providing authenticated data about the negotiation object, integrating it into text-based channels secured by IT. Yet, we know little about the dynamics of online negotiations today and the impact of the introduction of authenticated data on online negotiation behaviors. We address this research gap based on two experimental studies along with the example of online used car trade. We analyze users’ communicative and strategic actions in current P2P chat-based negotiations and examine how the introduction of authenticated data affects these behaviors using a conceptional model derived from literature. Our results show that authenticated data can promote less complex negotiation processes and more honest communication behavior between buyers and sellers. Further, the results indicate that chats with the availability of authenticated data can positively impact markets with information asymmetries. These insights provide valuable contributions for academics interested in the dynamics of online negotiations and the effects of authenticated data in text-based online negotiations. In addition, providers of trade platforms who aim to advance their P2P sales platforms benefit by achieving a competitive advantage and a higher number of customers.

Online Negotiations Techniques and Problems Facing

Online meeting is now a common way to start online work. This paper makes a challenge assignment of online meeting from perspective of enterprises and proposes possible solutions.

Learning-Based Synthesis of Social Laws in STRIPS

In a multi-agent environment, each agent must take into account not only the actions it must perform to achieve its goals, but also the behavior of other agents in the system, which usually requires some sort of coordination between the agents. One way to avoid the complexity of centralized planning and online negotiation between agents is to design an artificial social system. This system enacts a social law that restricts the behavior of the agents. A robust social law enables the agents to reach their goals while keeping them from interfering with each other. However, the problem of efficient synthesis of such laws is computationally hard, and previously proposed search techniques do not scale well. In this paper, we propose the use of graph neural networks to predict social laws from a graph-based representation of multi-agent systems. However, as this prediction can be wrong, we use heuristic search to correct possible mistakes in the network's prediction ensuring that the produced social law is indeed robust. Our empirical evaluation shows that this approach beat the previous state-of-the-art in social law synthesis, and that is can learn from an imperfect expert, even in the presence of noise.

Concession crossover in electronic negotiations

Abstract Negotiation is a joint decision making process involving making concessions by the parties. Concession-making may involve giving up negotiator’s utility and is an essential activity in the negotiation process. In the past it has been suggested by some authors that negotiators utility functions over the issues may not be linear. In this case, a phenomenon called “concession crossover” takes place, in which a negotiator may switch issues on which they choose to make concessions at some point in negotiations. This work sets to investigate the validity of such claims. To this end we introduce several concession-making models and use them for testing hypotheses. We have used a dataset from online negotiation experiments featuring a contract-signing case. The results support the claim that concession crossover does indeed occur.

The Human Touch in ODR: Trust, Empathy and Social Intuition in Online Negotiation and Mediation

As the field of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) has grown and evolved, it has often met resistance from practitioners and theorists alike. One core theme has always been that the interpersonal processes of negotiation and mediation are fundamentally dependent on an elusive quality or aspect dubbed 'the human touch'. The cold impersonal environment of the internet, the arguments went, is inherently bereft of the human touch.ODR had been growing rapidly even before the COVID-19 pandemic drove all forms of professional practice, including negotiation and mediation, online. The time has come, therefore, to reframe these objections into appreciative exploration:Just what is this 'human touch' and in what sense is it absent in online communication? How can practitioners regain the human touch, and bring it to bear in online interactions? Might there be ways in which we can imbue online negotiation and mediation processes with the human touch even beyond the levels encountered in-person interactions?To transform an ineffable notion into applicable theory and practice, the chapter outlines three key human-touch areas: trust, empathy, and social intuition. The chapter explains each area through a human-touch perspective. It then maps out the challenges to each in the online environment, and recommends helpful practices for enhancing each of these human-touch areas in online negotiation and mediation processes.

When Asking “What” and “How” Helps You Win: Mimicry of Interrogative Terms Facilitates Successful Online Negotiations

AbstractStrategic word mimicry during negotiations facilitates better outcomes. We explore mimicry of specific word categories and perceptions of rapport, trust, and liking as underlying mechanisms. Dyads took part in an online negotiation exercise in which word mimicry was manipulated: Participants were instructed to mimic each other’s words (both‐mimic), one participant mimicked the other (half‐mimic), or neither participant mimicked (neither‐mimic). When given a simple instruction to mimic their partner, participants mimicked both the style (personal pronouns, adverbs, linguistic style, interrogative terms) and the content (affiliation terms, power terms, and assents) of their partner’s messages. Mimicry was associated with greater joint and individual points gain and perceptions of rapport from the mimicked partner. Further, mimicry of interrogative terms (e.g., how, why) mediated positive effects of mimicry upon negotiation outcomes, suggesting the coordination of question asking between negotiators is an important strategy to create beneficial interactions and add value in negotiations.

Automated Synthesis of Social Laws in STRIPS

Agents operating in a multi-agent environment must consider not just their actions, but also those of the other agents in the system. Artificial social systems are a well-known means for coordinating a set of agents, without requiring centralized planning or online negotiation between agents. Artificial social systems enact a social law which restricts the agents from performing some actions under some circumstances. A robust social law prevents the agents from interfering with each other, but does not prevent them from achieving their goals. Previous work has addressed how to check if a given social law, formulated in a variant of ma-strips, is robust, via compilation to planning. However, the social law was manually specified. In this paper, we address the problem of automatically synthesizing a robust social law for a given multi-agent environment. We treat the problem of social law synthesis as a search through the space of possible social laws, relying on the robustness verification procedure as a goal test. We also show how to exploit additional information produced by the robustness verification procedure to guide the search.

Online Negotiation Process, Liquidation and Settlement in KARVY Stock Broking

In the earlier days, only brokers and companies utilized to hump way to the round hold mart but now online trading Bharat, of trading ensures trading for all. Internet also gives the required operation and acquisition on the hold activity as recovered as a precise reasoning of the happening of prices.
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The Lemon Car Game Across Cultures: Evidence of Relational Rationality

In cross-cultural business negotiation, culture is known to influence negotiation processes. As a lens to study this effect we deployed the Lemon Car Game, an online negotiation game developed for this purpose (Hofstede et al. in: Proceedings of 39th international simulation and gaming association conference (ISAGA). Technologia, Kaunas, pp 39–46, 2009a; Hofstede et al. in: David, Sichman (eds) Multi-agent-based simulation IX, international workshop, MABS 2008, revised selectedpapers, LNAI 5269. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–16, 2009b). In this article we report the results from the game, obtained from over 800 players from more than 70 countries. We employ several complementary analyses in a mixed-methods approach. Our findings show that to make sense of the players’ actions during negotiation, economic rationality falls short. A pan-cultural individual-level analysis of actions and stated intentions also fails to yield a coherent picture. Within countries, however, actions and intentions do cohere, as shown by an ecological country-level factor analysis, from which three factors emerge for the sellers at country level: trustworthiness, opportunism, and fairness. We conclude from these findings that, in this game, players are driven by what we call relational rationality: they are rational from the perspective of the social world in which they live, with interpersonal relationships weighing heavily. Relational rationality changes players’ perspective of economic rationality, and thus their observed behaviour in negotiation. Based on this evidence, we extrapolate that relational rationality significantly influences negotiation processes in all cultures.