Research Digest

Was there a connection between the secret talks leading up to the Oslo I accords and the public rhetoric displayed by Palestinian and Israeli leaders around those accords? Too often, negotiation research ignores the larger context that surrounds private negotiations.

The public statements made by Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the months preceding the accords and the events that unfolded during the talks were coded in a recent article by William Donohue and Daniel Druckman.

Their study discovered that Palestinian leaders' public rhetoric leading up to the accords focused primarily on justice issues that looked backward and used language communicating significant mistrust. This rhetoric was associated with retreat in the private talks. It may be typical of a nonstate actor's outbidding, showing a more aggressive posture to constituents. However, Israeli leaders, as state actors, switched between positively and negatively framed public rhetoric with forward‐looking and more affiliative language associated with progress in the talks.

The key point of the research is that there may be a stronger relationship between the public rhetoric and moves made in private negotiations than we realize. Information about progress by national representatives in private talks (the backstage) may be signaled by the tone and content of the speeches given by their national leaders outside the negotiating room (the front stage).

Source: Donohue, W. A. and D. Druckman. 2009. Message framing surrounding the Oslo I accords. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(1): 119–145.

Fifteen years ago, we published an article by Ian Macduff entitled “Flames on the Wires,” in which he analyzed how emotional flare‐ups can jeopardize online communications. Technology has evolved significantly since then, of course, as has our use of it.

Earlier this year, Group Decision and Negotiation published a special issue on how emotions affect interpersonal relationships in new media environments. Bilyana Martinovski's introduction highlights some of the questions explored in this special issue that examines the relation betweenemotion, and cognitive and linguistic behavior in relation to new communication technologies.

The articles examine many activities, including business negotiation, conflict solving, and bargaining. One study looks at language and emotion in dyadic e‐negotiations and found that asset‐oriented wording of actions and relations can be used to predict successful negotiations. Another focuses on management and representation of emotion in conflict using examples from international negotiation.

Source: Martinovski, B. 2009. Emotion and interactive technology‐mediated group decision and negotiation. Group Decision and Negotiation 18: 189–192.

Emotions are, by definition, fleeting. Nevertheless, Eduardo Andrade and Dan Ariely have found that they can affect our decisions and (by extension) our negotiation behavior, long after the actual feeling has evaporated.

The emotion literature has traditionally worked under the assumption that the intensity of a feeling, along with its impact on behavior, fades quickly. This article challenges this view by demonstrating that incidental emotions can live longer than the experience itself. The authors provide this evidence through a sequence of ultimatum and dictators games.

Their study demonstrates how mild incidental emotions can influence economic decision making in the short term and also live longer than the emotional experience itself. Questions remain, however, about the relation between the intensity of the emotional reaction and its shelf life, as well as the way that the initial emotional experience influences reactions to later events during the negotiation.

Source: Andrade, E. B. and D. Ariely. 2009. The enduring impact of transient emotions on decision‐making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process 109: 1–8.

Creating value is central to negotiation success. Creativity requires astute analysis of the parties' interests and options, of course, as Mark Davis explains in a recent meta study. It also depends on their mood, however, although in varying degrees.

Researchers generally agree that tasks related to creative thinking are mood sensitive, but there has been an ongoing debate as to whether positive or negative moods foster or inhibit creativity. Davis attempts to shed some light on this debate with a meta‐analytic review of mood creativity research.

His examination of the research on the relationship between mood and creativity supports the general view that positive emotions lead people to think and act more effectively, and his analysis found no benefits of a negative mood on creative performance. If a manager is looking for creative ideation (fluidity, originality, and flexibility), creating a positive mood in the workplace is the way to go.

Source: Davis, M. A. 2009. Understanding the relationship between mood and creativity: A meta‐analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 108: 25–38.

Relationships between people, organizations, and states can wax and wane. Parties to a negotiation likewise can build a close bond or become estranged. Kurt Dirks, Roy Lewicki, and Akbar Zaheer offer a temporal framework for relationships, focusing specifically on how they are repaired after they have been fractured.

Much has been written about the phenomenon of damaged relationships, but only recently has the focus turned to the problem of repairing relationships. This article begins by examining the existing works on relationship repair and organizing them into a conceptual framework. It then presents questions that could provide a basis for a more comprehensive foundation, including what it means to “repair” a relationship and if the processes for repair are independent or connected.

The purpose of this article is to stimulate research on this important but underresearched topic and to introduce readers to the other articles that are part of the Academy of Management Review's special topic forum on repairing relationships within and between organizations.

Source: Dirks, K. T., R. J. Lewicki, and A. Zaheer. 2008. Repairing relationships within and between organizations: Building a conceptual foundation. Academy of Management Review 1: 68–84.

Researchers dt ogilvie and Shalei Simms have found that even rudimentary creativity training enabled negotiation subjects to reach more integrative solutions and generate more value than others in a control group. The goal of their study was to demonstrate that creativity — the generation of newand useful ideas — can have a positive effect on individuals charged with a negotiation task.

Using students from a professional accounting MBA program as their sample, the researchers found that negotiators who received creativity training had better performance outcomes in a mock negotiation than those who did not. Although the creativity training was limited because of the experiment's time constraints, it still made a significant difference in the negotiator's performance.

What does this tell us? Approaching negotiation creatively can prove beneficial for an organization in both the short term and long term because it increases the likelihood of a win–win outcome and can prove beneficial to long‐term relationships.

Source: dt ogilvie and S. Simms. 2009. The impact of creativity on an accounting negotiation. Group Decision and Negotiation 18: 75–87.

We have all read case studies that analyze how masterful mediators have pulled rabbits out of hats and thus averted (or ended) costly conflicts. Such accounts are often included to justify and illustrate key negotiation principles.

Daniella Fridl reminds us in her recently published “Kosovo negotiation: Re‐visiting the role of mediation” that studying failures may be equally instructive, perhaps even more so. Her extensive analysis evaluates why the Kosovo mediation efforts failed to produce a mutually acceptable agreement.

The negotiations over Kosovo were complex and sophisticated. They were also an opportunity for the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians to establish communication, find common interests, and develop a strategy that would lead to economic prosperity, regional peace, stability, and membership in the European Union. But the mediator attempted to impose a solution rather than help the parties build trust, and the two parties remained in opposition for the duration of the talks. No agreement was reached and the mediator granted independence to Kosovo.

To reach a desired outcome in this situation, the mediator must be knowledgeable in both the theory of negotiation and the interests of the parties. Mediation may not resolve the conflict, but it can provide the means for the parties to live together.

Source: Fridl, D. D. 2009. Kosovo negotiation: Re‐visiting the role of mediation. International Negotiation 14: 71–93.

Does the proliferation of nuclear weapons increase the probability that they will be used, as many analysts fear, or could they actually deter major conflict? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between.

Erik Gartzke and Dong‐joon Jo conducted an extensive review of relevant nuclear proliferation literature and have developed hypotheses for both sides of the argument. These hypotheses focus on the likelihood of a state using nuclear weapons and on the relationship between possessing nuclear weapons and how a state is treated on the world stage (i.e. diplomacy and preferred policies).

The authors argue that the spread of nuclear weapons reflects an evolution of the struggle for influence that has always characterized world affairs. They found that states with nuclear weapons become more ambitious and are more likely to use their increased influence through means that are more diplomatic than military — it changes what nations bring to the bargaining table and what they bring home. It does not mean that they are more likely to use the weapons in their arsenal, especially in an offensive posture.

Source: Gartzke, E. and D. Jo. 2009. Bargaining, nuclear proliferation and interstate disputes. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(2): 209–233.