Transitions through Out-of-Keeping Acts Open Access

Coordinated action is oriented toward and based on making sense of the environmental and social challenges at hand. At the heart of the coordinated action that makes up every negotiation lies an often unstated logic for the interaction. The logic rests on the context in which the negotiation takes place, and is created and shaped by the actions taken within the negotiation (Strauss 1978). Each action or choice by one negotiator evokes a responding action or choice by another negotiator, guided by the parties’ growing sense of the underlying meaning and rules for the interaction (Weick 1998). When a responding action is in-keeping with the eliciting action and those previous to it, a logic of interaction is reinforced. If this reinforcement is repeated through double and triple interacts, the logic is reified and the parties are able to build a coherent sequence of actions.

In my earlier work, we refer to this creation of a coherent sequence of actions as an improvisation (McGinn and Keros 2002). Through a sequence of relational, informational, and procedural acts, the parties improvise throughout the negotiation, following a fundamental logic established in the interaction. Transitions occur when acts are out-of-keeping with the underlying logic and the parties must reassess the basis for their coordinated action.

Early in a negotiation, the logic of interaction may be too weakly established to provide behavioral guidance — the parties’ moves reflect their individual notions of what is suitable for the given social, environmental, and economic context. Messick (1999) suggests that both perceptions of and the choices made in a negotiation are influenced by “the perception of appropriateness,” or the set of rules implied by one’s own construal of the situation. If the parties’ perceptions of appropriateness are similar, the parties easily coordinate on an approach and the negotiation adopts a mutual and coherent logic with little comment (McGinn and Keros 2002). In other negotiations, acts and responses in this early stage may be out-of-keeping with one another, as the negotiators act under different views of the “right” or appropriate way to behave in the negotiation.

When the moves are inconsistent with one another, one or more of the parties may endorse a discussion of possible alternative logics, and the parties may explicitly assign a shared logic to the negotiation (Long Lingo and McGinn 2003). Solidifying the logic that will be used to guide the ensuing interaction creates coherence and allows the negotiation to proceed smoothly. In other negotiations, the initial interaction is insufficient to establish an agreed-upon logic and the parties continue to struggle to make sense of and coordinate their behavior far into the interaction.

Although sense-making is most active early in a negotiation, instances in which a responding action is out-of-keeping with the elicitation may occur at any time in the interaction. As the negotiation progresses, out-of-keeping responses and sequences create the opening for a shift in the logic of exchange; they provide the space for a transition in the negotiation. A transition is a period of active sense-making for all parties in the interaction, a period in which the underlying logic is brought into relief and must be actively reinforced or contradicted.

Although they provide the space for a transition, out-of-keeping acts do not lead inevitably to transitions. Acknowledging the inconsistency between the immediate act or sequence and the larger logic requires the parties to stand back and examine what usually remains unexamined, the unwritten rules for the social interaction (Garfinkel 1964). This may be especially difficult when the underlying logic has been that of relationship building, openness, or cooperative problem solving (McGinn and Keros 2002). Fehr and Gächter have shown that deviating from the norm in cooperative interactions “causes resentment and the impulse to punish” (2000).

The responder can assume the act is “one-off” and continue in keeping with the previous underlying logic. Alternatively the responder can view the act as an attempt to reject the guiding logic and move toward a new logic. In this case, the negotiator may experience difficulty formulating a response — any response is likely to be inconsistent with either the immediately previous act, or the assumed logic underlying the interaction as a whole. Any acceptance or endorsement calls for an acknowledgement or exploration of the failure of the previous logic and the factors underlying the transition (Goffman 1959).

Transitions, by definition, move a negotiation away from one logic of interaction and toward another. This movement has no requisite direction — an open and cooperative logic may take a turn for the worse, or a negating, combative logic may take a turn for the better. In addition, transitions are not necessarily isolated events in a negotiation. The occurrence of one transition moving the negotiation toward one logic does not preclude a later transition moving the negotiation toward another logic. Transitions are not necessarily good or bad for a negotiation — they are the mechanisms through which the interaction twists and turns on its way to resolution or impasse.

In our past research, we have audiotaped hundreds of two-party negotiations between individuals, agents, and teams (McGinn and Keros 2002; Long Lingo and McGinn 2003; Wolfe and McGinn 2003). The negotiations varied from simple one-issue price negotiations to others involving multiple quantitative and qualitative issues. Across all the transitions we identified in the transcripts, the trigger for change was a response that was out-of-keeping with the act proceding it and/or the underlying logic of the negotiation. An act may be out-of-keeping in one negotiation and in-keeping in another; in the first situation it may lead to a transition, while it is unlikely to do so in the second. Thus, the context and the logic of the interaction, rather than the details of the acts in isolation, determine which acts are likely to evoke transitions.

Seven distinct types of transitions resulting from out-of-keeping acts were revealed in earlier transcripts. A critical feature differentiating across the types is the abruptness or gradualness of the transition. In abrupt transitions, a single interact (act and response) is sufficient to trigger a new logic. Essentially, one party calls for a new logic and the other party either capitulates or refuses. Three of the transitions we identified in earlier research are abrupt: emotional punctuation, personalized value statements, and cutting off a competitive spiral. In gradual transitions, the development of a new logic occurs slowly over multiple interacts. These transitions are the joint creation of both parties as they gradually come to a new way of understanding their roles in the negotiation. Four of the transitions we identified are gradual: trust testing, addressing assumptions, process clarification, and discussing a fallback.

The transitions also varied in the presence and sequence of relational, informational, and procedural acts used by the negotiators. Relational acts are of two types: bringing together acts and acts of separation. Bringing together acts, as implied by their label, are statements that indicate opportunities or bases for the parties to view one another in a positive light. In our coding, we include statements of flexibility toward or concern for the other, expressions of support for or satisfaction with the other, positive comments about fairness, in-group identification statements, and positive outbursts of emotion as bringing together acts. We coded threats, pressure tactics, positional commitments, evasive behaviors, lies, negative emotional outbursts, expressions of dissatisfaction with the other, complaints about unfair tactics or offers, and interruptions as acts of separation.

We also coded informational and procedural acts. Informational acts concern the exchange of information and offers. Both the provision of information and offers, as well as questions about and requests for information and offers were coded as informational acts. Finally, procedural acts are those that communicate preferences or feelings about the process itself. These include behaviors that move the discussion along by focusing on procedures or on methods for organizing interaction. We also coded comments about time or the introduction of new issues as procedural acts.

Our objective in this essay is two-fold. First, the negotiations studied in the development of transition types were fairly simple games carried out for pay (based on performance) in a laboratory setting. We investigate whether these same transitions are present in more complex and less stylized negotiations. Second, we explore the combination of relational, informational, and procedural acts comprising the transitions. In this discussion, we consider evidence of types of transitions not documented in the earlier studies.

Lawyers spend their lives negotiating — with their clients for fees; with their superiors, peers, and subordinates about assignments and compensation; and with their clients’ adversaries for settlement. While negotiations with clients and colleagues are common across multiple occupations, negotiating with clients’ adversaries for settlement under “the shadow of the law” (Mnookin and Kornhauser 1979) is the specialized purview of lawyers. Recognizing this, many law schools offer elective courses in legal negotiations and dispute resolution.

New York University (NYU) School of Law goes even further. Asserting that skilled lawyers engage in processes not discovered through the learning of the law itself, NYU requires all of its first year law students to complete a year-long course in “lawyering.” The course includes segments on writing, interviewing, client counseling, negotiating, litigating, and mediating. Each segment requires students to learn by doing and is undertaken in conjunction with faculty who have experience as practicing attorneys and who provide guidance and feedback. In the interviewing and negotiating segments, the law students are given the facts of a simulated case, carry out the interviews (with faculty or upper level students acting as clients), and then negotiate (with another law student) in an attempt to reach settlement. All interviews and negotiations are videotaped, and the videotape is used as a small-group teaching tool.

The examples and findings presented below are culled from ten videotaped negotiations carried out by NYU law students. The negotiations were randomly selected out of more than one hundred videotapes being used in a larger study. The case being negotiated involves a high-end contractor (Roch) and an artist who owns a successful art gallery (Kanat). The artist had hired the contractor to build a swimming pool in the artist’s back yard. The original contract called for numerous unusual specifications, such as a 12-foot depth, a 1.5-meter diving board, decorative steps, and a built-in vacuum unit; and stated that the pool would be completed within three months.

More than a year later, the project is still not complete, and numerous errors have resulted in a pool that does not meet the original specifications. Of the original $36,000 agreed upon in the contract, $12,000 is yet to be paid. The contractor is suing for payment and the artist has countersued, claiming non-completion of the job. The “lawyers” in the negotiations had already interviewed their respective clients and investigated past court cases and administrative law that might have bearing on the current case. No constraints were put on the interaction, although a rough guideline of one hour was suggested.

All seven of the transition types were evident in the negotiations between the lawyers. Below, we describe each of the seven types of transitions identified in earlier research, provide examples out of the lawyering tapes, and use the examples to illustrate the how relational, informational, and procedural acts were interwoven in the transitions.

Emotional punctuation transitions are marked by strong emotion, either positive — through the use of humor (see Forester 2003), or negative — through anger or bursts of frustration. Emotional punctuations that spur transitions are out-of-keeping not only in substance, but also in the level of emotion expressed. One of the parties becomes dissatisfied with the ongoing mode of exchange and openly tosses out the approach being taken, using emotion to move the improvisation. Strong emotions are anathema in many negotiations, especially transactional negotiations, and create the need for an explicit acknowledgement of or adjustment to the logic guiding the interaction.

In the example below, the interactions leading up to the emotional punctuation are asymmetric, involving a balance of informational acts and positive and negative relational acts on the part of Kanat’s lawyer, and defensive relational and informational acts on the part of Roch’s lawyer. Kanat’s lawyer has patiently listened to Roch’s lawyer describe the reasons the job is incorrect and incomplete, including the fact that Roch was ill during some of the time the pool was being built. Kanat’s lawyer responds with sympathy but notes, as she has numerous times before, that the defects are significant.

Roch’s lawyer continues with pleas for sympathy rather than addressing the question of how to get the pool completed. Finally, Kanat’s lawyer interrupts the litany of ills with an emotional outburst: “It’s not my client’s fault.”

Kanat’s lawyer uses a single relational statement to call for a redefinition of the interaction. Roch’s lawyer could ignore the act and go on pleading for sympathy. Instead, he responds in-keeping with the emotional outcry and the parties begin a new phase of negative relational interacts — it is now a fight centered around who is to blame, not only for the problems with the pool, but also for the problems in the negotiation.

Negotiating is an evaluative process, one in which interests, constraints, and offers are repeatedly stated, discussed, and evaluated. In this way, value statements are often in-keeping with the expected way of proceeding. But these acts, whether positively or negatively framed, take on a more disruptive nature when the evaluation is personalized. A positive personalized value statement, for example, “I really appreciate how open you’ve been to working with me on this,” can bring the parties together and provide a foundation for greater mutuality within the interaction. A negative personalized value statement can drive a wedge between the parties, creating separation and a negative spiral.

In an example of a negative personalized value statement, Roch’s lawyer solicits information on each issue from Kanat’s lawyer, and then responds obliquely to requests for further work: “That’s certainly something we’d be more than happy to discuss.” When Kanat’s lawyer calls for concrete concessions, Roch’s lawyer begins to suggest “creative” ways to get to the full $12,000, “If we moved the diving board and took care of a few issues . . . if we could look creatively at some of the deviations, I think we could probably arrive at something that would make everyone happy.”

At this point, Kanat’s lawyer moves away from the agreed upon logic of cooperative information exchange with a negative personalized value statement: “My client’s view is that if your client couldn’t supervise the job and had employees that couldn’t handle putting the diving board in the deep end, and things that seemed obvious to my client given a diagram that showed exactly where things were supposed to be, it won’t cut it that she wasn’t able to supervise. . . . Just so I can fully understand, can you explain why she doesn’t feel she needs to do what was in the contract?”

Personalized value statements can involve only relational acts, but they frequently also include informational acts such as the reference in the quote above to the construction diagram. A personalized value statement, in contrast to an emotional punctuation, says something about how the negotiator feels about the other and backs that up with evidence from the conflict itself. While positive personalized value statements can pull the negotiators up out of an unproductive exchange, negative personalized value statements can create separation between the parties and make settlement more difficult.

As the name suggests, this transition begins with an out-of-keeping act that works to diminish the negative emotion in the discussion. The response to an act of separation, such as an extreme demand, is typically a similar act of separation, leading to a negative spiral (Fehr and Gächter 2000; Long Lingo and McGinn 2003). Non-competitive responses to such acts are out-of-keeping in that they short-circuit this spiral, and have the potential to bring the parties back together.

In an example of an interaction involving an act of separation and a non-competitive response, the initial interactions focus on information sharing and efforts to develop solutions that both parties will accept. Gradually, the parties move away from problem solving as they begin to jab one another about why the delays and mistakes occurred in the first place. Roch’s lawyer lays the blame on Kanat. Rather than respond in-keeping with these accusations, Kanat’s lawyer makes a statement that cuts off this competitive spiral and moves Roch’s lawyer to respond in kind.

“These are all things in the past,” Kanat’s lawyer said. “I think we should just move forward. Here are the things that are most important to my client.”

Within this simple informational act nests an important relational statement: we’re going to focus our relationship on the future, not on the past. By cutting off further spiraling of the blaming process, the negotiator has offered to move back to the original logic of problem solving based on information exchange, while emphasizing that her client’s needs must be met. Roch’s lawyer responds with information about his client’s priorities, and the negotiation is back on track.

Trust-testing transitions put in relief one party’s faith in the veracity of the other party. A party sets up “tests” to ascertain whether or not the other is trustworthy. As with the abrupt transitions described above, trust-testing can occur in-keeping with the logic of the interaction without creating a transition. When it occurs out-of-keeping with the ongoing interaction, it presents the opportunity for a change in the way the parties are making sense of the negotiation. Olekalns and Smith (2003) found, in their laboratory results, that trust-testing can facilitate or inhibit positive outcomes. If the other party is deemed trustworthy, the transition enhances the interpersonal relationship between the parties, but if the other party fails the test of trustworthiness, the transition severs the relationship.

In the following example, the parties are stuck in a haggling improvisation. The interactions are a series of non-overlapping offers. Rather than continue the heretofore unproductive haggling, Kanat’s lawyer begins to open up, testing, as he does so, whether Roch’s lawyer is willing to be equally open. He explains that he has received quotes from other contractors for the work yet to be completed, and would be willing to share that information in the hope that Roch could finish the job at a lower price and still make a profit, benefiting them both. He reveals some of his quotes and asks that Roch’s lawyer provide information about her client’s costs to see if a solution that suits them both is possible. But Roch’s lawyer hedges and Kanat’s lawyer takes the trust-testing one step further.

“Can I see your prices?” Kanat’s lawyer says as he lays down his own price list. “I’d have to look at your sheet.” As Roch’s lawyer puts her price list under a pile of other papers, Kanat’s lawyer continues: “I just showed you my price list. I can see that you have one.” Roch’s lawyer pulls her price list back up, but covers the list of prices, then pulls the sheet away again as Kanat’s lawyer attempts to read it.

Roch’s lawyer has failed the test. Kanat’s lawyer drastically switches logics in response, pulling his own price list off the table as he begins to quote law and lay out the likely outcome in arbitration.

Trust-testing progressions involve relational, informational, and procedural acts. Kanat’s lawyer is not only sharing information, he is also suggesting that a more open process may be preferable. The relational acts are implicit — can I trust you — embedded in the informational and procedural acts. If the party being tested responds favorably to the information and the process suggestions, the negotiation can move to a more productive new logic; in contrast, if the test reveals one party cannot be trusted, a whole range of productive logics have been eliminated.

Interactions within a negotiation are grounded in multiple assumptions (potentially unstated and ill formed), such as those about the nature of the interaction, the values and preferences of both parties, and the possibilities for agreement. In many negotiations, these assumptions are never discussed, although in our studies we have found that parties afterwards can state what they believed them to be. Assumptions may be so taken-for-granted that it is out-of-keeping to name them, and even more so to question their validity.

Coming to a mutual understanding of underlying assumptions in a negotiation is critical to settlement, and particularly so in legal cases for which the alternative is a formalized process such as arbitration or trial (Wilson 1995). In these cases, the parties operate as if the other’s assessment of the likely outcome in court/arbitration is the same as theirs, even though both parties are likely to be significantly overconfident about their own chances of success outside the negotiation (Babcock et al. 1995). When assumptions are addressed and differences revealed, the differences can jolt the negotiation into a new logic.

In the following example, the negotiation has included a balanced blend of informational and procedural acts, with a minimum of pressure tactics or blame trading. A half hour into the negotiation, the parties have agreed in principle on a number of issues. Kanat’s lawyer summarizes the happy state of affairs, “I think if we can wrap it into one package, we could find something that both parties would be happy with.”

Roch’s lawyer treats this as an invitation to begin to discuss prices for the services he’s agreed to provide, and mentions arbitration in his introduction of prices. “What’s outstanding in the contract is $12,000,” Roch’s lawyer said. “I understand that even if we went to arbitration, I think it’s unlikely that we would get this whole amount.”

Roch’s lawyer has revealed his underlying assumptions and simultaneously, the weakness of his case. Kanat’s lawyer wants the interaction to continue in the previous vein, discussing solutions but not prices. He takes the discussion of assumptions one step further in an attempt to maintain the dominant logic: “Rather than put a number on it, should we try to negotiate different things or services that would compensate for it? Because it’s really hard to say, and I think this would be a problem in arbitration as well. How do you put a value on having 1 foot less in depth?”

But rather than restoring the interaction to its previous logic, this undermines Roch’s lawyer’s concession and drives him to put a new face on his assumptions about arbitration: “The way the law stands on that, in terms of what would happen in arbitration, Mr. Roch has put in a good faith effort . . . and he put in a lot of time and effort and money, more than he expected, to try to get the pool right. . . . I think it’s clear that he made a good faith effort, which I know the courts look at.”

The transition continues, as the parties try to get the negotiation back to a positive exchange. “I don’t want to go to arbitration — the additional time and cost to our clients, I don’t think that would be best serving them,” Kanat’s lawyer replied. “If we had to, though, it could go both ways, and it’s really hard to predict what the outcome would be. They could say ‘Scrap the pool and do it correctly. It’s a custom builder.’ Likewise, they could tell us, ‘Hey, it’s a contract. You’re getting water in the pool.’ So I don’t want it to come to that if we don’t have to, unless it seems that we can’t reach an agreement here. Are we thinking along the same lines?”

An out-of-keeping act addressing assumptions highlights a contradiction in beliefs. This requires a transition if the negotiation is going to remain or become symmetric: symmetry is difficult to maintain in the presence of shared awareness of different underlying assumptions. Kanat’s lawyer’s response, with its subtle combination of relational acts (“our clients”; “if we had to”; “Are we thinking along the same lines?”) and balanced information about the assumptions regarding arbitration (“it could go both ways”) allows both parties to save face, while bringing some additional urgency to their heretofore low pressure negotiation.

Process clarification transitions result when the parties question the underlying rules of interaction (Garfinkel 1964; Mehan and Wood 1975). In contrast to the other transitions, these are explicit. In essence, the parties are saying “let’s do this differently.” Rules are questioned and reformulated, often across a long period. The responding actor often endorses a discussion of alternative approaches to the interaction.

In the following example, the parties have been negotiating issue by issue, throwing out single-issue options to one another and settling on the ones that work best for both parties. The interaction has been positive and fruitful. But they are now stuck on the toughest issue — the steps — and can’t resolve it as easily as they have the other issues. Roch’s lawyer claims that his client is not willing to put in steps as originally called for in the contract, because “it’s an addition to the pool that’s more a matter of Ms. Kanat’s whim than the value of the pool.”

Kanat’s lawyer does not want to let the discussion degenerate, so makes a process suggestion, “I tell you, why don’t we come back to the steps.”

In response, Roch’s lawyer reassesses the overall process: “I think maybe we should see if we’re going in the same direction here. . . . The question is what Mr. Roch’s compensation is going to be for taking care of this. There’s a larger issue here, in that Mr. Roch would be perfectly willing to repair as much of the pool as he can . . . but we need to talk about what’s going to happen with the other aspect of the contract, which is the $12,000.”

The parties have opened up process as an item for negotiation. For the next five minutes, they interweave procedural acts with informational and relational acts, and undo many of the single-issue agreements they had settled on earlier, until they firmly establish a new logic in which multiple issues are discussed simultaneously. A final procedural act solidifies the new, more complex, logic: “OK, so let’s keep those two options available as we move to the [next issue],” Kanat’s lawyer says.

Discussing a fallback is again procedural, like process clarification, but it is more specific. It is also similar to addressing assumptions, with the distinction that the fallback is created in the negotiation rather than coming from outside the interaction like arbitration. In that sense, discussing a fallback rests on the discovery of new information in the negotiation. The parties come to recognize, and finally name, an agreement they deem acceptable or perhaps inevitable — they may then agree to continue negotiating in the hope for a greater payoff for both parties. In out-of-keeping actions leading to these transitions, one of the parties labels a specific settlement point as an acceptable outcome. Nearly any response by the other party explicitly or implicitly assigns the fallback as the outcome if no better solution is found.

As in the example of addressing assumptions above, the parties in the following negotiation are stuck on the issue of the steps. After a rough beginning trading accusations of blame, they have tentatively settled into straightforward information exchange and have resolved most of the issues. But when Kanat’s lawyer brings up the issue of the steps, Roch’s lawyer’s response threatens to bring them back to their earlier logic of blame and fighting.

Roch’s lawyer claims the request is unreasonable, and begins to make cutting remarks about Kanat: “It’s a very bizarre request. . . . I’m not sure why it has to be steps. You’re sitting on the side of the pool dangling your feet in the water, does it make much difference if you can put your butt in the pool too? What’s the enormous difference there?”

Rather than responding to this act of separation, Kanat’s lawyer tries to keep the negotiation focused on price information, “Do you have a quote for what it would cost to put in the steps?”

Roch’s lawyer continues harping on how “bizarre” the request is. Finally, Kanat’s lawyer steps out of the established pattern and throws out an alternative to completing the steps to Roch’s lawyer: “Well, I see two possibilities, then. Either your client wants to propose an alternative to the steps, but something that would serve a similar function — I can possibly bring that back to my client — or we can go with another builder putting in the steps. My client is really firm on the steps, and this is something I have to bring back to him, so it’s important.”

This reference to a fallback position includes relational (threat of severing the relationship), informational (“my client is really firm on the steps”), and procedural components (calling for a proposal). It shakes Roch’s lawyer out of his chorus about the bizarre nature of the request and into a conciliatory response: “The steps. Well, we clearly don’t want you to go to another contractor, we want to make good here.”

With the fallback on the table, and the baseline established, the negotiation can move back to productive information exchange.

The lawyering transcripts provide evidence and illustration of the seven types of transitions. While there were numerous instances of the same acts occurring without transition when they were in-keeping with the negotiation logic, when an act moves outside the current logic, the opportunity for transition is created. The transcripts we studied suggest the basic choice set for the responder is limited — accept the new logic; endorse a discussion of alternative logics; reject any new logic and respond in-keeping with the previously established logic; or allow the logics to diverge across parties and engage in an asymmetric social interaction. Although the out-of-keeping act provides the impetus, it is the resulting interaction or series of interactions that determines whether a transition occurs.

The transcripts revealed similar relational, informational, and procedural acts across the transitions, but these acts occurred in different proportions and different orders depending on the type of transition. The abrupt transitions are simple, often only one or two interactions, and tend to involve only a limited set of behaviors and responses. Two of the abrupt transitions — emotional punctuation and personalized value statements — rely almost exclusively on relational acts and responses. Personalized value statements are somewhat more complex and may also involve informational acts and responses. In contrast to the other abrupt transitions, cutting off a competitive spiral rests largely on informational acts, with relational content implied but not spoken by either party.

The gradual transitions are more balanced blends of relational, informational, and procedural acts. Addressing assumptions encompasses informational acts by both parties. These may or may not be accompanied by acts addressing relational and/or procedural issues. In trust-testing, informational and procedural acts are clearly presented, while the relational component — can I trust you — is implied rather than stated openly. Process clarification and identifying a fallback are the most drawn out of the transitions, and both involve an interwoven combination of relational, informational, and procedural acts.

In addition to looking for the presence of the seven types of transitions we had sifted out of previous research, we scoured the transcripts for transitions that occurred in the absence of the out-of-keeping acts we expected. What we found revealed a critical difference between our laboratory studies and the lawyering negotiations, one that most of the authors in this issue will find as no surprise. The lawyering negotiations included numerous transitions that were precipitated by power or status plays, what Deborah Kolb (2004) calls “moves.” As Kolb asserts, the parties were cocreating not only the negotiated order, but also the moral order within the interaction. Many of the negotiations included multiple exchanges of “moves and countermoves.” Sometimes these led to transitions that did not fit into the set we identified a priori. In some cases, these interactions led to transitions that fit into our typology, such as in our example of addressing assumptions. But our typology does not consider power or status in the negotiation and, therefore, fails to pick up on these acts when they occur outside other out-of-keeping acts.

In conclusion, an individual act or response does not create a transition by its mere utterance. Acts and responses may open the space for a transition. But in order for the transition to occur, the act or response must first be out-of-keeping with the negotiation as it has been played out. In this way, the context and negotiated order within the interaction determine the potential for transition. Second, transitions require a response or set of interactions in response that move the parties away from the previous logic and toward a new logic of interacting. From a descriptive perspective, these findings allow us to present a much fuller picture of the microprocesses involved in the creation of critical moments in negotiation. From a prescriptive perspective, these findings can provide guidance to negotiators attempting to move to a new logic in their own negotiations.