How Implicit Beliefs Influence Trust Recovery

After a trust violation, some people are quick to forgive, whereas others never trust again. In this report, we identify a key characteristic that moderates trust recovery: implicit beliefs of moral character. Individuals who believe that moral character can change over time (incremental beliefs) are more likely to trust their counterpart following an apology and trustworthy behavior than are individuals who believe that moral character cannot change (entity beliefs). We demonstrate that a simple but powerful message can induce either entity or incremental beliefs about moral character

Role of Culture in Communication Process and Atmosphere of Business Negotiation: A comparative Analysis of Business Negotiations in CEE and ASEAN Countries from Finnish Firms' Perspective

In the research area of cross-cultural business negotiations there are few studies on factors that impact the atmosphere and the communication process of business negotiations. Hence, the interest of this study lies in investigating specifically what are the cultural and strategic factors and to what extent they determine the nature of the atmosphere and communication in particular business negotiations. The targeted negotiations are of Czechs and Malaysians, considered from the Finnish firms’ perspective. Furthermore, none of such academic research has ever been made. Thus, this study aims to answer the research question, which is to identify and compare similarities and differences in the communication process and the atmosphere in Czech and Malaysian business negotiations. The theoretical framework of this study consists of specific cultural and strategic factors that determine the final nature of the atmosphere and the communication process. This study applies a qualitative research method with a multiple-case study research strategy. Two Finnish firms were chosen as case companies, and the empirical data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with Finnish high-level managers who were involved in Czech or Malaysian business negotiations. The findings of this study demonstrate there are in fact more similarities between Czech and Malaysian negotiators than proposed in the theory. The nature of the atmosphere and the communication are affected by particular cultural and strategic factors relevant for each of the countries. On the side of Czech negotiators, a corporate culture and mix of two cultures play a role of major determinants. Malaysian negotiations were observed more heterogeneous, mainly due to existence of various ethnic and religious groups, a change in a Malaysian society towards Western values, and other factors that appeared to be culturally or strategically related.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Gender and Negotiations: When Does Gender Play a Role in Negotiating?

The fable takes place during the holidays, involving two sisters. One sister is planning to bake a chiffon cake for Christmas dinner; the other, a fruitcake. Both recipes each call for one orange. When the sisters check the pantry, they find only one orange, not the two they need. An argument immediately erupts over who gets the orange. One sister complains that the chiffon cake is wrong for the season. The other retorts the fruitcake may be traditional but nobody likes it. Obvious solutions are out of the question. It being a holiday, they cannot borrow from the very neighbors who will later be their guests, and the stores are closed. The sisters, unwilling to compromise and bake only half a recipe, become more and more entrenched in defending their rights. After a fair amount of bickering, the mother cuts the orange in half. A fair solution? The needs of the sisters remained ambiguous throughout the argument. How would have the solution differed if the sisters were to explain their needs; while one sister needed orange peel, the other needed orange juice. If chiffon cake was intended for solely one sister and the fruitcake was to be donated to another family, would the end result change? Would the sister making the fruitcake, on behalf of others, be more assertive in negotiating for the orange? Would the situation change if this fable was written as an argument between a sister and brother? Some say “yes” (Kolb, 2000

Crossing the frontiers : peer coaching and self - managing in the process of the professional development in multicultural environment

Our effort focuses on the development of a process of cross-cultural peer coaching through which we have sought to grow as reflective practitioners and strengthen authentic conversations between two individuals, from Poland and the United States. By building a theoretical framework around peer coaching, intercultural interaction, and auto-ethnography we have worked to make explicit our development as educators working to enrich the process of the organizational learning and to make education more open, democratic and human. As Kottler [1997] claims, it is possible to find stages that a tourist goes through during the process of recognizing and knowing another culture that was used to mirror the sensation of the professional growth. The findings shed light on how peer coaching might be strengthened, as well as the development of an observation protocol to structure such reflective and, ultimately, life changing work

Culture and Egocentric Perceptions of Fairness in Conflict and Negotiation

In this article, the authors advanced a cultural view of judgment biases in conflict and negotiation. The authors predicted that disputants’ self-serving biases of fairness would be more prevalent in individualistic cultures, such as the United States, in which the self is served by focusing on one’s positive attributes to “stand out” and be better than others, yet would be attenuated in collectivistic cultures, such as Japan, where the self is served by focusing on one’s negative characteristics to “blend in” (S. J. Heine, D. R. Lehman, H. R. Markus, & S. Kitayama, 1999). Four studies that used different methodologies (free recall, scenarios, and a laboratory experiment) supported this notion. Implications for the science and practice of negotiation are discussed

The Effects of Culture in Computer-Mediated Negotiations

The paper explores the impact of culture on anonymous inter- and intracultural negotiations conducted via the Internet using a Web-based negotiation support system (NSS). In e-negotiations, technology acts as a moderator in the relationship between culture and negotiation behavior. This implies that patterns of cultural impact on negotiations can be different from face-to-face negotiations. Communication technology reduces the transmission of social cues and increases the importance of explicit communication. Thus, cultural dimensions such as power distance, which rely on social cues, are reduced in their impact, while the impact of communication-related dimensions of cultures such as high vs. low context is amplified by the system. The empirical analysis of these effects is based on a set of bilateral negotiations involving 1366 participants carried out with the Web-based NSS Inspire. It indicates a significant influence of culture, particularly regarding negotiators’ expectations. We also found significant cultural differences with regard to communication patterns emerging during the negotiation process and outcomes of negotiations. Our results also indicate that as the negotiation process progresses, individual differences between negotiators, including their approach to problem solving, become more important than their cultural characteristics

Balanced Negotiations: An Online Negotiation Training for Women

Research has identified consistent differences in the processes and outcomes of negotiation between women and men (Mazei et al., 2015; Stuhlmacher & Walter, 1999), but there has been little investigation into different types of negotiation trainings specifically for women (Barkacs & Barkacs, 2017; Kulik et al., 2020). This study developed and evaluated an online evidence-based negotiation training for women. Using a pretest-posttest randomly assigned control group design, 95 early career female participants completed three short self-guided online training modules. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), with pretest scores used as a covariate to reduce error variance, found that the intervention had a significant effect on increase perceptions of malleability of negotiation skills, increased feelings of negotiator self-efficacy, increased setting of specific and complex goals, and reduced fear of backlash. The intervention was not found to have a significant effect on negotiator anxiety or the choice to continue past the study to participate in an optional Zoom negotiation. The implication of these findings for practitioners, academics, and future research are discussed

Fitting the Communication Forum to the Mediation Fuss: Choosing the Appropriate Communication Mode for Mediation in the Post-Pandemic World

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, mediations have shifted dramatically from face-to-face settings to the virtual realm, resulting in the widespread acceptance of using virtual communication channels, including videoconferencing, audio calls, and text messaging. With the waning of the pandemic, mediators and parties presently face a plethora of choices in fitting their mediation to the appropriate communication channel. Thus, having an accurate, evidence-based understanding of different communication modes’ impact on mediation is necessary to design an optimal mediation process. Some decades ago, Sander and Goldberg formulated the phrase “fitting the forum to the fuss” to describe the process of choosing the most appropriate dispute resolution option to fit characteristics of each dispute and parties’ needs. Currently, there is a palpable need for the fitting of a rather different forum—the mode of communication—to the fuss. This article discusses how parties can best customize the mediation process by fitting the “communication forum” to the “mediation fuss.” To understand the characteristics of communication forums, the article draws from a range of disciplines to distil the relevant research on four modes of communication: face-to-face interaction, videoconferencing, audio calls, and text messaging. The article proposes discerning the “mediation fuss” by examining disputants’ objectives, likely obstacles to resolution, and the likely mediation model to be utilized. It argues that these factors enable the mediator to ascertain which of five goals are most applicable to the particular dispute: building of rapport and trust; facilitating mutual understanding of perspectives and interests; managing power imbalances and safety concerns; ensuring procedural justice; and encouraging creative and collaborative problem-solving. Relying on current research findings, the article analyzes the impact of differing communication forums on these five mediation goals. Lastly, it proposes a basic framework for fitting the communication forum to the mediation fuss. This framework aims to encourage mediators to consider, in consultation with the parties, the most appropriate communication mode to convene mediation for the particular dispute and to thoughtfully modify their mediation techniques and tools to suit the relevant communication mode

Negotiation capability : a conceptual model and reference practices

This research studies the topic of negotiation in the business field at a national and international level, and in particular the concept of negotiation capability, understanding that the negotiation processes generally depend on how skillful the negotiators are, not only in one-time negotiation but mainly in the maintenance of long term business relationships. As a theoretical framework, this thesis adopts a holistic view of the dynamic phenomenon of negotiation by studying the interconnectedness of the concepts emerged from the study: ethics, decision-making, leadership and emotional intelligence. Methodologically, this study employs a mixed method research approach, through a longitudinal perspective, based on a interpretive paradigm and constructivist approach and on the selection of qualitative analysis as well as qualitative data derived from the research method of grounded theory, techniques of observation, interviews, and complemented by the integration of Bibliometrics, as a quantitative method, for increased validity of the research findings. The results of this work offer a model of negotiation capability, which is the main objective of this research. The components of the model are a set of personal values, dimensions and reference practices that support the complex process of building and developing negotiation capability.Esta investigación estudia el tópico de la negociación en el ámbito empresarial a nivel nacional e internacional y en particular el concepto de capacidad de negociación, entendiendo que los procesos de negociación generalmente dependerán de la habilidad de los directivos. No sólo en negociaciones individuales, sino sobre todo en el mantenimiento de relaciones de negocio a largo plazo. Como marco teórico, esta tesis adopta una visión integral del dinámico fenómeno de la negociación mediante el estudio de la interrelación de los conceptos surgidos durante la investigación: la ética, la toma de decisiones, el liderazgo y la inteligencia emocional. Metodológicamente, este estudio emplea un enfoque de investigación de método mixto, a través de una perspectiva longitudinal, basado en un paradigma interpretativo y en un enfoque constructivista, así como en la selección de análisis y datos cualitativos, obtenidos a partir del método de investigación de la teoría fundamentada, técnicas de observación y entrevistas, complementado por la integración de la Bibliometría, como método cuantitativo, para incrementar la validez de los resultados de la investigación. Los resultados de este trabajo muestran el principal objetivo de esta investigación, que es la construcción de un modelo sobre la capacidad de negociación. Los componentes del modelo, son un conjunto de valores personales, dimensiones y prácticas de referencia, que soportan el complejo proceso de construcción y desarrollo de la capacidad de negociación.Postprint (published version

Negotiators at Work: Three Essays on Employee Negotiation Skill Development and Exhibition

The need to negotiate is pervasive, but the ability to do so effectively is not so commonplace and is an often assumed or taken-for-granted skill. Despite the fact that people negotiate something nearly every day, be it in their personal or professional lives, very few people undergo formal negotiation skill training. In fact, most people overestimate their negotiating abilities, primarily because they never receive feedback on their skills. Consequently, this overestimation of negotiating ability often leads people to unknowingly negotiate suboptimal agreements. In other words, they can do better. In an organizational setting, many employees have to negotiate as a normal and customary part of their job; however, unlike other essential skills, such as technical skills or general communication skills, negotiation skills are not as widely taught and are frequently assumed to be mastered. Furthermore, organizations will place great emphasis on the outcomes of employee negotiations rather than the skills that lead to those outcomes. Similarly, scholarly research on negotiation seems to mimic this focus, where there are many studies related to negotiation outcomes and even general tactics (e.g., making the first offer, setting target and resistance points, etc.) prescribed to obtain outcomes. However, there is a large gap in understanding how people acquire and why they exhibit particular negotiation skills. Furthermore, the relationship between specific negotiation skills and specific negotiated outcomes has been inferred or tested indirectly in previous research. Studies in this dissertation directly examine if acquiring a particular negotiation skill set does lead to particular negotiated outcomes. This dissertation aims to set forth an initial framework for employee negotiation skill development and test key relationships to support the idea that not everyone acquires the same set of negotiation skills or are effective in every negotiation situation. This overall argument will be presented via three essays, the first proposes a theoretical framework and the second and third empirically test relationships set forth in the theory paper