Suchergebnisse

AbstractUncertainty is one of the natural consequences of innovation. Regardless of the particular area, innovation leads to unknown situations ranging from the creation of high-tech new products to profound modification of economic and social structures. This uncertainty creates difficulties for negotiation processes because it becomes almost impossible to anticipate all the consequences of any agreement. Consequently, innovation tremendously enhances the uncertainty of a negotiator with regard to his own interests. Uncertainty about the opponent's interests and behavior is of course another major concern and has been dealt with extensively by many authors. This paper deals with the very different concept of uncertainty regarding one's own interests. It analyzes the impact of this form of uncertainty in the negotiation process, examining the 1997–1999 negotiations at IBM over the implementation of a European Works Council. We show that when a negotiator is uncertain about his own interests, he is less inclined to consider positions located in his uncertainty zone. This occurs as soon as he discoevers an acceptable outcome outside of this zone, even when the agreement is little differentthan the status quo. The negotiator will persist in such a strategy even though alternative agreements located in the uncertainty zone could be more advantageous for one or even both parties. In order to enlarge the zone of potential agreements between parties, a negotiator should undertake one further step: exploration of his own uncertainty zone. We demonstrate that the adoption of such a strategy, is innovative in and of itself, requiring a pro-active and creative attitude on the part of negotiators in order to discover appropriate uncertainty reduction mechanisms.

AbstractThis article provides an analysis of Nightline's involvement in deep-rooted conflicts in both South Africa and Israel and an examination of whether media debates as a form of "track two," or unofficial diplomacy, can assist in preparing the ground for a proper "track one," government-to-government negotiation process. The extent to which the news media, in this case an ABC Television public affairs program, can play a role in the pre-negotiation phase when formal processes of intervention or formal fora of negotiation are absent is the focus of this article. Three levels of data gathering were utilized to analyze Nightline's week-long programs in South Africa in 1985 and in Israel in 1988. In addition to a content analysis of the ten programs, the participants in these debates, including moderator Ted Koppel, were interviewed, and the public and journalistic response to the Nightline broadcasts in both countries were analyzed. The findings suggest that in the process of facilitating the highly positional debates between the parties, Nightline empowered and legitimized the out-parties' causes and gave in-parties an opportunity to publicly defend their positions. However, the programs' main impact was their fulfillment of pre-negotiation roles: creating an atmosphere for negotiation, enabling reciprocal education of the parties about the conflict, and modeling peaceful interaction.

AbstractMuch of our theorizing, and indeed much of our "wisdom," about negotiation is based on what we claim to know about real, highly publicized negotiations. Examples from those historically prominent negotiations are cited and re-cited. This essay raises questions about the reliability of the accounts we use from those negotiations. Though documents produced during the negotiation are often useful for scholars, what we know about the actual process of the negotiation – as distinguished from the outcome – depends mainly on what the participants are willing to tell us. The scholar's remedy for this problem is a deep skepticism about any individual account, in depth interviews (where available) of participants, a comparison of various versions, and the use of an explicitly articulated "plausibility test" in sorting out conflicting views. This essay suggests that negotiation scholarship may have depended too readily on individual recollections and thus given us a distorted "data base" from which to generalize. The essay delves deeply into one negotiation (Israeli-Palestinian negotiation at Taba, January 2001) to illustrate how the comparative approach yields quite different results than does a reading of any one memoir, and then describes more briefly how some of the field's favorite examples may not, on close inspection, illustrate what we previously thought they did.

AbstractGlobal negotiators often depend upon communication technologies to convey information and strike deals. Unfortunately, negotiations conducted via more "lean" media (e.g., e-mail, telephone) have been associated with low levels of trust and difficulties in reaching agreements. We explore two approaches to building trust while communicating via the internet. Derived from the literature on interpersonal trust, negotiators were asked to adopt one of two strategies. The first was to build personal rapport. The second was to discuss ground rules and procedures for the negotiation. Negotiators who spent time building rapport reported greater levels of trust, and were more confident and satisfied with their outcomes. These perceptions were evident even though outcomes were comparable across conditions. The most negatively perceived negotiations were those that included rules discussions without the benefit of rapport. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

AbstractThis article examines methodological issues that accompany expanding research attention to affect and emotion in bargaining and negotiation. The role of affect in negotiation is presumed to have anterior, experiential, and strategic components. After reviewing existing empirical research on emotion as predictor, consequence, and tactic in negotiation, we consider complications that challenge the researcher's ability to isolate the impact of specific affect states on particular components of the negotiation dynamic. That analysis leads to a survey and discussion of potential methodological remedies that will increase the ability of researchers to capture the "real" emotions that individuals experience, express, mask, and strategically deploy within the negotiation encounter.