Describe the art of negotiation in a global situation. What are the stages of negotiation and what role do styles of negotiation play.
Wendi L. Adair, associate professor of psychology, 4046 PAS, University of Waterloo, Water- loo, Ontario, N2L 3G1 Canada; tel.: 519-888-4567, ext. 38143; fax: 519-746-4147; e-mail: wladair@uwaterloo.ca. Masako Taylor, professor of business administration, Osaka Gakuin University, 2-36-1 Kishibe Minami, Suita, Osaka, Japan 564-8511; tel.: 81-6-6381-8434; fax: 81-6-6381-8455; e-mail: mstaylor@ogu.ac.jp/masakotaylor@gmail.com. Jihyun Chu, University of Waterloo, e-mail: jc3926@columbia.edu. Nicole Ethier, University of Water- loo, e-mail: naethier@gmail.com. Tracy Xiong, University of Waterloo. Tetsushi Okumura, professor, Nagoya City University; Jeanne Brett, DeWitt W. Buchanan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organization, Kellogg School of Management North- western University, Chicago; tel.: 847-491-8075; fax: 847-467-5700; e-mail: jmbrett@kel-
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Int. Studies of Mgt. & Org., vol. 43, no. 4, Winter 2013–14, pp. 6–25. © 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com. ISSN 0020–8825 (print)/ISSN 1558–0911 (online) DOI: 10.2753/IMO0020-8825430401
Wendi L. AdAir, MAsAko TAyLor, Jihyun Chu, niCoLe eThier, TrACy Xiong, TeTsushi okuMurA, And JeAnne BreTT
Effective Influence in Negotiation The Role of Culture and Framing
Abstract: These studies integrate research on social influence and negotiation to predict the effectiveness of influence strategies in the East and the West. Building on prior research documenting cultural differences in preferences for interests, rights, or power arguments (Tinsley 1998, 2001), we propose that framing such arguments as logical versus normative appeals will further explain cultural variation in influence-strategy effectiveness. We present results from a negotiation-vignette study demonstrating Canadian students are more responsive to arguments framed logically, whereas Chinese students are more responsive to arguments framed normatively, depending on the ethnicity of their counterpart. Then we present results from a negotiation simulation conducted by U.S. and Japanese dyads, indicating that these within-culture patterns of influence effectiveness support the social-psychological needs perspective and predict negotiation outcome. These findings offer extensions to existing theory on culture and negotiation and implications for managers in cross-cultural negotiation and conflict settings.
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Mastering negotiation in today’s global economy and multicultural workplace depends on understanding how culture impacts such factors as negotiators’ goals, strategy choice, communication, and interpersonal dynamics. While researchers have established many main effects of culture on negotiation behavior and dynam- ics (Brett 2007; Gunia et al. 2011; Liu 2011), this work has focused largely on the integrative, value-creating side of negotiation. How negotiators in different cultures claim value has received less attention, particularly in the area of social influence, or how negotiators construct and frame arguments to induce concessions or agreement from the other party. Our research applies the psychology of social influence to the question of how negotiators in the East and the West construct effective arguments.
We begin by reviewing the social-psychological needs perspective and argu- ing that an influence attempt in negotiation will be successful when it appeals to a target’s underlying needs (Chaiken, Wood, and Eagly 1996; Cialdini 1993). We focus on two different needs that have been shown to be sensitive to social-influence strategies: the need to be seen as logical and rational, and the need to be socially accepted. Applying this theorizing about influence to negotiation, we argue that a negotiator should be able to claim more value (receive more concessions) when using influence strategies that appeal to the target’s underlying needs that have been cued or activated by the sociocultural context of negotiation. In other words, a negotiator who is sensitive to upholding social norms in negotiation, for example letting a superior have her way, should be most responsive to an argument that is framed as an appeal to uphold social norms. Likewise, a negotiator who has strong needs for facts and objective truth should be convinced more easily with arguments framed according to logic.
We then propose that the negotiation context will activate a different set of needs for North American and East Asian negotiators. Based on cultural differences in how negotiation is typically conceptualized or framed (Gelfand et al. 2001), we argue that East Asian negotiators should be particularly sensitive to upholding social norms in the form of status recognition to superiors or maintaining company rules and precedent (Tinsley 1997). In contrast, we argue that North American negotiators will be attentive to arguments that appeal to logic. Prior theory has suggested and research has found evidence of Westerners preferring factual evidence and explicit logic in persuasion (Fu and Yukl 2000; Triandis 1994) in contexts of conflict man- agement and police negotiation (Beune et al. 2011; Ting-Toomey 1988). Thus, we propose that the negotiation context generates, or constructs, a different model of influence in negotiation for North Americans and East Asians.
logg.northwestern.edu. A previous version of this paper was presented at the International Association for Conflict Management Annual Conference, Kyoto, Japan, June 15–18, 2009. The authors thank Kathleen O’Connor and David Sally for assistance with data collection in the United States and the Cornell University Tokyo Alumni Club for assistance with data collection in Japan.
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Finally, we introduce the interests/rights/power model of dispute resolution to define three content areas that a negotiator may use to construct an argument (Ury, Brett, and Goldberg 1993). We propose that negotiators can frame the same inter- ests-, rights-, or power-based arguments using an information frame or a normative frame. Thus, prior research showing cultural preferences for interests-, rights-, or power-based arguments can be refined if we further examine how these arguments are framed. Our hypotheses predict that both argument content and framing will affect the negotiator’s effectiveness differently when used in Eastern and Western organizational contexts.
Our results across two studies demonstrate that interests-, rights-, and power- based arguments can be framed informationally or normatively to appeal to different negotiation targets. Negotiators in the East react more favorably to power-based arguments when framed normatively and Western negotiators react more strongly to interests- or rights-based arguments when framed informationally. We also show support for the underlying needs mechanism and demonstrate that how influence strategy and the target’s needs interact varies depending on the national culture context. For negotiators, we offer practical advice for the effective implementa- tion of influence strategies that includes having a repertoire of influence strate- gies, understanding the target’s needs, and heeding the cultural context in which negotiations take place.
Influence in negotiation
Negotiation research has largely ignored the study of social influence (Malhotra and Bazerman 2008), possibly because negotiation researchers have focused on identifying cognitive barriers to rationality (Bazerman et al. 2000), or because researchers have assumed that negotiators’ preferences are fixed and therefore not responsive to influence attempts (Malhotra and Bazerman 2008). However, real world negotiators, marketers, and salespeople alike will agree that negotiation in- volves using social influence to shift and reframe the target’s preferences to be in line with what one wants to accomplish. In fact, one of the world’s greatest influence researchers, Robert Cialdini (1993), regularly uses the negotiation context to test and illustrate principles of influence such as reciprocity or scarcity.
To influence is to redirect another person’s attitudes or behaviors. Classic social psychology distinguishes between informational and normative influence (Deutsch and Gerrard 1955; Turner 1991). Informational influence provides the target with your view of reality and seeks to change the target’s beliefs; normative influence provides a target with your view of what is socially acceptable and seeks to address the target’s desire for social approval (Deutsch and Gerrard 1955). A related perspective is that informational influence appeals to one’s sense of logic and rationality whereas norma- tive influence appeals to one’s desire to uphold social norms (Cialdini 1993).
Crafting a successful argument depends on understanding a target’s underly- ing needs and framing the argument to address those needs (Chaiken et al. 1996;
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Cialdini 1993; Turner 1991). For example, informational influence works because people are motivated to be logical and rational. The influence attempt provides them with information that suggests an alternative attitude is more rational and logical, and so they change. Normative influence works because people have a need to be liked, approved of, and respected by others. Normative influence informs the target that social norms and standards suggest an alternative attitude, and to conform to these social standards the target should change. In support of the needs mechanism, research has shown that individuals’ need for cognition and affect help explain their likely responses to different influence attempts (Haddock et al. 2008). We argue that the effectiveness of influence in negotiation can likewise be predicted based on the degree to which an argument appeals to an influence target’s need to be logical or need to uphold social norms.
Framing negotiation arguments to appeal to culturally distinct needs
Several lines of research suggest cultural variation in influence norms, citing a greater likelihood of rational influence in the West and emotional or normative influence in the East (Adair and Brett 2004) when considering persuasion in general (Johnstone 1989), and more specifically in the negotiation context (Adair and Brett 2004). Results of empirical research, however, have not been entirely consistent. Supporting theoretical predictions, Drake (1995) found that U.S. negotiators tended to frame arguments in terms of logic, whereas Taiwanese negotiators framed arguments around social roles and relationships. In the context of police interrogation, Buene et al. (2011) found that strategic sequences focusing on rationality were most eliciting confessions from low-context (i.e., preferring direct communication) Dutch suspects, whereas relational sequences were more effective with high-context (i.e., preferring indirect communica- tion) Middle Eastern suspects. However, Adair et al. (2004) studied negotiators’ use of persuasive messages and found that Japanese negotiators were more likely than U.S. negotiators to use both persuasion containing facts or logic and persuasion contain- ing a threat. And Tinsley (2001) reports that in the West (Germany and the United States), negotiators used more arguments based on parties’ underlying interests, but in the East (Japan) negotiators used more power-based arguments.
We propose that one reason this prior research does not paint an entirely consis- tent picture is that researchers have measured culturally normative influence in many different ways, including negotiators’ use of influence, negotiators’ preferences for influence, and negotiators’ response to influence. Another possible explanation for inconsistent prior findings is that researchers have tested message content, such as status and mutuality, or message framing, such as appeals to informational or normative needs, but not both together. If negotiators from different cultures have different needs and motives, then an argument with the same content may have very different effects when framed informationally or normatively.
Several empirical studies suggest cultural differences in the prevalence of
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various influence-related needs. In one study comparing U.S. (individualistic) and Polish (collectivist) participants (Cialdini et al. 2001), researchers found that compliance was greater following appeals to social proof in Poland and to com- mitment/consistency in the United States. These cultural differences were due to strong needs to demonstrate social responsibility (i.e., upholding social norms, being respected by others) characteristic of collectivist cultures (Cialdini et al. 2001), and the strong need to be accurate and consistent with one’s own past ac- tions characteristic of individualistic cultures (Cialdini et al. 2001). Evidence that East Asians are more likely to comply with social norms than North Americans can also be found in some research on behavioral intentions. In a study of purchase intentions, researchers found that whereas U.S. respondents based their purchasing decisions on how they felt about the objective information such as brand, Korean respondents placed greater emphasis on what the “right thing to do” was in the society (Lee and Green 1991).
Together, this literature suggests that when responding to an influence attempt, East Asians have a stronger need to uphold social norms and North Americans have a stronger need to adhere to logic. Such differences may be particularly prevalent in an organizational negotiation context. The negotiation context unavoidably engenders role distinctions (buyer/seller, superior/subordinate) that confer status and provide information about social power and socially appropriate behavior. Prior research has found that East Asians are more likely to conceptualize negotiation in terms of relationships, social networks, roles, and face (Gelfand et al. 2001; Tinsley 1997). Thus, in Eastern cultures, the negotiation context should activate the need to uphold social norms that dictate role-appropriate behavior. Hence influence attempts that appeal to social norms should be consistent with the cognitive representation of the situation and therefore easy to follow (Morris and Gelfand 2004). In contrast, in the West we expect the negotiation context will activate informational needs that require actions that maintain a sense of rationality and logic that go beyond social acceptance. Hence influence attempts that appeal to needs for logic should be consistent with the cognitive representation of the situation and therefore easy to follow (Morris and Gelfand 2004).
Culture and the framing of interests, rights, and power arguments
One of the few models that has generated empirical research into social influence strategies in negotiation is the interests, rights, and power (I/R/P) model of conflict resolution (Ury et al. 1993). These authors propose that interests, rights, and power are three strategies that negotiators use to influence the outcome of a dispute. In terms of social influence in negotiation, an interests-based argument proposes an integrative or value-creating agreement that meets the target’s underlying concerns, namely, the reasons why the negotiator is taking the position. A rights-based argu- ment suggests an agreement in which value is claimed by the party whose position is supported by an objective standard, for example contract law or corporate policy.
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A power-based argument references one’s power to impose sanctions to be borne by the target if the target does not concede. In other words, I/R/P arguments attempt to redirect the other party’s thinking and behavior.
Importantly, influence arguments can be framed to appeal to either informational or normative needs. For example, consider the following power-based argument offered by an executive trying to get a coworker to agree with her growth forecasts: “I have been in this company longer than you, and I have many years of facts and figures that support my assessment of your division’s growth potential.” This ar- gument is power-based because the negotiator refers to her tenure and expertise. However, a target’s decision to concede could be based on informational factors (i.e., “many years of facts and figures”) or social-normative factors (i.e., “I have been in this company longer than you”), or possibly both.
As noted above, rights arguments refer to an objective standard to persuade a party to concede. As a further example of argument framing, consider the follow- ing rights appeal from a negotiator trying to nail down a five-year contract when his counterpart is suggesting just three years: “I want a five-year contract, they are standard for our industry.” This same content could be followed by an informational frame—“I have data here on the last 20 contracts, and all of them are 5 years in duration”—or a rational frame—“The five-year model works well, and it doesn’t make sense to change what works well.” The main message content could alterna- tively be followed with a normative frame: “The industry expects us to uphold their standard practice,” or “It is not expected for someone at your level to change the terms, just get the deal done.” The first two examples appeal to the counterpart’s need for logic and rationality, whereas the second two examples appeal to the counterpart’s desire to uphold social norms and do what is expected of him.
Because influence arguments can be framed informationally or normatively, and prior research suggests that in an organizational conflict Western negotiators will have greater needs for logic whereas Eastern negotiators will have greater needs to uphold social norms, we propose to test cultural variation in responsiveness to influence as a function of message content and message framing. We base our predictions on prior work by Tinsley (1998, 2001) that found interests and rights arguments more effective in Euro-Western cultures and power arguments more effective in Eastern cultures. We extend this existing research in two ways. First, we predict that Western negotiators will respond most favorably to interests or rights arguments framed informationally (versus normatively) and Eastern negotiators will respond most favorably to power arguments framed normatively (versus informationally). Second, we predict that these effects can be explained by a needs mechanism.
Hypotheses
Our first set of hypotheses test whether framing impacts the effectiveness of a negotiator’s influence attempts in the East and the West, focusing on interests- and power-based arguments.
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Hypothesis 1a: Eastern negotiators will rate power-normative influence strategies as more effective than Western negotiators will.
Hypothesis 1b: Western negotiators will rate interests-informational influence strategies as more effective than Eastern negotiators will.
Our second set of hypotheses focuses on rights- and power-based arguments to test the psychology-of-influence needs-based prediction that negotiators will claim more value when their influence strategy appeals to the target’s underlying needs.
Hypothesis 2a: for Western negotiators, rights-based persuasion will interact with partner’s informational needs to predict value claimed.
Hypothesis 2b: for Eastern negotiators, power-based persuasion will interact with partner’s normative needs to predict value claimed.
Study 1
Study 1 employed a vignette method to test H1. Participants were from China (representing an Eastern culture) and Canada (representing a Western culture). We examined participants’ effectiveness ratings for four different influence strate- gies (power-normative, power-informational, interests-normative, and interests- informational) offered by a professor in a culturally homogeneous or culturally heterogeneous student-professor conflict.
Sample
A total of 94 participants completed the study (41 Canadian and 27 Chinese) in exchange for research credit in a course. Chinese participants were born in main- land China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong and their first language was either Mandarin or Cantonese. Canadian participants were all Caucasian Canadian, born in Canada, and spoke English as their first language. The average age of the sample was 21 years old (Sd = 5.08); 26 percent of the participants were male, and 64 percent were female.
Procedure
Participants read a short vignette and were asked to imagine themselves in a situ- ation where they had to resolve a grade conflict with a university professor (Ap- pendix A). The vignette was designed with experimental realism and pilot tested with Chinese and Canadian student samples. Students imagined they are about to graduate, with plans for family celebrations followed by a summer of travel, when they discover they are 2 percent short of the necessary passing grade in one course. Students imagine approaching the professor (Dr. Chan or Dr. McKenzie) and ask-
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ing the professor to reconsider the grade. The professor declines to change the grade. After reading the vignette, participants filled out a short quiz to assure they had attended to information in the vignette. Participants then read eight possible responses from the professor, justifying why the professor is not willing to change the grade. Each response reflected an influence strategy the professor might use to convince the participant to accept the grade decision. Participants then indicated how effective each influence statement would be, relative to the other statements, in convincing them to accept the professor’s decision.
Measures
The study employed a 2 (participant culture: Chinese or Canadian) x 2 (professor ethnicity: Chinese or Canadian) design. Our predictor, Culture, was coded 0 for Canadian participants and 1 for Chinese participants. The dependent measure was computed from participants’ rank order of influence statements offered by the profes- sor (presented in random order). The eight influence statements were adapted to the vignette context from the code for interests, rights, and power persuasion offered in Tinsley (2001). We created two arguments for each of four influence types: interests- informational, interests-normative, power-informational, and power-normative (Table 1). Participants were asked to rank order the effectiveness of the eight influence state- ments given by the professor from 1 (most effective) to 8 (least effective).
Results
We first tested our hypotheses using the Mann-Whitney Test, the nonparametric equivalent of an independent t-test. Results of this test did not reveal any significant differences in ranking order based on participant culture or professor nationality. A potential reason why we did not find significant differences is that the 1–8 prefer- ence ranking scale was too refined. For example, if participants gave ratings of 4 and 5, respectively, for interests-informational statements and Power-Normative statements (our two main comparison strategies), it may be difficult to detect dif- ferences given the range of other rankings. Therefore, we transformed the data to make a broader comparison. We recoded the ranking data so that statements ranked from 1 to 4 were considered more effective (coded 1) and statements ranked from 5 to 8 were considered less effective (coded 0). A two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a significant multivariate interaction effect for participant culture and ethnicity of the target (ethnicity of the professor). Wilks’s l = .92, f (2, 88) = 3.93, p <. 001, partial eta squared = .80. Power to detect the effect was .69. Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate interaction effects were examined.
H1a predicted that in a negotiation context, Chinese participants will rate power-normative-focused influence strategies as more effective than Canadian participants will. A marginally significant interaction (f (1, 89) = 3.38, p = .07,
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Table 1 Study 1—Influence statements
Interests-based approach Power-based approach
Informational influence Interests-informational: “I know you are concerned about retaking the course but taking the course the second time will help you boost your overall average.“
Power-informational: “In my past experience of teaching this course as the professor, I have never changed my mind regard- ing a pass or fail. If we look at all your grades over the term, they indicate the grade that you deserve.”
“I know you are concerned about retaking the course but if you want to succeed later in graduate school or the work setting, retaking the course will benefit you in the long run.”
“I am the professor and my decisions are final. I can see from your attendance record why you didn’t pass the class. ”
Normative influence Interests-normative: “In my past experience of teaching this course as the professor, I have never changed my mind regarding a pass or fail. This course mark is produced by the same TA and applies to all students in the course.”
Power-normative: “In my past experience of teaching this course as the professor, I have never changed my mind regarding a pass or fail. This course mark is produced by the same TA and applies to all students in the course.”
“I know how important it is for you to graduate this semester given your cur- rent standing, but this is a difficult course for every student. Other students who have taken this course again have greatly benefited from the experience.”
“I am the professor and my decisions are final. Other students have respected my assessment of the grade that they earned.”
partial eta square = .39) partially confirms that Chinese participants rated power normative arguments more effective than Canadian participants did, but only when the imagined professor was Chinese. However, contrary to our expectations, this effect did not hold when participants imagined interacting with a Canadian professor. When being persuaded by a Canadian professor, Chinese and Canadian participants rated power normative arguments as equally effective. The pattern of the interaction appears in Figure 1.
H1b predicted that in a negotiation context, Canadian participants will rate interests-informational influence strategies as more effective than other Eastern
EffECTIvE InflUEnCE In nEgOTIaTIOn 15
negotiators will. We found a significant two-way interaction (f (1, 89) = 7.93, p < .01, partial eta square = .08) indicating that as expected, Canadian participants rated interests-informational arguments more effective than Chinese participants did, but only when the imagined professor was Chinese. Our predicted effect did not hold when participants imagined interacting with a Canadian professor. When interests-informational arguments were offered by a Canadian professor, Canadian participants rated them as less effective than Chinese participants did (Figure 2).
Discussion
The results from Study 1 support our prediction that the effectiveness of influence across cultures can be partly explained by how the argument is framed. Using a realistic undergraduate student scenario in which a student tried to negotiate a grade with a professor, we found that two factors had a significant effect on how Chinese and Canadian participants rated influence effectiveness: argument framing and target ethnicity. The findings suggest that making straightforward predictions for culturally normative influence strategies in negotiation is too simplistic of an approach. Whereas Chinese participants were more responsive to power arguments, it was only when they were framed normatively (versus informationally) and when the professor was Chinese. While Canadian participants were more responsive to interests based arguments, this was only the case when they were framed infor- mationally (versus normatively) and the professor was Chinese. While the results provide some evidence that the context of negotiation can activate a need for logic for Canadian students but a need to uphold role-based social norms for Chinese
Figure 1. Study 1—Chinese and Canadian participants’ ratings of power- normative influence effectiveness when professor was Canadian versus Chinese
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students, they also suggest that the counterpart’s ethnicity plays a role, as does the influence statement’s message content.
Study 2
Study 2 was designed to strengthen the findings from Study 1 by further testing the interaction between a negotiator’s influence strategy and the target’s underlying needs (H2). We used a more realistic and dynamic scenario by conducting a face- to-face negotiation simulation. We measured negotiators’ actual use of rights- and power-based arguments during the negotiation interaction. In addition, we measured negotiators’ general informational and normative needs as a baseline prior to the study to examine cultural variation in whether the organizational negotiation context activated a specific set of needs as predicted.
Sample
Western participants were U.S. students enrolled in an executive MBA program; Eastern participants were Japanese managers and employees attending a workshop on cross-cultural negotiation in Japan. There were 30 U.S. participants (15 dyads) with an average age of 33.76 (Sd = 4.73). There were 28 Japanese participants (14 dyads) with an average age of 34.87 (Sd = 5.58) and an average of 1.73 (Sd = 1.82) years spent living in the United States. The U.S. sample was 90 percent male, and the Japanese sample was 57 percent male (four participants did not report gender).
Figure 2. Study 1: Chinese and Canadian participants’ ratings of interests- informational influence effectiveness when professor was Canadian versus Chinese
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Procedure
Participants completed the Summer Interns dyadic negotiation simulation (Lewicki et al. 2006), in which the manager of engineering and the manager of human re- sources (HR) are in conflict over their company’s Summer Intern Program (SIP). Each year Engineering receives two summer interns through the SIP. But because the timing and requirements of SIP do not meet Engineering’s needs, Engineer- ing has hired its own interns. The two managers must resolve up to four current issues that address what to do with the interns hired by Engineering and through the SIP, and up to four future issues that address how the parties will avoid such situations in the future. Fueling the emotion underlying the conflict is the endorse- ment of SIP by the senior manager, who is aligned with HR, and dissatisfaction with the SIP expressed by managers of other line departments, who are aligned with Engineering. The exercise has been used to study strategic focus, information exchange, persuasion, and cultural differences in conflict resolution negotiations (Tinsley 1998, 2001).
Before the exercise, participants completed a survey assessing their cultural values, demographics, and general influence-related needs. Following a brief in- troduction to negotiation and the session, participants received their individual role instructions and had 20 minutes to prepare for the negotiation. Participants were then paired with someone of the same cultural background playing the opposite role and had 40 minutes to negotiate the case, after which they jointly reported their outcome.
All Japanese participants, who had applied to a U.S. MBA program, spoke flu- ent English. Therefore, all role instructions and survey materials were in English. They were, however, given the opportunity to negotiate in Japanese. Prior to data analysis, the Japanese authors carefully reviewed all the free-response answers to survey questions (e.g., what is your goal in this negotiation, how will you achieve your target) and excluded any Japanese participants who did not clearly understand the nature of the negotiation case.
Measures
The independent variable culture was coded 0 for U.S. participants and 1 for Japa- nese participants. Influence-related needs were measured prior to the negotiation session, when participants were asked to consider daily situations in which others “want you to give them something, or make a concession, or say ‘yes’” and respond to 12 possible reasons to comply with the request, preceded by the statement: “You should say “yes” because . . . ,” on a seven-point scale (1 = not at all effective, 7 = very effective). Results of a factor analysis revealed one factor for susceptibility to logical influence (three items, a = .71; e.g., it is the logical and rational thing to do) and one factor for susceptibility to normative influence (seven items, a = .81; e.g., you will feel guilty if you do not say “yes”; it is your duty to help this person
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when they make an appeal). The factors were labeled Informational Needs and Normative Needs, respectively.
To measure the use of influence strategies in the context of the Summer Interns exercise, the research team modified the code used by Tinsley (2001) to measure rights- and power-based influence from negotiation transcripts of the Summer Interns case (Table 2). Rights-based influence included three types of arguments (department function, department budget, and company policy). Power-based influence included arguments that referred to the focal negotiator’s power, status, or expertise.
Before the process data were coded, all audio recordings were transcribed (and first translated in the case of the Japanese recordings) and formatted in a data file such that each row was a single speaking turn. Two coders were first trained to identify unique thought units within a speaking turn and then unitize all of the data. Each transcript was unitized by both coders, and Gutzgow’s unitizing reliability was .08. Coders met to discuss and resolve any unitizing discrepancies. Then, over a period of six months, the two coders, who were blind to the hypotheses in the study, were trained to identify the different forms of influence in the negotiation transcripts at the level of the thought unit (Cohen’s kappa = .78). To quantify the frequency codes for statistical analysis, we followed the procedure in Adair et al. (2001) to compute logged proportion scores.
At the conclusion of the negotiation, parties together completed a worksheet indicating how each separate issue was addressed or resolved. Options included: (1) issue decided in favor of HR, (2) issue decided in favor of Engineering, (3) is- sue decided jointly, (4) issue will be brought to third party to resolve, or (5) issue
Table 2 Study 2—Coding scheme for rights- and power-based influence
Influence code Category Example
Rights arguments Department function “SIP is a program with a formal process where HR is in charge to hire students and provide orientation so that they un- derstand the company’s background.” “HR has never delivered on time to meet my needs.”
Department budget “Personnel has a budget for 10 interns only.”
Company policy “It doesn’t apply just to intern hiring. It applies to overall company policy.”
Power arguments Departmental expertise or stature
“It’s hard to give you veto power over this. We know it better than you do.” “We’ve been doing it this way for a long time.”
note: Other codes included interests, offers, preferences and priorities, accept/reject an offer, and other.
EffECTIvE InflUEnCE In nEgOTIaTIOn 19
not discussed. The dependent measure, value claimed, was calculated by counting the total number of issues that were resolved in each party’s favor. For example, if three issues were decided in HRs favor, two issues were decided in Engineer- ing’s favor, and two issues were not discussed, HR would receive a score of 3 and Engineering would receive a score of 2.
Results
Correlations between the main variables in our analyses appear in Table 3. There was not a significant correlation between culture and the number of issues claimed, general informational and normative needs, or the frequency of influence strate- gies used. The lack of cultural differences in general Informational and Normative Needs assessed before the introduction of the negotiation simulation suggests that these are in fact individual-difference and not culture-level variables. In addition, it suggests that cultural differences we uncover in hypothesis testing are due to the differential activation of needs in the negotiation context.
We tested H2 using multilevel regression, which allows us to present results that control for dependency between the dyad members. H2 predicted that we would find different patterns of influence strategy interacting with partner’s needs in the West and the East.
H2a predicted that in the West, the interaction between negotiators’ use of rights-based persuasion and partners’ informational needs will be predictive of the value negotiators claim. This finding was marginally significant, t = 2.0, p = .06 (Figure 3). That is, when partners had high informational needs, there was a positive relationship between the negotiators’ use of rights-based persuasion and claimed value. When partners had low informational needs, the relationship be- tween the negotiators’ use of rights-based persuasion and the value claimed was strongly negative.
Table 3 Study 2—Mean, standard deviations, and correlations
Variables Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Culturea .48 .50
2. Rights influenceb –.27 .22 .19
3. Power influence –2.04 .38 –.15 .08
4. Informational needs 5.28 1.10 .09 –.07 –.24
5. Normative needs 3.83 1.06 –.18 .02 –.06 .39**
6. Issues claimed 1.57 1.27 .01 –.03 .07 –.06 –.03 notes: ** Significant at p < .01 (two-tailed); a 0 = United States, 1 = Japan; b all influence strategies are logged proportion scores.
20 adaIr (Canada) ET al.
Figure 3. Study 2: Value claimed as predicted by the interaction between partner’s informational needs and negotiator’s use of rights-based persuasion (U.S. sample)
Figure 4. Study 2: Value claimed as predicted by the interaction between partner’s normative needs and negotiator’s use of power-based persuasion (Japanese sample)
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H2b predicted that in the East, the interaction between negotiators’ use of power-based persuasion and partners’ normative needs would be predictive of value claimed. This interaction was statistically significant within the Japanese sample,
EffECTIvE InflUEnCE In nEgOTIaTIOn 21
t = 2.2, p < .05 (Figure 4). More specifically, this finding suggests that when Japa- nese partners had high normative needs, Japanese negotiators’ use of power-based persuasion techniques resulted in increased value claimed, in comparison to when partners had low levels of normative needs.
Discussion
Effective deal making and conflict resolution in a multicultural world requires at the minimum an understanding of how negotiators raised and trained in different socio- cultural environments develop distinct mental models of negotiation, value-based motivations and goals, and culturally normative behaviors for information exchange and influence (Brett 2007). It could be argued that more complex factors, such as how negotiators adjust or adapt their mental models, goals, and repertoires when negotiating cross-culturally, or the role of language in cross-cultural negotiation, can be understood only once we have a strong foundation of knowledge on intracultural negotiation. This study begins to create a solid foundation of knowledge on culture and influence in negotiation for researchers and practitioners. By integrating the social psychology of influence with research on culture and influence in negotia- tion, we show that influence effectiveness across cultures is best understood as a function of message content and framing.
Our findings highlight the importance of considering characteristics of the individual, the culture, and the situation, as emphasized by dynamic constructiv- ist theory. The dynamic constructivist approach conceptualizes culture as a set of knowledge structures that become highly accessible in memory through daily use and observation (Hong 2009). Thus, to understand the impact of culture on psychological processes, we need to consider how the situation activates different knowledge structures (Hong 2009; Hong et al. 2000). Researchers in this area have found that the interaction between an individual difference and a manipulated con- text can explain when people respond in a culturally normative fashion and when they do not, that is, when culture matters (Chiu et al. 2000; Hong and Mallorie 2004; Hong et al. 2000).
Supporting dynamic constructivism in a negotiation context, Gelfand and Realo (1999) found that an accountability manipulation led to more competitive behavior for people with individualist values and more cooperative behavior for people with collectivist values. Liu, Friedman, and Hong (2012) extend this work to show that Chinese negotiators are more relationship focused than their American counterparts only when negotiating with in-group members under conditions of high accountability. In other words, we can turn stereotypical Chinese cooperativeness on or off by acti- vating different values or by changing the situation. These studies show that our lay understanding of culturally normative behavior may actually account for only some behavior, some of the time. We need to examine culture, individual differences, and the situation to explain why and when people adhere to cultural norms.
When considering the effectiveness of influence in negotiation, dynamic con-
22 adaIr (Canada) ET al.
structivism suggests we model influence strategies represented in an individual’s cultural knowledge set, the individual’s needs, and the situation that activates the knowledge set and the needs. Consistent with this approach, our studies show that the effectiveness of culturally normative influence strategies (i.e., interests in the West, power in the East), depend on how the arguments are framed in a negotiation context. Our Study 2 shows that even when there are no individual differences in general influence-related needs, in the negotiation context Westerners respond more to arguments framed informationally and Easterners respond more to arguments framed normatively. Together these findings offer support for a dynamic construc- tivist model and also extend findings on culture and individual differences in other areas of social influence literature. For example, Barrett et al. (2004) showed that social-obligation-based compliance (corresponding to our “normative influence effectiveness”) is predicted by collective-primacy values both in Poland and the United States. Regardless of national culture, people were more likely to fill out a survey for a stranger when they had strong collective primacy, and this effect was even stronger when group reputation was made salient. Likewise, individualistic values, rather than national culture, were the strongest predictor of consistency- based compliance following requests to complete two surveys for both U.S. and Asian samples (Petrova, Cialdini, and Sills 2007). These authors conclude that researchers should consider within-nation variation in cultural orientation, or individual differences, as well as culture effects.
As our results highlight, another important situational factor to consider in future research is the cultural context. Negotiating with someone from your own culture may activate one set of culturally normative negotiation strategies, but negotiating with someone from another culture may suppress culturally normative responses and instead activate behaviors guided by a different knowledge structure that may contain information from past experience or stereotypes about the other culture (Adair, Taylor, and Tinsley, 2009; Morris and Fu 2001). This is an area that can be studied with intra- versus intercultural negotiation simulations, as well as by priming bicultural participants and manipulating their counterpart’s culture.
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Appendix A
Study 1
Chinese Professor
Imagine that you are studying at University of Waterloo as an undergraduate student.
This is your 4B term of your undergraduate studies. Recently, you have handed
EffECTIvE InflUEnCE In nEgOTIaTIOn 25
in your “intent to graduate form” and you are excited to graduate since you have made plans to travel to Europe and Asia with some of your colleagues. Your fam- ily and relatives are also excited about your graduation, and they have planned a big surprise graduation party at a fancy restaurant for you to attend after you get home. After the final exam, you start packing your things and begin to say goodbye to Waterloo.
Today is the day when unofficial grades come out, and you are nervous about checking your grades on Quest. When you check your grades, however, you find out that you have failed a course by 2 percent (to pass, a student must obtain a grade of 50 percent). Unfortunately, you are aware that obtaining a failed course grade does not permit you to graduate this term, leaving the only option to retake the course next term.
You are devastated by the final score and promptly make an appointment to see the professor to change his/her mind. At the appointment, your professor, Dr. Chan, declines to alter the grade.
Canadian Professor
Imagine that you are studying at University of Waterloo as an undergraduate student. This is your 4B term of your undergraduate studies. Recently, you have handed in your “intent to graduate form” and you are excited to graduate since you have made plans to travel to Europe and Asia with some of your colleagues. Your family and relatives are also excited about your graduation, and they have planned a big surprise graduation party at a fancy restaurant for you to attend after you get home. After the final exam, you start packing your things and begin to say goodbye to Waterloo.
Today is the day when unofficial grades come out, and you are nervous about checking your grades on Quest. When you check your grades, however, you find out that you have failed a course by 2 percent (to pass, a student must obtain a grade of 50 percent). Unfortunately, you are aware that obtaining a failed course grade does not permit you to graduate this term, leaving the only option to retake the course next term.
You are devastated by the final score and promptly make an appointment to see the professor to change his/her mind. At the appointment, your professor, Dr. McKenzie, declines to alter the grade.
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