Week 7 - Communication and Process Outcomes

Question 1

Communication in negotiation

Answer 1

Communication processes, both verbal and nonverbal, are critical to achieving negotiation goals to resolving conflicts

Negotiation is a process of interaction

Negotiation is context for communication subtleties that influence processes and outcomes

Question 2

What is communicated during negotiation?

Answer 2

• Offer, counteroffers, and motives: dynamic, interactive, and subject to situational and environmental constraints.
• Information about alternatives (BATNA): negotiators with an attractive BATNA should tell the other party about it if they expect to receive its full benefits
• Information about outcomes: be cautious about sharing outcomes )people feel less positive about their own outcomes when they know how well other party did)
• Social accounts: explanation of mitigating circumstances (no other choice in taking the position they did), explanation of exonerating circumstances (honest mistake - explain broader perspective of a position that looks negative), reframing explanation (change context)
• Communication about process: halt conflict spirals that might otherwise lead to an impasse

Question 3

How people communicate: Use of language

Answer 3

• Logical level (proposals, offers)
• Pragmatic level (semantics, syntax, style)

The meaning conveyed by a proposition or statement is a combination of one logical surface message and several pragmatic (i.e., hinted or inferred) messages.

It is not only what is said and how it is said that matters but also what additional, veiled, or subsurface information is intended, conveyed, or perceived in reception.

Question 4

Selection of a communication channel

Answer 4

• Communication is experienced differently when it occurs through different channels
• People negotiate through a variety of communication media - by phone, in writing and increasingly through electronic channels or virtual negotiations
• Social presence distinguishes one communication channel from another (the ability of a channel to carry and convey subtle social cues from sender to receiver that go beyond literal text)

As an alternative to face-to-face interaction, the telephone preserves the ability to transmit social cues through inflection or tone of voice but forfeits the ability to communicate through facial expressions or physical gestures. Written communication has only the words and symbols on paper, although the choice of words and the way they are arranged can certainly convey tone, (in)formality, and emotion.

Question 4

Use of nonverbal communication

Answer 4

• Make eye contact
• Adjust body position
• Nonverbally encourage or discourage what is being said (nodding, “uh uh”, frown, shake head etc.)

Question 5

Three main techniques are available for improving communication in a negotiation

Answer 5

• Asking questions
• Listening
• Using role reversal

Question 6

How to improve communication: Asking questions (Manageable questions)

Answer 6

• Cause attention or prepare the other person’s thinking for further questions (may I ask you a question?)
• Getting information (how much will this cost?)
• Generating thoughts (do you have any suggestions for improving this?)

Question 7

Unmanageable questions

Answer 7

Cause difficulty (where did you get this dumb idea?)

Give information (didn’t you know we couldn’t afford this?)

Bring the discussion to a false conclusion (don’t you think we have talked about this enough?)

Although these questions may yield information, they are likely to make the
other party feel uncomfortable and less willing to provide information in the future.

Question 8

Negotiators can also use questions to manage difficult or stalled negotiations

Answer 8

• Take it or leave it
• Pressure to respond to a deadline
• Highball or lowball
• Impasse (what can we do to close this gap)
• Attempts to pressure, control, manipulate

Question 9

Listening: three major forms

Answer 9

Passive listening: Receiving the message while providing no feedback to the sender

Acknowledgement: Receivers not their heads, maintain eye contact, interject responses

Active listening: Receivers restate or paraphrase the sender’s message in their own language

Question 10

Using role reversal to improve communication in negotiation

Answer 10

Negotiators understand the other party’s positions by actively arguing these positions until the other party is convinced that he or she is understood

For example, someone can ask you how you would respond to the situation that he or she is in. In doing so, you can come to understand that person’s position, perhaps accept its validity, and discover how to modify both positions to make them more compatible.

Helps members of the negotiation team anticipate counterarguments and formulate appropriate responses

Question 11

Benefits arising from good communication patterns

Answer 11

• Trust
• Reputation
• Justice

Question 12

Trust

Answer 12

An individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the words, actions and decisions of another

Question 13

Three things contribute to trust:

Answer 13

1. Individual’s chronic disposition toward trust (individual differences in personality that make some people more trusting than others)
2. Situation factors (the opportunity for the parties to communicate with each other adequately)
3. History of the relationship between the parties

Question 14

Recent research on trust and negotiation

Answer 14

Many people approach a new relationship with an unknown party with remarkably high levels of trust

Trust tends to cue cooperative behaviour

Individual motives also shape trust and expectations of the other’s behaviour - Parties who are more co-operatively motivated report higher initial trust

The nature of the negotiation task (distributive versus integrative) can shape how parties judge the trust
- In a more distributive context, trusters tend to focus on the risks they face, while those who are in a position to receive and then reciprocate the others’ trust focus on the benefits that the trusters have provided to them.
- the possibilities for trust to break down or not be completed may increase because neither party truly understands the risks or rewards as perceived by the other,

Question 15

Recent research on trust and negotiation (2)

Answer 15

Greater expectations of trust between negotiators leads to greater information sharing

Greater information sharing enhances effectiveness in achieving a good negotiation outcome

Distributive processes lead negotiators to see the negotiation dialogue, and critical events in the dialogue, as largely about the nature of the negotiation task (i.e., how to divide the pie)
- Distributive processes also lead people to judge the other party with negative characterization frames

Question 16

Recent research on trust and negotiation (3)

Answer 16

Trust increases the likelihood that negotiation will proceed on a favourable course over the life of a negotiation

Face-to-face negotiation encourages greater trust development than negotiation online

Negotiators who are representing other’s interests, rather than their own interests, tend to behave in a less trustworthy way and tend to expect that the other will be trusting.

Question 17

Justice

Answer 17

Can take several forms

• Distributive justice: The distribution of outcomes (Parties may be concerned that one party is receiving more than he or she deserves)
• Procedural justice: The process of determining outcomes (Parties may be concerned that they were not treated fairly during the negotiation - not getting a word in, not treated with respect)
• Interactional justice: How parties treat each other in one-to-one relationships (people have strong expectations about the ways another party should treat them - deception, improper questions, rude)
• Systematic justice: How organizations appear to treat groups of individuals (When some groups are discriminated against, disenfranchised, or systematically given poorer salaries or working conditions)

Question 18

Reputation

Answer 18

The impression that other people have of a negotiator based on past experience

• Perceptual and highly subjective in nature
• An individual can have a number of different, even conflicting, reputations
• Influenced by an individual’s personal characteristics and accomplishments
• Developed over time; once developed, is hard to change
• Negative reputations are difficult to “repair”

Question 19

Issue of fairness

Answer 19

Involvement in the process of helping to shape a negotiation strategy increases commitment to that strategy and willingness to pursue it

Negotiators (buyers in a market transaction) who are encouraged (primed) to think about fairness are more co-operative in distributive negotiations. Make greater concessions etc.

Similarly, parties who receive offers they perceive as unfair may reject them out of hand, even though the amount offered may be better than the alternative settlement, which is to receive nothing at all.

Establishment of some objective standard of fairness has a positive impact on negotiations and satisfaction with the outcome.

Judgments about fairness are subject to the type of cognitive biases described earlier. For example, most negotiators have an egocentric bias, which is the tendency to regard a larger share for ourselves as fair, even if the obvious fairness rule is an equal split.

Question 20

Summary

Answer 20

The concepts in this chapter tend to affect each other
- e.g. communication patterns can influence trust, reputation and justice