Instrumentalism, the philosophy that rational people will behave in ways that promote self‐interest, is often the default assumption that scholars and practitioners rely upon when interpreting and predicting human behavior in negotiations. Instrumentalism, however, need not be the only lens through which negotiators and negotiations are viewed. In this article, we discuss some of the problems associated with too heavy a reliance on instrumentalism and propose an alternative relational approach, one in which negotiators see themselves as agents embedded in a system of relationships, who are motivated to understand and advance the welfare of others. We discuss some of the characteristics that differentiate negotiators who adopt a relational versus instrumental approach and invite scholars and practitioners to consider the implications of viewing negotiations through a more relational lens.

Scholars in the social sciences have long been interested in negotiation (see, e.g., Rubin and Brown 1975; Druckman 1977). But, wittingly or not, many prominent scholars have examined negotiation from a perspective that implicitly assumes that negotiation behavior is best predicted and explained by selfish motives (see, e.g., Karrass 1970; Rubin and Brown 1975; Young 1975; Druckman 1977; Strauss 1978; Gulliver 1979; Pruitt 1981; Raiffa 1982; Haydock 1984; Murray, Rau, and Sherman 1996; Lewicki, Saunders, and Minton 1997; Nelken 2001, 2007; Craver 2005; Thompson 2011; Hogue, Levashina, and Hang 2013). This view is called “instrumental rationality” (or instrumentalism) (Fowers 2010).

In fact, instrumentalism has become so pervasive that it is regarded as a fundamental assumption (Ghoshal 2005). A careful review of the literature shows that this assumption of instrumentalism has greatly influenced modern portrayals of human nature, motivation, behavior, and relationships, particularly in many respected articulations of the nature of the negotiator and the negotiation process (see, e.g., Karrass 1970; Nierenberg 1973; Rubin and Brown 1975; Young 1975; Druckman 1977; Strauss 1978; Gulliver 1979; Pruitt 1981; Raiffa 1982; Haydock 1984; Cialdini 1993; Murray, Rau, and Sherman 1996; Lewicki, Saunders, and Minton 1997; Nelken 2001, 2007; Craver 2005; Thompson 2011). This instrumental lens has deep roots in other disciplines with utilitarian outlooks, such as economics and decision analysis.

That negotiators will have largely instrumental motivations is assumed not only by many negotiation scholars, but is often accepted as conventional wisdom by negotiators themselves. Scholars and actual negotiators alike take it as a given that most negotiations will include some form of the question, “What's in it for me (or us)?” While this accurately captures at least one (legitimate) reason why people approach the negotiating table, if this question is asked of all behavior, it forces a means–end rationality upon negotiators in which all actions (even benevolent ones) are reduced to selfish motives (Fowers 2010).

Despite the prevalence of instrumentalism, some theorists have made important efforts to formulate alternative conceptions of human nature, motivation, behavior, and relationships that do not rely on the presumption of instrumentalism (see, e.g., Hopman 1995; Gantt 1996, 2005; Batson 1998; Ghoshal 2005; Grant 2007; Folger and Salvador 2008; Tenbrunsel and Smith‐Crowe 2008; Cropanzano and Stein 2009; Grant and Parker 2009). The most common of these alternatives is what may loosely be termed as altruism — that is, the idea that people are fundamentally constituted to act out of a desire to contribute to the welfare of others without concern for benefit or risk to self (Kohn 1990; Batson 1991, 1998). For most negotiation scholars, however, the presumption of altruism has not been particularly persuasive because of the way in which instrumentalism and altruism have been framed and defined, and subsequently, compared and contrasted (Kohn 1990; Gantt 2005; Reber and Osbeck 2005).

For example, typical articulations of altruism hold that if an act is in any way tainted by the possibility of self‐interested rationales, then the act can only be understood as selfishly instrumental in nature because only acts that are entirely devoid of self‐interest can be deemed genuinely altruistic (Kohn 1990). When scholars and practitioners assume a pervasive instrumental motivation in a negotiation simply because it is possible, they make a logical mistake — the fallacy of accident.1 In other words, when individuals assume that the possibility of selfishness infers the actuality of it, they in essence eliminate the possibility of genuinely altruistic acts (Kohn 1990; Gantt 2005; Reber and Osbeck 2005). We contend that it is not fair, or even wise, to dismiss all other‐oriented motivation and action simply because there may be an element of self‐interest in the decision‐making process.

We would like to note that this article is not another attempt to take a side in the debate between instrumentalism and altruism. Nor are we dismissing all instrumental viewpoints. The underlying desire to satisfy a need or interest is what brings people to the negotiation table, so some degree of instrumentalism is unavoidably intrinsic to the event. Furthermore, instrumentalism, embodied in the strategic actions a negotiator takes to obtain his or her desired results, effectively explains a great deal of negotiation behavior. A dominant reliance on instrumentalism, however, becomes problematic if we assume that it offers a complete understanding of negotiation behavior or if we take a purely instrumental view and automatically assume it will always produce the best results in a negotiation. Thus, we present an alternative approach, what we call “relational negotiation,” and we discuss the implications of adopting this approach in which people are cast as inherently relational beings.

The default assumption that instrumentalism is fundamental to human nature, motivation, behavior, and relationships has a deep hold in the social sciences. Alfie Kohn's (1990: 189) seminal statement on motivation in the social sciences from nearly a quarter century ago still rings true today:

The number of drives attributed to the human may have grown over the years, but the nature of these drives never seems to change: it is always the satisfaction of one's own needs that is supposed to motivate the individual. This is taken on faith.

Let us then consider how negotiation experts and behavioral scholars often unwittingly assume a position of instrumentalism in human motivation.

A primary explanation for why contemporary negotiation theory defaults to instrumentalism is that such theories frame relationships in an ontologically individualistic way (Kohn 1990).2 “Ontology” is the philosophical study of the nature of being, and ontological individualism refers to the perspective that the individual is what is most real or most important in any analysis of human nature. The individual's wishes are thus expected to take precedence over the wishes of others, and the individual values independence and self‐reliance over all else in making decisions (Slife and Wiggins 2009). So long as relationships do not interfere with individual goals, relationships can be seen as important. Brent Slife and Brady Wiggins wrote that “although these theorists clearly take relationships seriously, when push comes to shove their individualism ultimately places the individual above or at least before” the relationship (2009: 18).

Accordingly, if people are viewed in an ontologically individualistic manner, then their behavior is also assumed to be instrumentally motivated because the self is already driven by unconscious mechanisms (e.g., biases, schemas, heuristics, traits, and needs) that prioritize the self above everything else (Slife and Williams 1995). Note here that instrumentalism never has to be explicitly mentioned. Rather, it is simply assumed because once one adopts the premise that humans are by nature individualistic, then all behavior is seen as a means to an end in the service of self‐assessment, self‐enhancement, and self‐preservation (Fowers 2010).

Additionally, if one assumes that individuals will always consider their self‐interest before acting, then the overriding concern for self will outweigh altruism (Kohn 1990; Batson 1998). Therefore, according to modern assumptions, it can be concluded that people are primarily motivated by ontologically individual and instrumental concerns, and only secondarily motivated by other‐interested reasons.

To understand how instrumentalism implicitly creeps into negotiation scholarship, we must also consider the two main paradigms that have dominated the field: the competitive (or distributive) approach and the cooperative (or integrative) approach (Conceição‐Heldt 2006; McAdoo and Manwaring 2009; Fisher, Ury, and Patton 2011). A negotiator may use either or both approaches, employing bargaining tactics reflecting either or both approaches. These paradigms provide parsimonious and comprehensive approaches to negotiation practice, but they are too often assumed to arise from instrumental motivations. The instrumentalism inherent in distributive bargaining is fairly obvious, while integrative approaches are more subtly undergirded by instrumentalism — integrative approaches are often implied to be a more enlightened or sustainable means of accomplishing instrumental ends. Although integrative approaches are more mindful of relationships and mutually beneficial outcomes, the subtext typically casts those considerations as savvier ways to achieve one's personal goals. Thus, instrumentalism pervades prescriptive advice even for “win–win” negotiations.

Another feature of negotiation scholarship that reinforces instrumentalism is the depiction of the individual as a complex self who carries out social exchange interactions (see, e.g., Emerson 1976; Bottom et al. 2006). This complexity appears in definitions that describe a person as a self‐contained individual with a social identity driven by materialistic and mechanistic causes that exist at both the conscious and unconscious levels (see, e.g., Bandura 1982; Neale and Bazerman 1991; Bandura 2001; Hogue, Levashina, and Hang 2013). Similarly, instrumental perspectives on negotiation imply that negotiators engage in social exchange only insofar as they are driven by automatic biologically and physiologically based causes, and not out of any real or primary concern for the other person.3 Just because biology and physiology may be necessary conditions for motivation, however, does not mean that they are automatically sufficient causes on their own (Slife and Williams 1995).

In addition to conflating necessary with sufficient causation, many contemporary negotiation scholars also assume instrumentalism in the way that they dichotomize motivation as being either instrumental or altruistic. Unfortunately, this popular either/or fallacy gives rise to definitional opposition and sheds no light on the question of whether instrumentalism underlies all human relations, including those within negotiations. The default assumption, then, is that negotiators must be acting out of self‐interested motivations (Fowers 2010).

Moreover, because most examples of self‐sacrificing helping behavior can also be interpreted via instrumentalism, the possibility of altruistic intention is usually dismissed by a more cynical instrumental explanation for behavior (Kohn 1990). Consider the following real‐life case.4 Joe, an admired executive and skilled negotiator at a major consulting firm, faced an ethical dilemma regarding one of his clients, a Fortune 500 company based overseas. After negotiating a significant deal, the chief executive officer of the client company found a problematic rider in the agreement and called Joe and said, “You have me dead to rights on this contract, but I don't remember us agreeing to this. There's nothing we can do about it if you choose not to change it, but will you please look into this?” When Joe inquired about the clause, he discovered that a junior employee had strategically slipped it into the contract during the negotiation process. Joe called the chief executive officer and offered a postnegotiation concessionary revision to the contract, which he was not legally obligated to do.

Given the pervasive assumption of instrumentalism, what do you suppose was the first question asked of Joe when he discussed this encounter with a class of M.B.A. students at a top‐tier business school? The first student asked why he made the change to the contract when he did not have to. When Joe responded simply with “It was the right thing to do,” students immediately pushed back with “Yeah, but you knew you were going to do business with them, you knew it would affect your reputation; you had to know it would affect your future bottom line!” The students' comments reflect their embrace of instrumentalism as the be‐all end‐all guiding force for action. Joe was regarded as naïve at best, and duplicitous at worst, if he did not confess to an instrumental motivation in behaving relationally and morally toward the other party in a complex negotiation.

We believe there is an alternative to reducing all behavior in a negotiation to the instrumental pursuit of self‐interest. But before introducing this perspective, we want to highlight some of the costs associated with too heavy a reliance upon instrumentalism.

First, the assumption of instrumentalism leads to cynical interpretations of people's behavior: per Joe's experience, those who behave relationally are viewed as either self‐deceived or outright deceptive when they describe their motivations nonselfishly or in terms of the relationship (Kohn 1990). Furthermore, some have argued that this view encourages objectification in the sense that individuals and their relationships can be understood only as either objects of frustration or objects of gratification (Kohn 1990). In other words, although negotiation scholars may describe people as sense‐making agents, when they assume ontological individualism and instrumentalism, their scientific explanations all too often reduce people to stimulus‐response machines. This perspective paints a slanted view of human motivation at a theoretical level, but the practical ramifications are concerning as well.

When the assumption that people will behave in a self‐interested fashion is sufficiently pervasive, the descriptive nature of the assumption escalates into a prescriptive nature that exercises regulatory influence on actual behavior. In a series of experiments, Rebecca Ratner and Dale Miller (2001) observed that people were hesitant to take social action that was incongruent with apparent self‐interest, primarily because they feared negative evaluation by others. Their fear was indeed validated — when third‐party observers evaluated individuals who acted on behalf of something for which they had no vested interest, both surprise and anger were unleashed upon the non‐self‐serving target.

This inhibition to act in a nonself‐serving fashion relates to another cost of assumed instrumentalism, which is the self‐fulfilling nature of instrumentalism. Instrumentalist assumptions give rise to social institutions that reward and validate self‐interest and thereby confirm the messaging that people are primarily driven by self‐interest (Kohn 1990; Schwartz 1997). Additionally, Dale Miller's (1999) work on the norm of self‐interest helps explain the powerful grip it has on people's actions and opinions. He has argued that when people operate under the strong norm of self‐interest, they are more likely to pursue material self‐interest over their passions or principles because they are reticent to violate the descriptive and prescriptive expectations of others. He wrote, “People act and sound as though they are strongly motivated by their material self‐interest because scientific theories and collective representations derived from those theories convince them that it is natural and normal” (1999: 1059). Thus, an assumption of instrumentalism causes negotiators to act in more self‐interested ways because: (1) they fear that deviating from self‐interest will provoke suspicion or derogation, (2) they worry that acting altruistically will leave them vulnerable to exploitation (“How can I possibly compete if I don't play like everyone else?”), or (3) they feel entitled to act like their peers and can rationalize away any guilt associated with pursuit of self‐interest (“If everyone else behaves this way, why not me?”) (Frank, Gilovich, and Regan 1993; Snyder and Stukas 1998).

Finally, another liability of this view is that it leads to a disproportionate focus on easily quantified outcomes, usually economic ones. Unfortunately, this means the harder to measure outcomes of the negotiation — typically relational in nature — become marginalized and negotiators are more likely to pursue economic gains at the expense of relational gains (Curhan, Elfenbein, and Xu 2006).

In light of the many liabilities associated with a strictly instrumental perspective, we propose an alternative. Our alternate view is neither altruistic nor instrumental. We call this view “relational negotiation.” Relational negotiators see themselves as agents embedded in a system of relationships, who are motivated to understand and advance the welfare of others. Relational negotiation is characterized by strong relationality, a communal orientation, asking and questioning behavior, and a focus on fair outcomes. Relationality need not take the place of instrumentalism — instrumentalism is real and illuminates a great deal of behavior — but relationality can coexist with instrumentalism and protect negotiators from the myopia associated with an exclusive reliance on instrumentalism. In this section, we provide an explanation of what relational negotiation is and how it differs from instrumental negotiation (see Table One for a summary of differentiating features). To do this, we build on concepts from alternative dispute resolution, therapeutic jurisprudence, and work by contemporary negotiation scholars.

Table One

Differentiating Features of Instrumental versus Relational Approaches to Negotiation

Instrumental NegotiationRelational Negotiation
Relationality Weak relationality. Relationships matter because I never know when I'll see someone again. Strong relationality. Relationships are an important part of our human experience. 
Orientation/Focus Exchange orientation. Focus is on the self. I care what I get out of the negotiation. Communal orientation. Focus is on the other and the shared experience. I care about the welfare of the other. Increased perspective taking. 
Behaviors Telling/selling. Ask questions in order to push own agenda, to solve the problem at hand, and come to an agreement. Listening. Ask questions not just because it will equip me with information to solve the problem, but because I want to understand the interests and constraints of my counterpart. 
Outcomes More likely to evaluate the final agreement to make sure I have captured as much of the value as possible. Concern for self‐interest. More likely to evaluate the final agreement to ensure equity. Concern for justice. 
Instrumental NegotiationRelational Negotiation
Relationality Weak relationality. Relationships matter because I never know when I'll see someone again. Strong relationality. Relationships are an important part of our human experience. 
Orientation/Focus Exchange orientation. Focus is on the self. I care what I get out of the negotiation. Communal orientation. Focus is on the other and the shared experience. I care about the welfare of the other. Increased perspective taking. 
Behaviors Telling/selling. Ask questions in order to push own agenda, to solve the problem at hand, and come to an agreement. Listening. Ask questions not just because it will equip me with information to solve the problem, but because I want to understand the interests and constraints of my counterpart. 
Outcomes More likely to evaluate the final agreement to make sure I have captured as much of the value as possible. Concern for self‐interest. More likely to evaluate the final agreement to ensure equity. Concern for justice. 

Relational negotiation is characterized by strong relationality. Slife and Wiggins (2009) defined strong relationality as a view that “the most basic reality of the world is relationship. Things, events, and places are not first self‐contained entities that later interact and relate to other things, events, and places. Instead, all things, events, and places are first relationships — already and always related to one another” (2009: 18). According to this viewpoint, the best way to see an individual is in context. As such, strong relationality can serve as a cognitive device that negotiators can use to reframe people as embedded in relationships (Gelfand et al. 2007). This enhances the longevity of exchange — and encourages negotiators to care as much about reputation and relationships as they care about material well‐being.

In contrast, instrumentalism is characterized by weak relationality. The premise of weak relationality is that individuals begin in isolation. Thus, communication and relationship only exist to serve the individual's idiosyncratic traits, states, drives, and needs because the isolated individual is primary and any subsequent relationship between individuals is secondary.

Influential mediation theorists Robert Bush and Joseph Folger (2004) have resisted this premise and have heralded strong relationality as a central tenet of their work. They proposed that conflict should be seen as an opportunity for the empowerment and mutual recognition of the parties — the parties must see and understand each other in order to “transform” the relationship, and only then can they resolve their conflict. This model is aligned more closely with a relational perspective than an instrumental one, as the parties are dependent on each other and responsible to each other to acknowledge each other's basic humanity and each other's reality (Bush and Folger 2004). In this way, the parties can be seen as mutually dependent “co‐creators” of the conflict and of the conflict resolution — they did not create the conflict as individuals and they cannot solve it without attending to the needs of the other.

When people recognize that they are an integral part of a broader set of relationships, they see that “actions are definitely contributive to the circumstances as a whole, but these actions are not separate from the circumstances” (Slife and Williams 1995: 123).5 In other words, because relationships are fundamental to our existence, one is incapable of taking isolated actions; rather, each individual is embedded in an interdependent loop of behavior and responses. What this means is that if we bracket the coprimeval assumptions of ontological individualism and instrumentalism and instead start with the ontological assumption of strong relationality, then any relationship, including those within negotiation, becomes less about satisfying an individual's amoral self‐interest and more about building and maintaining sustainable and meaningful relationships.

This is not to say that negotiators with an instrumental focus pay no heed to relationships. We contend, however, that instrumentally minded negotiators place value on the relationship to the extent that they believe it will one day come back to serve their interests. In contrast, a relational negotiator sees relationships as an inherently valuable part of our human experience — not simply a means to an end.

Another hallmark of relationality is that such negotiators tend to have more of a communal orientation and less of an exchange orientation. That is, rather than focusing on what they get out of the negotiation, they value the shared experience and are mindful of the welfare of the other in the negotiation. Recent research undertaken by Margaret Clark and her colleagues has compared exchange‐oriented relationships with communal‐oriented relationships. While social exchange theory and instrumental motives effectively explain exchange relationships, communal relationships are difficult to explain from an instrumental standpoint because they emphasize an other‐focus as a worthy end unto itself. They are characterized by giving assistance to the other as needed, rather than as an exchange, with lower expectations for direct reciprocation. Because communal relationships emphasize concern for the other person's well‐being, relational negotiators will be better equipped to reap the rewards of such bonds. The research indicates that a stronger communal orientation leads to positive outcomes, such as lower perceptions of exploitation, greater relationship satisfaction, and improved moods following helping behavior (Clark and Waddell 1985; Clark and Finkel 2005).

We expect that relational negotiators will enjoy several other benefits from taking on a communal orientation. The heightened focus on the other (versus the self) should enhance perspective‐taking ability, which is known to foster social bonds, reduce sinister attributions, and increase cooperation (Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000; Galinsky, Ku, and Wang 2005). Importantly, within negotiation contexts, perspective takers are more likely to identify creative, but hidden, solutions (Galinsky et al. 2008). Relational negotiators should also be more attuned to discerning the emotions of their counterpart. This critical element of emotional intelligence uniquely predicts counterpart satisfaction, liking, and an increased desire to work together in the future (Mueller and Curhan 2006).

Effective negotiation requires proficient communication, particularly the ability to ask the right questions and to listen to discern the needs and interests of others. While both instrumental and relational negotiators should recognize the importance of skillful questioning, those with an instrumental focus view such behavior as a means to extract the information required to solve the problem and come to an agreement. In contrast, relational negotiators asks questions not just to extract the raw materials from which to craft solutions, but also because they genuinely care about understanding their counterparts' interests and constraints.

Finally, we expect that instrumental and relational negotiators will assess outcomes differently. While instrumental negotiators may be prone to fixate on easy‐to‐quantify economic outcomes, relational negotiators will consider social capital, considering both the economic and relational value created in the negotiation. Furthermore, when assessing economic outcomes, instrumental negotiators will be more likely to base their satisfaction on how much of the value they captured. Meanwhile, the relational negotiator will consider distributive gains against the backdrop of equity.

Such a concern for equity carries important implications for relational negotiators' pursuit of justice. Deborah O'Reilly (2013) found that third parties in negotiation (who are not the direct object of mistreatment themselves) attempt to punish a negotiator who is mistreating another party. While this pursuit of justice can be explained loosely by instrumentalism (i.e., a desire to protect the ethics of the system in which one participates), it may be better understood through a relational lens. Research by Francesca Gino and Lamar Pierce (2009) is supportive of this; they found negotiators were willing to incur personal costs to protect those who were exploited in a social relationship. In an experiment, participants' wealth was manipulated via winnings from a lottery, after which they had the opportunity to help or hurt the other party through dishonest actions. Emotions, namely guilt or envy (depending on whether they were the advantaged or the disadvantaged party), prompted participants to act dishonestly in order to reestablish equity, even when such dishonesty incurred a personal financial cost. Lest one conclude that the negotiators sought equity simply to shed unpleasant emotions, Gino and Pierce also observed helping behaviors when there was inequity between one's partner and third parties, this time motivated by empathy (again, even at personal costs). Thus, financial self‐interest (instrumentalism) cannot fully account for the tendency to help or hurt another. Instead, the participants' reactions were better explained by their concern for fairness and for the relationship, and we expect that this motive would be particularly salient for relational negotiators.

Viewing negotiation through the lens of relationality creates interesting opportunities to rethink the practice, teaching, and study of negotiation. Relationality offers opportunities for practitioners to reframe what happens during a negotiation. A relational approach can shape negotiators' a priori expectations, the behavior of both parties, and post hoc interpretations of the interactions. For example, instead of assuming that a negotiation counterpart is acting strictly out of self‐interest, we can consider the possibility that the person also cares about the well‐being of everybody at the table. Using this lens, a negotiator may be more willing to accept claims of benevolent (or moral) action at face value. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply greater vulnerability of relational negotiators as compared with those with an instrumental approach. In fact, relational negotiators should be well equipped to navigate the wide space between wary distrust and naïve vulnerability by employing strategies that build relationships while still protecting themselves against exploitation (e.g., contingent contracts that align future interests while motivating each other to act in good faith and a tit‐for‐tat strategy that starts with trust and allows for forgiveness).

Relational negotiators are also less likely to subscribe to the belief that strengthening the relationship automatically requires one to relinquish one's share of the value. Research is gradually dismantling the false dilemma that pits relational outcomes against economic outcomes; studies indicate that many of the same strategies that produce superior financial outcomes, such as aggressive anchoring, can simultaneously create greater satisfaction for one's counterpart. Similarly, the technique of presenting multiple equivalent simultaneous offers has been shown to yield better economic outcomes while at the same time increasing the other party's perceptions of the negotiator as flexible and accommodating (Medvec et al. 2005). Finally, in a compelling investigation of the compatibility of economic and relational goals, researchers found that the creation of subjective value led to greater long‐term objective gains (although we hope that awareness of such economic benefits will validate the relational approach instead of refracting it back to an instrumental lens) (Curhan, Elfenbein, and Eisenkraft 2010).

This acknowledgement that pursuit of self‐interest can happily coexist with other‐interest, could, we hope, encourage negotiators to work harder and be more creative in crafting mutually beneficial solutions (again, such an orientation is possible within instrumentalism, but instrumental negotiators may not be as motivated to persist in the search for solutions that satisfy all parties). Consider the case of the landowner who discovered an endangered species habitat on a parcel of land that she hoped to develop. Rather than sell the parcel without disclosing the issue (her prior knowledge of the presence of the species would have been impossible to prove) or destroying the habitat without informing anyone, she disclosed the discovery and entered into a complex high‐stakes negotiation that resulted in a land swap with the U.S. government (see Cushman 1996). As illustrated in this case, a relational negotiator is motivated to find a creative way to both create value for herself and honor the public good.

In the classroom, most negotiation training includes at its core a focus on claiming value for the negotiator. Concern for the other is often presented as a secondary concern. We suggest that teachers introduce the perspective that there are multiple types of value to be created and claimed in a negotiation, specifically nonmonetary outcomes. The Subjective Value Inventory can aid in this effort (see http://www.subjectivevalue.com; Curhan, Elfenbein, and Xu 2006). It delineates and quantifies four areas of central concern to negotiators: feelings about instrumental outcomes, feelings about themselves, feelings about the process, and feelings about their relationships. While the latter three forms of subjective value may already be salient to the relational negotiator, employing the Subjective Value Inventory can help open instrumentalists to the value and possibilities of non‐instrumental outcomes as well.

Researchers can also apply a relational lens as they explore the underlying assumptions made by and the actual approaches taken by negotiators. Recent work by Phillip Glenn and Ran Kuttner (2013), for example, has explored interesting ideas about how discourse can be analyzed to reveal underlying assumptions and to cultivate relational awareness. Experiments could also explore the role of relational self‐construal (cf., Cross, Bacon, and Morris 2000; Gelfand et al. 2007) on negotiation attitudes and behavior. How do negotiators primed with an instrumental versus a relational approach differ in their goals prior to a negotiation, their willingness to act on altruistic impulses, and their justifications for unethical behavior? How do these behaviors affect the amount of information sharing that goes on and the ability of the parties to create integrative agreements? These are potentially fruitful areas for empirical research (c.f., Agle et al. 2015).

Theories of negotiation motivation have heavily emphasized the role of self‐interest. Given the centrality of relationships in negotiations, we believe that other‐centered motivations deserve more attention from negotiation scholars. What we refer to as relational negotiation reconceives negotiators as strictly self‐interested agents to negotiators who strongly relate to and care about others. We hope this alternative set of motivational and behavioral assumptions encourages scholars and practitioners to think in new ways about negotiation, the underlying motives that guide negotiation behavior, and the beneficial outcomes that may result.

The authors gratefully acknowledge Edwin Gantt, Richard Williams, Gerald Williams, Nancy Waters, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful guidance and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

1.

One of the many fallacies described by Aristotle.

2.

One At least one movement within the contemporary negotiation literature confronts Western individualism with Eastern collectivism. Even when discussing Eastern collectivism, however, advocates of this perspective still hold that the individuals are ontologically fundamental and that these individuals somehow chose to submit their personal self‐interests to the greater good of the society (cf. Thompson 1998). Thus, this collectivistic interpretation is still construable as a species of motivation that is still in the best self‐interest for the individuals in that type of a collectivistic society. Therefore, any viable alternative to instrumentalism needs to not only step outside of the instrumentalism‐altruism dichotomy, but also needs to step outside of the individualism‐collectivism dichotomy.

3.

One This complex conception of the self is pivotal in the history of understanding how people think, feel, and behave. The general consensus is that experimentalists have been able to enlarge the human understanding of the self in a predictable manner more than any previous type of behavioral scholars had been able to do. Significant theoretical concerns arise from this claim (i.e., is this conception of the self really complex?) that range beyond the scope of this article. However, for those who are interested, please see Gantt and Williams (2002) or Williams and Gantt (2002).

4.

One Details have been changed to protect the identities of the relevant parties, but the rest of the information is factually accurate.

6.

This perspective is also consistent with similar approaches in other fields, such as the concepts proposed by Sheila McNamee and Ken Gergen (2006).

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