HOMEWORK 4
Essentials of Negotiation
Part 03: Negotiation Relationships
Chapter 09: Relationships in Negotiation
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Challenging How Relationships in Negotiation Have Been Studied
Negotiation is studied in two ways.
Live field situations.
Simulated negotiations.
Simulated negotiations dominated research for 50 years.
It is easier to conduct.
Controlled conditions.
Ease of data collection.
Problems with this approach.
Conclusions for complex negotiations come from simple simulations.
Parties have no existing relationship.
Yet, relationships change negotiation dynamics.
Negotiating in relationships takes place over time.
Negotiation is a way to learn and increase interdependence.
Resolution of simple issues has implications for the future.
Issues within relationships can be emotionally hot.
Negotiating within relationships may never end.
The other person may be the focal problem.
Relationship preservation is the goal in some negotiations.
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Negotiations in Communal Sharing Relationships
Parties in a communal-sharing relationship are more cooperative and empathetic.
Relational identity theory holds that defined group members who use negotiation techniques focusing on issues are likely to fail.
It is unclear whether parties in close relationships produce better solutions than other negotiators do.
A long-term study of conflict resolution in marriages provides insights.
Successful couples stay positive and say “yes” often.
They embrace conflict as a way to work through differences.
Good relationships know not only how to fight, but also how to repair a relationship after a fight.
Successful couples stress what they like, value, appreciate, and respect about the other.
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Key Elements in Managing Negotiations within Relationships
A study of work relationships identified eight key dimensions.
Trust, support, affect (emotion), loyalty, accountability, instrumentality, respect, and flexibility.
Some dimensions are critical at the beginning of a relationship.
While others are critical as a relationship matures.
Trust was the most common and important dimension.
Reputations play important roles in shaping relationship development.
Justice was also an important relationship component.
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Reputation
There are several important aspects of reputation.
Reputations are perceived and highly subjective in nature.
It is what others actually think of us that counts.
An individual can have a number of different, even conflicting, reputations.
It is commonly a single, consistent image.
Reputations are shaped by past behavior.
Reputation is influenced by personal characteristics and accomplishments.
Reputations develop over time; once developed, they are hard to change.
Other's reputations can shape emotional states as well as their expectations.
Negative reputations are difficult to “repair.”
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Trust
One definition of trust is an individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the words, actions, and decisions of another.
Three things contribute to the level of trust one negotiator has for another.
The negotiator’s chronic disposition toward trust—individual differences in personality that make some people more trusting than others.
Situation factors—such as the opportunity for the parties to communicate with each other adequately.
And the history of the relationship between the parties.
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Recent Research on Trust and Negotiation: Individual and Situational Antecedents of Trust in Negotiation
Individual antecedents of trust in negotiation.
People generally start with high levels of trust even without data about the situation or the other party.
Individual motives shape expectations of trust.
Personality differences shape expectations.
Emotions contribute to trust or distrust.
Situational antecedents of trust in negotiation.
The nature of the negotiation process shapes trust expectations.
Face-to-face negotiation encourages greater trust development than online negotiation.
Negotiators who are representing others’ interests tend to be less trusting and less trustworthy than if they are representing their own interests.
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Recent Research on Trust and Negotiation: Negotiation Processes and Outcomes of Trust
Trust and negotiation processes.
The focus on different things is amplified by the type of negotiations the parties expect.
Trust increases “positive” turning points around common interests and decreases “negative” turning points that might deadlock a negotiation around polarization of issues or negative emotions.
Outcomes of trust.
Trust cues cooperative behavior.
Trust enhances the sharing of information, and greater information sharing generally leads to better negotiation outcomes.
Parties who trust tend to communicate by using questions and answers in order to share information and understand the other’s perspective.
Parties who trust less tend to argue for and justify their own preferences and listen less to the other—hence, they are less likely to understand the other’s perspective and more likely to “force” their view on the other party.
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Building Trust at the Negotiation Table
Learn what you can about your counterpart.
Reputational information can be helpful.
Get to know the person before you formally negotiate.
Whether you have dealt with the other before, or not.
Proceed with caution on the other’s trustworthiness.
Use safeguards to protect you against errors in judgment.
Win the other’s trust.
Make the other understand the “cost” of a major concession from you and don’t underestimate the value of a concession on their part.
Listen to and acknowledge the other’s concerns.
Acknowledging emotion may be one of the most important parts of effective listening as a vehicle for building trust.
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Trust Repair
Three major strategies that a trust violator can use to repair trust.
Verbally address intent with apologies, explanations, and accounts.
Apologies should include: an expression of regret, an explanation, an acknowledgement of responsibility, a declaration of repentance, an offer to repair the impact, and a request for forgiveness.
Reparations – payment of compensation to the victims for the consequences suffered from the violator.
The amount of money offered is less critical than the offer itself.
Structural solutions – make the effort to create rules, regulations, and procedures to minimize the likelihood of violation in the future.
Rules and procedures can be strengthened by also creating fines and penalties for rule violation.
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Justice
Justice can take several forms.
Distributive justice is about the distribution of outcomes.
Procedural justice is about the process of determining outcomes.
Concerns about procedural fairness arise most when negotiators are judging the behavior of third parties.
Interactional justice is about how parties treat each other in one-to-one relationships.
People have strong expectations about their treatment and when those standards are violated, parties feel unfairly treated.
Systemic justice is about how organizations appear to treat groups of individuals and the norms that develop for how they should be treated.
When groups are discriminated against or disenfranchised, they may think the system is biased.
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Research Conclusions on Justice and Fairness
Involvement in the process of shaping negotiation strategy increases commitment to that strategy and willingness to pursue it.
Procedural justice appears to impact the way negotiators approach the negotiation process.
Negotiators encouraged to think about fairness were more cooperative in distributive negotiations.
Parties who receive offers they perceive as unfair may reject them out of hand, even though the amount offered may be better than their BATNA.
Establishment of some objective standard of fairness has a positive impact on negotiations and satisfaction with the outcome.
Judgments of fairness are subject to cognitive biases.
Egocentric biases vary across cultures.
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Relationships among Reputation, Trust and Justice
Reputations, trust, and justice all interact in shaping expectations of the other’s behavior.
When one party feels the other acted fairly in the past or will act fairly in the future, they are more likely to trust the other.
Conversely, when parties are unfairly treated, they often become angry and retaliate against either the injustice itself or those who are seen as causing it.
Trust, justice, and reputation are all central to relationship negotiations and feed each other.
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Repairing a Relationship
Talk through the following questions to help identify problems and improve a relationship.
What might be causing any present misunderstanding, and what can I do to understand it better?
What might be causing a lack of trust, and what can I do to begin to repair trust that might have been broken?
What might be causing one or both of us to feel coerced, and what can I do to put the focus on persuasion rather than coercion?
What might be causing one or both of us to feel disrespected, and what can I do to demonstrate acceptance and respect?
What might be causing one or both of us to get upset, and what can I do to balance emotion and reason?
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