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r Academy of Management Perspectives 2019, Vol. 33, No. 1, 3–11. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2018.0043
S Y M P O S I U M
ETHICS IN NEGOTIATION: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES
BRIAN C. GUNIA Johns Hopkins University
Why do negotiators act ethically or unethically? What happens after they do? Despite accumulating evidence on the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical be- havior in non-negotiation situations, surprisingly few attempts have been made to ex- amine these issues systematically within the negotiation context. This is problematic because it contributes to the somewhat stale viewpoint that unethical negotiation be- havior is both inevitable and uniformly harmful. It also impedes progress in both the negotiation and the behavioral ethics literatures and limits our field’s ability to train ethical negotiators. As a step toward refreshing the field’s perspective on the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical negotiation behavior, the current symposium assembles four papers by leading scholars of ethics and negotiation. Collectively, they aim to provide a bird’s-eye view on the numerous causes (e.g., moral character, ethical fading, environmental cues) and surprisingly diverse consequences attending ethical and unethical negotiation, both reviewing current knowledge and looking to the future. Overall, we suggest that unethical behavior is not inevitable in negotiation nor neces- sarily detrimental for either negotiator. Rather, science can reliably anticipate negoti- ators’ ethical choices and the consequences that attend them—and urgently should.
Why do negotiators act ethically or unethically? Despite a vast trove of psychological research on the drivers of ethical and unethical behavior in non- negotiation situations (for summaries, see Moore & Gino, 2015; Zhang, Gino, & Bazerman, 2014), surpris- ingly few attempts have been made to catalog and theoretically ground the set of reasons why negotiators adopt ethical orunethical approachesat thebargaining table. This is problematic because it contributes to the stale yet prevalent view that, in negotiation, ethical behavior is impossible and unethical behavior is in- evitable. In addition to conflicting with the available evidence, this view impedes progress in both the ne- gotiation and the behavioral ethics literatures and limits our ability to train ethical negotiators.
And what are the consequences of ethical or un- ethical negotiating? In terms of unethical negotiating, the answer appears relatively obvious, as many stud- ies have documented the numerous negative conse- quences of deception for both the deceiver and the deceived. Although deceptive negotiators may extract some short-term benefits (e.g., Boles, Croson, & Murnighan, 2000; Rogers, Zeckhauser, Gino, Norton, & Schweitzer, 2016; Schweitzer, DeChurch, & Gibson,
2005), deception is seen as quite detrimental overall. As just a few of the many examples, deception reduces trust (e.g., Rogers et al., 2016), prompts retaliation (e.g., Boles et al., 2000), and harms the deceiver’s eco- nomic outcomes (Croson, Boles, & Murnighan, 2003).
The near consensus is illusory, however, as the great majority of the just-mentioned papers study a very specific unethical behavior: self-interested de- ception in which an individual overtly provides in- accurate information. We know much less about the many other types of unethical behavior documented in psychological studies of non-negotiation situa- tions, and virtually nothing about the consequences of overt ethicality in negotiation. This too is prob- lematic, as it contributes to the equally stale view- point that deception in negotiation is necessarily harmful, at least for thedeceived and probably for the deceiver. In addition to conflicting with some of the available evidence and impeding theoretical prog- ress, this view leaves us with few explanations for the proliferation of deception in real negotiations (Schweitzer, 2001).
We assembled the current symposium in hopes of refreshing the field’s perspective on the causes and
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consequences of ethical and unethical negotiation. In so doing, our goals were to 1) identify insights from other fields (particularly psychology) that could ad- vance research on ethics in negotiation, 2) iden- tify insights from negotiation that could advance research in other fields (particularly macro-level management areas), and 3) promote ethical negotia- tion in the real world. The four symposium papers, each written by authors with expertise in both ethics and negotiation, briefly summarize the state of the art on a particular aspect of ethics in negotiation. More important, each also offers a unique perspective that challenges and advances our understanding of the topic. Finally, each at least implicitly draws out the implications for related research areas, building missing bridges and highlighting pressing and often intriguing areas for future research.
Three symposium papers consider causes of ethi- cal and unethical negotiation, drawing from the psychological and organizational behavior work on behavioral ethics to discuss causes rarely studied in the negotiation literature: moral character (Morse & Cohen), ethical fading (Rees, Tenbrunsel, & Bazer- man), and environmental cues (Gunia). As a group, these papers apply the psychological insight that personal and situational factors interact to shape behavior in many situations (Ross & Nisbett, 2011) to ethics in negotiation. The final symposium paper (Gaspar, Methasani, & Schweitzer) develops an in- tegrative model detailing the surprising diversity of consequences that attend negotiators’ choice to de- ceive. We include only one paper on consequences by design, as this paper assumes a higher level of analysis, presenting a model that seeks to cover the current evidentiary base in total. Collectively, the symposium aims to offer a bird’s-eye view of the causes and consequences of ethics in negotiation, both as we see them today and as the contributors believe we should see them tomorrow.
Insum,thissymposiumseeks tomovethescholarly conversationbeyond the viewthatunethicalbehavior is inevitable and uniformly harmful in negotiation. Instead, these papers advance the innovative per- spective that unethical as well as overtly ethical be- haviors arise among certain scientifically predictable individuals, becauseof certain predictable situational factors, with certain predictable costs and benefits. We hope these ideas will interest an array of scholars from across academic management.
In particular, we hope management scholars who do not specialize in negotiation will walk away with a refined appreciation of the ethical choices and conse- quences that real negotiators face, perhaps concluding
that ethical negotiationispossibleeven thoughunethical negotiation can be surprisingly beneficial. Additionally, we hope these scholars find connections to their own work, particularly on topics related to ethics (e.g., value- based decisions such as corporate social responsibility, consumer relations, and crisis management) or negotia- tion (e.g., interdependent decisions such as top man- agement team interactions, strategic alliances, and CEO–board relations). Of course, we also hope the sym- posium benefits scholars of negotiation and/or behav- ioralethics,forwhomitmapsoutthelandscapeofcauses and consequences in current research as well as the nu- merous opportunities for future work. Finally, we hope the symposium interests negotiation teachers and prac- titioners who wish to elicit ethical negotiation in the real world, or at least understand the consequences of ethical and unethical negotiating.
Having summarized our collective aims and the papers’ basic messages, the rest of this introduction will discuss but not seek to rehash the individual papers. Each speaks clearly on its own. Instead, I aim to draw out the key contributions and themes that emerge when considering the papers in gestalt, not- ing novel connections and intriguing implications for future research. In the process of detailing con- tributions arising specifically from the causes or con- sequences sections, I will build up to a discussion of themes that emerge from the whole symposium. The introduction concludes with a discussion of implica- tions for future research.
A final note before proceeding: Like most people who read the academic discourse on ethical and unethical behavior, you may be wondering what those terms mean. The short answer is that the symposium does not offer a unified definition. That is, these papers, like many in the literature, adopt differing definitions. Two symposium papers (Gunia’s and Gaspar et al.’s) focus on one of the most socially agreed upon forms of unethical behavior: deception. While few behavioral ethics scholars would dis- pute the operationalization of unethical behavior as deception, this operationalization is also rela- tively narrow. The other two papers take a broader view, focusing on a variety of stable tendencies (Morse & Cohen) or observable behaviors (Rees et al.). This diversity of definition is consistent with much of the behavioral ethics literature. Addition- ally, we consider it a distinct strength, as it allows us to pose provocative questions such as “Can we really define universally beneficial behaviors as un- ethical?” (implicit in Gaspar et al.) and “Is ethical negotiating necessarily desirable?” (implicit in Rees et al.). So we acknowledge the diversity but do not
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attempt to apologize for it, trusting our readers to judge the adequacy of our definitions and un- derstand the diversity of our viewpoints. In closing, thank you for your interest. We hope you find our perspectives useful.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF CAUSES PAPERS: ETHICAL � IMPOSSIBLE AND UNETHICAL � INEVITABLE
Negotiation practitioners and scholars have long assumed, at least implicitly, that unethical behavior and negotiation go hand in hand. Put differently, many people with varying perspectives on negotia- tion assume that ethical behavior is nearly impossible in negotiation situations or, equivalently, that un- ethical behavior is nearly inevitable. For example, a prominent practitioner-oriented article indicated that “when it comes to negotiation, the process is often strewn with falsehoods and deception” (Adler, 2007, p. 69). Likewise, scholars have noted the ubiquity of deception in negotiations, sometimes finding that deception occurs in the majority or even great ma- jority of negotiation situations (e.g., Aquino, 1998).
These claims are striking for several reasons, one of which is the high degree of consensus both within the scholarly community and across the scholarly– practitioner divide. Few aspects of human behavior would seem to attract such widespread social con- sensus. The assumption that negotiation 5 unethical behavior is also striking for its contrast with the re- lated but distinct behavioral ethics literature, which assumes that the causes of deception are worthy of scientific study. In particular, this literature pre- sumes that science can reliably predict which people will act unethically and when they will do so. If all negotiators in all negotiations deceive, the topic is not particularly interesting.
Luckily, the three symposium papers focusing on the causes of ethical and unethical negotiating cast doubt on this conclusion, suggesting that unethical behavior arises among certain scientifically predict- able negotiators, because of certain predictable fea- tures of the negotiation situation. In other words, the papers suggest that not all negotiators act unethically, and not all negotiation situations call for unethical behavior. One of the symposium’s key contribu- tions, then, is to cast doubt on the widespread as- sumptions that ethical 5 impossible and unethical 5 inevitable in negotiation. Another is to identify who the routinely ethical and unethical negotiators might be, as well as what the ethically supportive and ethically treacherous negotiation situations might be.
So what do they say? Morse and Cohen’s paper speaks to the first issue, suggesting that individuals high in moral character are naturally prone to ethical negotiating, resisting the sway of unethical behavior despite the distinct possibility that it might literally pay. The other two papers on causes speak to the second issue: Rees and colleagues suggest that cer- tain predictable features of the negotiation situation (e.g., incentives, competition) can contribute to ethical fading, which leads negotiators to display bounded ethicality. Gunia, in turn, suggests that certain predictable features of the physical and temporal environment surrounding the negotiators (e.g., money, time of day) can elicit both distributive and deceptive negotiating. Although several of the papers mention interactions between personal and situational factors (e.g., Morse and Cohen’s discus- sion of moral character in intergroup contexts), none focuses directly on this interaction—an important direction for future research discussed below.
Collectively, these papers call the inevitability of un- ethical behavior into question, moving toward a com- prehensive, scholarly view of the factors that cause ethical and unethical negotiating. In the process, they provide a powerful set of theoretical frameworks for applying the many and varied findings from the behavioral ethics literature to negotiation. Rees and colleagues’ focus on bounded ethicality and fading, for example, provides a lens for understanding how and why the psychological finding that groups lie more readily than individuals (Cohen, Gunia, Kim, & Murnighan, 2009) may apply to group negotiations.
In addition to questioning the inevitability of un- ethical negotiating, these papers also question its intentionality—the assumption that self-interested negotiators overtly choose to check their ethics at the door (Adler, 2007; Carson, Wokutch, & Murrmann, 1982). Indeed, none of the papers focuses on the intentional choice to deceive. Each focuses on a factor—moral character, ethical fading, or environ- mental cues—that presumably influences ethical or unethical negotiation at least partially outside of the negotiator’s awareness. This too brings the negotia- tion literature into closer alignment with the behav- ioral ethics literature. It also provides an important corrective to the devious and plotting portrait often painted of the negotiator. Finally, it highlights how many seemingly benign features of the situation— a negotiation room’s messiness (Gunia), for example—might lead to unexpected unethicality. Conversely, it highlights how otherwise dubious features of the situation—a negotiator’s complete,
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consolidated power (Rees et al.), for example—could lead to unexpected ethicality.
Finally, the three papers on causes (and particularly the two on situational causes) point toward inter- ventions that could encourage more ethical negotiation in the real world. Rees and colleagues’ paper, for ex- ample, suggests that slight differences in the words used to frame a negotiation can lead to entirely different sets of ethical assumptions. Gunia’s highlights a wide variety of ways that knowing negotiators could alter the physical or temporal environment in which the ne- gotiation unfolds (e.g., by wearing particular colors). While these perspectives raise new ethical questions of their own (covered in the future research section below), suffice it to say here that the papers afford resourceful negotiators with an array of ideas for stimulating their own and their counterparts’ ethical compasses.
Overall, the three papers covering the causes of ethical and unethical negotiating suggest that nego- tiation should not be confused with an ethical free- for-all. Instead, science offers substantial guidance about the negotiators among whom—and negotia- tion situations in which—ethical and unethical be- havior is likely. In this sense, the papers portray negotiations as much more akin to everyday situa- tions (studied by the behavioral ethics literature) than commonly assumed. Yet the papers also suggest that negotiations—and especially their socially in- teractive features—introduce interesting wrinkles of their own. As described below, the papers collec- tively seek to avoid a trade deficit with the behavioral ethics literature by exporting this idea and others, even as they import decades of useful findings.
CONTRIBUTIONS OF CONSEQUENCES PAPER: ETHICAL � DESIRABLE AND UNETHICAL � HARMFUL
Negotiation practitioners and scholars have also as- sumed, at least implicitly, that unethical behavior in negotiation is inherently and necessarily bad for the deceived and probably for the deceiver. For example, Shell (1991, p. 99) concluded an article on the legality and ethicality of lying in negotiation by saying: “In negotiation, people who rely on the letter of legal rules as a strategy for plotting unethical conduct are likely to get indeeptrouble.But peoplewhorelyonacultivated sense of right and wrong to guide them in legal matters are likely to do well.” Likewise, authors such as Adler (2007) and Carson et al. (1982) clearly suggested that deceived negotiators tend to suffer serious harm. Fi- nally, scholars have long argued that deception in negotiation is immoral (e.g., Aquino, 1998; Treviño,
den Nieuwenboer, & Kish-Gephart, 2014). And they have often documented the ubiquitous consequences of unethical negotiation behavior and especially de- ception, showing, for example, that deception often harms deceivers by reducing their perceived trust- worthiness (e.g., Rogers et al., 2016), motivating their counterparts to retaliate (e.g., Boles et al., 2000), and hampering their economic outcomes (Croson et al., 2003). Likewise, deceived negotiators often perform worse (Rogers et al., 2016; Schweitzer et al., 2005), even when they detect the deception (and choose to spend economic resources punishing the deceiver; Boles et al., 2000).
Again, these claims are striking, both for the high degree of social consensus and for the contrast with behavioral ethics research, which increasingly as- sumes that the consequences of deception are worthy ofscientificstudy.Althoughresearchinthisareaisless voluminous than research on antecedents, accumu- lating evidence focusing specifically on deception clearly suggests that deception is not necessarily harmful for either party. Rather, this work indicates that deception is a multidimensional construct, the unpacking of which reveals its multifaceted and sometimes neutral or even beneficial effects for all concerned (Gaspar, Levine, & Schweitzer, 2015; Levine & Schweitzer, 2014, 2015). In contrast to these papers’ implication that the consequences of unethical behavior merit scientific study, the common assump- tion that deception in negotiation is primarily harmful suggests little need to inquire further.
Gaspar and colleagues’ symposium paper on the consequences of deception calls this assumption, too, into question. By highlighting the literature’s relatively narrow focus on “self-interested, in- formational lies of commission” (p. 62) and unpacking the multidimensional features of de- ception in negotiation, Gaspar and colleagues suggest that deception in negotiation is not neces- sarily harmful for the deceiver or even the deceived. Indeed, although it is easy to see how deception could benefit the deceiver in the short term, this paper highlights several contexts in which deception may benefit the deceived too—or at least serve the deceiver without substantially harming the de- ceived. In particular, the paper suggests that the ef- fects of deception in negotiation depend on three scientifically predictable dimensions of the decep- tion itself: intentionality (whether the deception is self-interested or prosocial), content (whether it in- volves information or emotions), and activity (whether it takes the form of commission, omission, or paltering). These dimensions form the basis of a
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deception consequence model (DCM) that suggests that deception is not necessarily harmful for either negotiator and can sometimes benefit both (e.g., in cases of prosocial deception). This also implies the reverse: that, at least in negotiations, ethical behavior may not always be desirable.
Thismodel and its implications affordamuchmore comprehensive view of deception’s consequences in negotiation as well as a corrective to the clichéd view that deception is necessarily and uniformly bad. In- deed, the model problematizes the use of the word “bad,” as it implicates a behavior—deception—that moral philosophers (e.g., Kant, 1785/1983) and ne- gotiation scholars (e.g., Aquino, 1998) have equated with “unethical.” But if the behavior benefits every- one, can we reasonably call it “bad”? And what about “unethical”? Or does negotiation offer a setting in which “unethical” behaviors can sometimes be con- sidered “good”? These are intriguing questions for both philosophers and scholars of negotiation— topics reminiscent of Rees and colleagues’ call for a scholarly consensus about the meaning and de- sirability of ethical behavior in negotiation.
More concretely, the DCM helps to pull back the curtain on the reasons why we observe deception in real-world negotiations. If deception is inherently “bad” for both negotiators, then a social scientist could reasonably expect to detect little in the real world, or at least among experienced negotiators. As discussed in the section above, however, scientists and practitioners make no such assumption: They tend to concur that deception in negotiation is ram- pant, with few exceptions for experience. Without the DCM, we have few tools to explain this conclusion. With the DCM, we know that at least some of the de- ception that emerges probably emerges for a scien- tifically predictable reason: because it potentially benefits both negotiators, or at least one without harming the other (much like a logrolling trade-off). Indeed, the model suggests that negotiators who de- ceive do not necessarily act irrationally or even self- interestedly; in some circumstances, their deception may reflect rationality or even benevolence.
Finally, and similarly to the section above, Gaspar and colleagues implicitly highlight many inter- ventions that could minimize deception’s costs in the real world. Negotiators inclined to deceive, for ex- ample, could at least direct their deception toward prosocial lies, emotional forms of misleading, or omission rather than commission. These implica- tions, again, raise ethical questions of their own, some of which I discuss below. Nevertheless, both the practical and the theoretical implications of Gaspar
and colleagues’ paper come through clearly: Ethi- cality is not always desirable, and unethicality not always harmful for either negotiator.
OVERALL THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
This symposium represents the first known attempt to collect a set of papers that consider the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical negotiating in tandem. Doing so is critical for several reasons. First, it provides a bird’s-eye view of ethical and unethical negotiating both before and after it happens, cataloging both what we know and what we need to know at both stages. Second, a concurrent consideration of causes and consequences helps us see why and how the causes might matter. Considering the costs and bene- fits of deception in negotiation, for example, helps us understand why we should care about a negotiation room’s lighting conditions (Gunia), as well as the pos- itive and negative consequences of a poorly lit room. Finally, considering both causes and consequences helps to highlight specific, interesting, and previously unconsidered research questions. To highlight just one, a reader of these papers might wonder whether a low- or high-character negotiator (Morse & Cohen) might find it easier to engage in mutually beneficial forms of prosocial deception (Gaspar et al.).
On a theoretical level, the papers collectively highlight a disconnect between the behavioral ethics literature and negotiation research. They paint the disconnect as puzzling, in that the two literatures have much in common. But they also paint it as surmountable and build numerous theoretical bridges, highlighting specific ways in which the two literatures could productively engage. Morse and Cohen, for example, provide an outline for applying psychological work on interindividual–intergroup discontinuity (e.g., Cohen, Montoya, & Insko, 2006) to negotiations. Overall, the papers import the basic psychological insight that the person, situation, and interaction between them can explain many aspects of human behavior (Ross & Nisbett, 2011), including deception (Treviño & Youngblood, 1990). At the same time, they export the negotiation literature’s insight that true, immersive social interactions with real individuals have fundamentally different qual- ities than interactions with briefly encountered or imagined others. Because the behavioral ethics lit- erature has tended to focus on the latter (albeit not exclusively), it may benefit from the insights in some of these papers (e.g., Morse & Cohen, Gunia) about the ways in which true social interactions can alter basic psychological effects.
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In addition to the negotiation literature’s relevance for behavioral ethics, these papers highlight its rel- evance for other areas of management research, particularly those involving value-based and/or in- terdependent decision making. In other words, they suggest that negotiations offer a lens for un- derstanding a broader swath of the organizational world. Gunia, for example, provides a long list of organizational decision-making contexts in which environmental cues could influence interdependent individuals’ deception. He then offers mergers and acquisitions as an extended example, discussing the possible influence of environmental factors such as office cleanliness, the consolidated organization’s logo, and disparate time zones on the decision makers’ ethical choices. Likewise, Rees and col- leagues draw out the implications of ethical fading and bounded ethicality for research in areas that rely on related theories of conflict and/or social exchange (e.g., human resource management, corporate strat- egy, and corporate reputation).
Collectively, these discussions point out that assumptions and findings about ethics in negotia- tion matter for a wider array of organizational situations—and the scholars who study them. For example, if the negotiation literature concludes that unethical behavior is inevitable and uniformly harmful, then scholars in other areas risk applying those conclusions with unintended consequences. Scholars of human resource management who draw from the negotiation literature, for example, might overestimate the likelihood of employees’ deception and also assume that employees hold overly self-interested motives. We hope that man- agement scholars who are not negotiation spe- cialists walk away from this symposium with the sense that deception is not inevitable nor neces- sarily harmful—that both the causes and conse- quences of ethics in negotiation and related settings are worthy of consideration and careful scientific study.
In sum, the symposium paints a new, nuanced picture of the causes and consequences of ethical and unethical negotiating. Drawing from psycho- logical and organizational behavior research on be- havioral ethics, it suggests that predictable people deceive, in predictable situations, with predictable costs and benefits. These conclusions push the ne- gotiation literature forward and generate important implications for the behavioral ethics literature as well as numerous macro-level management research literatures. We hope they also contribute to ethical negotiating in the real world.
IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ON ETHICS IN NEGOTIATION
This introduction concludes with a discussion of some intriguing research directions arising from the symposium papers. Each paper offers many specific and compelling ideas, which I will not reiterate. In- stead, I will again seek to abstract from the four papers as a whole, identifying high-level research priorities emerging from the papers in gestalt. At that level, the symposium papers suggest that the nego- tiation literature has already learned a great deal about ethical and unethical negotiation. They also suggest, however, that taking our understanding of ethics in negotiation to the next level will require some methodological and topical changes.
Starting with methodology, the papers suggest that research on ethics in negotiation is ready to move beyond main effect to moderator studies. That is, they urge future research to consider not just how particular causes influence ethics in negotiation, nor how ethical and unethical behaviors produce particular consequences. Rather, they suggest that future research should consider the conditions un- der which particular causes operate or particular consequences obtain. Morse and Cohen, for exam- ple, caution scholars that basic predictions about moral character may reverse in the intergroup con- text. Rees and colleagues emphasize the potential moderating role of time—particularly the point in the negotiation process when an individual con- templates unethical behavior. Gaspar and col- leagues suggest that interactions among the three dimensions of deception could produce complex patterns of consequences.
Despite the great potential associated with importing findings from behavioral ethics, the sym- posium papers also suggest that future studies of ethics in negotiation need to supplement and possi- bly move beyond the experimental paradigm often used and the WEIRD1 cultures often studied (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010) in that litera- ture. With respect to culture, our current conclusions may be limited to the specific cultural contexts in which the underlying studies were conducted. For example, Gaspar and colleagues note that emotional deception may send very different signals in Eastern versus Western cultures, but that the relative dearth of studies limits our ability to say much more. With respect to paradigm, the papers suggest that the
1 Western, educated, and from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries.
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experimental method—for all of its true benefits— may mask some important aspects of ethical negoti- ation in the real world. In particular, the experiments in the behavioral ethics literature tend to focus on short-term interactions between strangers (who may not meet or even exist). They do not tend to focus on true and immersive social interactions, the develop- ment of relationships, or the passage of time. Each of these areas seeds important topics for future research.
Although negotiations are true social inter- actions, the symposium papers ironically suggest that the literature needs to think more critically about the effects of true social interaction on ethics in negotiation. Particularly if the negotiation liter- ature imports findings from behavioral ethics, as the papers advise, it may need to pay special at- tention to the effects of the back-and-forth dialogue that constitutes negotiation. Morse and Cohen, for example, urge negotiation scholars to study the specific negotiation processes that arise when ne- gotiators with different levels of moral character interact. Gunia suggests that the social features of negotiation may amplify the documented effects of environmental cues, affording several pathways by which these cues could heighten deception. These papers imply that future negotiation research may want to use methodologies capable of capturing social interactions in more richness (e.g., case studies; observation; coding of behaviors, words, or nonverbals).
The symposium papers also urge future negotia- tion research to consider the interrelated issues of relationships and time. Many real-world negotia- tions take place between individuals with a preex- isting relationship. At a minimum, the negotiators may know something about each other’s reputation or may enter into a relationship after the negotia- tion. If the negotiation literature imports findings from behavioral ethics, several symposium papers caution scholars to consider the potentially mod- erating role of relationships. Deception seen as rel- atively minor or even expected in a lab study of strangers, for example, may strike the members of a long-term relationship as egregious (Lewicki & Wiethoff, 2000). Thus, future studies of ethics in negotiation may want to track negotiation dyads over time, as ethical temptations arise and the re- lationship develops or dissolves.
Relatedly, future studies may want to account for the passage of time, if only by studying the various phases of the negotiation process. As several sym- posium papers suggest, both behavioral ethics re- search and negotiation research tend to take a
snapshot of the decision phase—the point at which individuals are actually deciding whether to act ethically or unethically. Less research in either lit- erature considers the pre- or post-decision phases in which individuals are anticipating their decision or reflecting on and implementing it. Future research may want to carefully consider the phases of the negotiation (Weingart & Olekalns, 2004), particularly by considering the implementation phase (Mislin, Campagna, & Bottom, 2011). This work could ad- dress a particularly yawning gap: the lack of em- pirical research that studies the causes and consequences of ethical or unethical negotiation in tandem.
These implications are fairly general, but the symposium papers also highlight a variety of more specific implications. With respect to the causes of ethical and unethical negotiation, they suggest that more work on person x situation causes is urgently needed. Many social psychologists have suggested that the most complete and compelling psycho- logical theories consider both individual differ- ences and situational factors in tandem (Mischel & Shoda, 1998). Yet few studies of ethical or un- ethical negotiation consider the interaction be- tween the person and the situation. Morse and Cohen offer some concrete ideas about how to do so, and readers of this symposium could easily come up with others. For example, do negotiators with strong moral character (Morse & Cohen) dis- play less ethical fading when endowed with power (Rees et al.)?
Future research on antecedents of ethical negotia- tion may also wish to probethenonconsciousnature of the antecedents described here. How do nonconscious impulses to act unethically, driven by factors such as environmental cues (Gunia) or ethical fading (Rees et al.), inform and interact with conscious decisions to deceive? If decisions about unethical action in negoti- ation trace mainly to nonconscious factors, how do individualswithhighmoralcharacter(Morse&Cohen) counteract such factors? Such questions could seed intriguing research.
Additionally, future research on the antecedents of ethical negotiation could take a cue from Gaspar and colleagues by adopting the DCM and treating de- ception as a multidimensional construct. At present, most research on antecedents appears to treat decep- tion in negotiation as a dichotomous variable. Allow- ing for multiple types and forms of deception, as the DCM does, might lead to intriguing new insights about the influence of particular antecedents. As just one example, do overt symbols of wealth (Gunia)
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prompt the negotiator who observes them to display more informational or emotional deception in re- sponse? More generally, the DCM would seem to provide the behavioral ethics literature with a use- ful framework for organizing its findings.
Finally, the antecedent papers in this symposium could seed an intriguing new direction in lie-detection research. Past research on this topic has suggested that most people find it hard to detect deception from facial expressions or other overt indicators, rendering many commonlyacceptedmethodsofliedetectionunreliable (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991). Even if individuals cannot detect liars in action, though, the current symposium papers suggest that they may be able to detect the types of people or situations conducive to deception. In that vein, could negotiation research identify more reliable personal or situational “tells” that alert astute negotia- tors to the likelihood that their counterparts will lie?
In addition to these implications for research on causes, the symposium papers hold some interesting implicationsforresearchontheconsequencesofethical and unethical negotiating. In particular, many papers reviewed by Gaspar and colleagues document the con- sequences of conscious, intentional deception (whether self-interested or prosocial). As noted, though, this symposium tends to focus on nonconscious and rela- tively unintentional causes. Future research that ex- amines whether and how the consequences vary when thedeceptionoriginatesoutsideofconsciousawareness could be especially informative. Indeed, scholars might eventually build from such research to update the DCM, amendingtheintentionalitydimension or adding a fourth dimension to account for unintentional de- ception. Additionally, Gaspar and colleagues’ paper focuses on one type of unethical negotiation behavior— deception—and does not consider the consequences of ethical negotiation. This focus is consistent with the literature but also suggests that more research is needed on the consequences of other types of unethical nego- tiating, as well as the consequences (potentially both positive and negative) of overtly ethical negotiating (as well as what that looks like in practice).
Finally, although the great majority of the research reviewed in this symposium (as well as its overall philosophical orientation) is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the symposium raises two important nor- mative questions that any full examination of ethics in negotiation will eventually need to answer. The first relates to Rees and colleagues’ discussion section, which implores scholars across disciplines to collec- tively 1) define what “ethical” and “unethical” mean in negotiations, and 2) reach some consensus on whether ethical behavior is desirable and unethical behavior is
undesirable in negotiations. Without answers to these questions,theysuggest,descriptiveresearchonethicsin negotiationisconfusingatbestanddevoidofmeaningat worst. This tension is apparent in several other sympo- siumpapers,particularlyGasparandcolleagues’article, where the same sorts of behaviors could reasonably be labeled “deceptive” and “unethical” but also “proso- cial”and“beneficial.”Throughnofaultoftheseauthors, the moral status of certain negotiation behaviors re- mains ambiguous. As Rees and colleagues suggest, the field will eventually need to grapple with basic ques- tions of definition and normative ethicality. The SINS scale may offer a useful point of departure for explor- ing these issues (Robinson, Lewicki, & Donahue, 2000).
The second normative question suggested by the symposium arises if and when negotiation instructors and negotiators consider what to do with its findings. As noted, astute readers might walk away from these papers with a sophisticated set of nudges to stimulate their counterparts’ conscience—or even reduce the costs of their own intended deception. But is a keen sense of how to manipulate another person for per- sonal advantage, outside of their awareness, really an “ethical” takeaway? The problem is hardly confined to this symposium, as many of the core lessons in a negotiation course may involve benefiting from other people’sbiases(e.g.,bymakinganaggressivefirstoffer; e.g., Galinsky & Mussweiler, 2001). But scholars of negotiation and ethics, in particular, may have to confront the question of whether and how to ethically teach negotiators about other negotiators’ ethical blind spots.
Much remains to be done. Yet we hope this sympo- sium reveals that much has been done already—that muchisalreadyknownaboutethicsandnegotiation,in the negotiation literature but also in the related litera- ture on behavioral ethics. We sincerely hope that the symposium moves the field forward—and the world toward ethical negotiating.
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Brian C. Gunia (brian.gunia@jhu.edu) is an associate pro- fessor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research focuses on the simple ways that people can help themselves and their colleagues act more ethically and/or negotiate more effectively, especially by proactively reg- ulating their sleep patterns. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
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