Negotiating interests or values and reaching integrative agreements: the importance of time pressure and temporary impasses

Abstract

Negotiation research and theory tends to focus on interests and ignores values. This experiment compared the influence of negotiations about interests with negotiations about values under low or high time pressure. Results showed that (1) individuals got locked into early impasses more often under low than high time pressure, (2) getting locked into early impasse produced a switch from low levels of integrative behaviour early in the negotiation to high levels late in the negotiation, but only when interests rather than values were negotiated, (3) individuals reached higher joint outcomes when interests rather than values were negotiated, especially when time pressure was low rather than high, because of (4) the relatively greater switch to high levels of integrative behaviour in the case of low time pressure and conflict of interest.

Take a break! or not? The impact of mindsets during breaks on negotiation processes and outcomes

“…For example, case analyses of labor-management negotiations (Walton & McKersie, 1965) as well as laboratory experiments (Harinck & De Dreu, 2004;Olekalns & Smith, 2005) These research findings and case observations resonate well with the idea that temporary breaks in negotiation allow participants to cool off, to reflect upon the interaction process and to evaluate behavior and strategies. Indeed, Ury (1991) advises negotiators to frequently take a break, and to 'go to the balcony'; to detach oneself physically and mentally from the negotiation to evaluate it as if one were a third party.…”

“…The authors found that negotiation outcomes improved when the negotiation was characterized by more facilitating than inhibitory turning points. Similarly, Harinck and De Dreu (2004) showed that naturally occurring temporary recesses early in a negotiation related to more integrative behavior late in the negotiation.…”

“…Similarly, the data used by Harinck and De Dreu (2004) were correlational and it cannot be excluded that their results were, at least in part, due to some unknown third variable. Thus, the above evidence for the putative positive effects of taking a break is indirect and correlational.…”

Software Requirements Negotiation Using the Software Quality Function Deployment

“…The negotiation process often follows a differentiation-before-integration pattern [16], where the negotiation starts with distributed behaviours until an impasse is reached, and then the participants switch to integrative behaviours to avoid failure.…”

“…According to [16], the switch to the integrative behaviour requires the combination of two conditions: an impasse and the willingness to engage in integrative behaviours. We investigate another alternative: using groupware to foster users engaging in integrative behaviours.…”