Computer-Supported Preference Awareness in Negotiation Teams for Fostering Accurate Joint Priorities

ABSTRACT

A major problem within a negotiation team is, that its members -- although they form one joint negotiation party -- often have different preferences for an upcoming negotiation. If these are not exchanged and aligned by the team members prior to the negotiation in order to agree on joint priorities, they achieve poorer negotiation results. This experimental study examines, whether computer-supported awareness about the preferences of all team members (i.e. Preference Awareness) can foster accurate joint priorities within a team. 150 participants were randomly assigned to teams of three members with different preferences in either a condition with or without Preference Awareness. The team members had to prepare jointly for an upcoming negotiation via audio conference and afterwards were asked for their priorities for the negotiation. The stated priorities in the condition with preference awareness covered the preferences of all team members significantly better than in the condition without awareness.

References

1. Brett, J. M. (2007). Negotiating globally (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
2. Brett, J., Behfar, K., & Friedman, R. (2009). How to Manage Your Negotiating Team. Harvard Business Review, 105--109.
3. Cronin, M. A., & Weingart, L. R. (2007). Representational gaps, information processing, and conflict in functionally diverse teams. Academy of Management Review, 32, 761--773.
4. Engelmann, T., Tergan, S.-O. & Hesse, F. W. (2010). Evoking knowledge and information awareness for enhancing computer-supported collaborative problem solving. The Journal of Experimental Education, 78, 1--20.
5. Halevy, N. (2008). Team negotiation: Social, epistemic, economic, and psychological consequences of subgroup conflict. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1687--1702.
6. Homan, A. C., van Knippenberg, D., van Kleef, G. A., & De Dreu, C. K. W. (2007). Bridging faultlines by valuing diversity: Diversity beliefs, information elaboration, and performance in diverse work groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1189--1199.
7. Martinez-Moreno, E., Zornoza, A., Gonzalez-Navarro, P., & Thompson, L. F. (2012). Investigating face-to-face and virtual teamwork over time: When does early task conflict trigger relationship conflict? Group Dynamics: Theory Research and Practice, 16(3), 159--171. doi: 10.1037/a0029569
8. Morgan, P. M., & Tindale, R. S. (2002). Group vs. individual performance in mixed-motive situations: Exploring an inconsistency. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 87, 44--65.
9. Stasser, G., & Titus, W. (1985). Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: Biased information sampling during discussion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1467--1478.
10. Swaab, R. I., Galinsky, A. D., Medvec, V. & Diermeier, D. A. (2012). The communication orientation model: Explaining the diverse effects of sight, sound, and synchronicity on negotiation and group decision-making outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(1), 25--53.
11. Thompson, L., Peterson, E., & Brodt, S. (1996). Team negotiation: An examination of integrative and distributive bargaining. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 66--78.
12. van Ginkel, W. P. (2007). The use of distributed information in decision making groups: The role of shared task representations. Doctoral Dissertation, Erasmus University, Rotterdam.
13. van Kleef, G. A., Steinel, W., & Homan, A. C. (2012). On Being Peripheral and Paying Attention: Prototypicality and Information Processing in Intergroup Conflict. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98 (1), 63--79.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing