Cross‐cultural negotiations, dysfunctional personalities at the table, intuition in negotiations, trust in mediators, government coalition negotiations, and negotiation competencies are all addressed in this issue, which includes two “research reports,” an “in theory” article, a “case analysis,” an “in practice” article, and a “teaching note.” Together the topics and the formats nicely exemplify the diversity of scholarship offered by Negotiation Journal. Though less obvious on the surface, there is a subtext around research data and models that connects the contributions in this issue, to which I will return at the end of this editor’s note.
Cross‐cultural negotiations are challenging and pervasive in virtually all sectors of society. John L. Graham, Mehdi Mahdavi, and Navid Fatehi‐Rad examine “Potential Speed Bumps and Pitfalls In Buyer–Seller Negotiations in Twenty Cultures” in this issue’s lead article. They draw on data from 1,198 business negotiators from twenty countries engaged in structured simulations over multiple decades. The article builds on and extends research led by John Graham dating back to 1994. The authors acknowledge the need to be cautious with cultural stereotypes, while also documenting key dimensions on which cultural differences prove highly consequential in negotiations.
The research is important for the scale and scope of the inquiry, as well as for the willingness of the authors to make their data available to others. Scholars and practitioners in many scientific fields and disciplines are increasingly recognizing the value of sharing data—not just for replicating research findings, but also for opening up new avenues of inquiry. Here at Negotiation Journal we are committed to promoting the sharing and reuse of negotiation data as an important factor in advancing our field. This article is a key step in that direction.
No negotiations workshop, seminar, or class is complete without questions on how to deal with irrational or dysfunctional personalities. We all have stories to tell and tips to offer, but few of us can describe the specific traits of various personality disorders and articulate optimal ways to negotiate with people who manifest them. In “Dealing with Dysfunction: Negotiating with Difficult Individuals,” Marc‐Charles Ingerson, Kristen Bell DeTienne, Jill M. Hooley, and Nathan Black review five types of personality disorders: borderline personality disorder, passive‐aggressive behavior, and what is called the “dark triad”—narcissism, antisocial tendencies, and Machiavellianism. The authors note that approximately ten percent of working adults have one or more of these tendencies and provide guidance for dealing with each.
The selection of negotiations representatives may be adversely biased toward these personality types. As a result, this article is sure to become required reading for classes in negotiations. The article will also likely become an essential part of the training curriculum for diplomats, business leaders, community organizers, and others.
In the face of complex issues, time constraints, intentional distortions, and other elements of negotiation, negotiators often rely on their intuition as a guide. Yet there is remarkably little attention given to intuition in the negotiation literature. In “The Meaning of Intuition for the Negotiation Process and Outcome,” Peter Kesting and Rasmus Nielsen introduce the concept and consider relevant applications. In this theory‐building article, the authors combine a review of many relevant literatures with motivational insights from five in‐depth interviews with business negotiators. A theoretical model is presented that distinguishes repeated routines from emergent intuitions and suggests avenues for future research.
Theorist Howard Raifa famously observed that, in negotiations, the way we count is “one, two, more than two.” His point, of course, is that after bilateral bargaining, the many types of multilateral bargaining are all of a type, with just small differences in degree. Bilateral bargaining has received much more scholarly attention than multilateral bargaining, so the article by Johanna Hornung, Robin Rüsenberg, Florian Eckert, and Nils C. Bandelow is a welcome addition to the literature. “New Insights into Coalition Negotiations—The Case of German Government Formation” traces complex multilateral dynamics. In particular, the authors document post‐election multiparty negotiations to form a new government, negotiations that were driven more by personality and intragroup dynamics than classic utility or interest maximization. Ultimately, and contrary to rational predictions, a grand coalition emerged.
While this case will be useful for teaching about principles of governance, it also illustrates the use of diverse data types—interviews, archival data, and public media. Most importantly, the case documents counterintuitive findings that push the frontiers of theory on multilateral dynamics.
Mediators can be effective only when they build trust with the disputing parties. In “Triangulation of Salient Studies to Date on Trust‐Building in Mediation,” Joan Albert Riera Adrover, María Elena Cuartero Castañer, and José Francisco Campos Vidal share their research on family conflict mediation in the Spanish Balearic Islands. They sought both to document the role of trust in the mediator, and to triangulate findings by Jean Poitras with a competency model developed in a different cultural context (Montreal, Canada). This is done with a survey rather than through qualitative interviews, which Poitras had utilized.
Repeated studies, triangulating research findings, are all too rare. There is too much of a bias in scholarly research emphasizing what is new, which makes this article doubly valuable—both for its substance and for exemplifying this type of contribution to knowledge. The key findings, highlighting the roles of mastery, warmth and consideration, and chemistry in trust building are more robust as a result of triangulation.
In an ever‐growing number of domains, the required skills and competencies are being identified and advanced with maturity or competency models and associated tools. While such competency‐based approaches do exist for mediation (including the Poitras competency model), arbitration, and some other related domains, there is not a standard model for negotiation. Remigiusz Smolinski and Yun Xiong offer such a model with “In Search of Master Negotiators: A Negotiation Competency Model.” Drawing on criteria used in negotiation competitions; interviews with expert informants; and a review of the literature on negotiation skills, tactics, and strategies, they organized the elements of their model into four broad categories of competency: language and emotionality, negotiation intelligence, relationship building, and moral wisdom. Each category has associated skills and tactics that will be familiar to all of our readers, such as active listening and questioning, managing emotions, understanding interests and options, stage setting, making the first offer, managing concessions, generating creative options, post‐settlement settlement, strategic adaptability, and team performance. By identifying behavioral indicators on these and other dimensions, enormous value is provided to the field.
Readers may want to integrate the competency model into their teaching and research. With use of the model, elements will certainly evolve—think of it as a living document with this article as a baseline. A core component of quality improvement is the use of standards to reduce variance before attempting to improve a system; trying to improve a highly variable system just creates more variation. This article is important as a crucial step toward standardization on which improvement becomes viable.
Just as the competency model can play a broader role in advancing our field, increased open sharing of data and the associated models—rather than independent work by investigators who eschew cooperation and collaboration—accelerates progress in the theory, practice, and pedagogy of negotiation and conflict resolution. At present, Negotiation Journal asks authors to submit their data in reusable forms along with their articles. Such submission of data is voluntary and comes with a value proposition—we will support the proper curation and archiving of the data, embargo it for a period of time if needed, and attach digital object identifiers (DOIs) so that researchers get credit when the data is reused. Keep an eye on these pages as we will have further announcements in future issues of Negotiation Journal on the expanding importance of negotiation data in our field.
